Later in the century scholars and audiences began to appreciate Appalachian music on its own merits, and not merely as a relic of Anglo-Saxon heritage. Campbell was one of the rare authors who emphasized the diversity of Appalachia. Campbell book's The Southern Highlander and His Homeland (1921) provided a survey of Appalachia including his wife, Olive Dame Campbell's research of folksong. Appalachian culture was viewed as a source of national pride or heritage in the face of industrialization and new European immigration. The attitudes of scholars like Sharp were representative of Progressive Era ideas. In his search for British "Child" ballads, or the English and Scottish ballads collected by Francis Child, Sharp ignored all instrumental, religious, and popular music. Sharp's collection was the first comprehensive study of Appalachian music, but he omitted many facets. Beginning in the early 19th century Cecil Sharp and other song-collectors were among the first to "discover" Appalachian people and viewed them as isolated people cut off from the industry, economy, and transportation of the modern world. Sharp's attention to the Appalachian South added legitimacy to the idea that the region harbored a unique folk culture that resided in white Anglo-Saxon natives who maintained the tradition their ancestors (Becker, 1998, p. Teachers and missionaries in social settlements across the region helped Sharp identify local contacts and eased his way into communities. The "discovery" (Ballads were discovered by outsiders but the people who were singing them certainly knew they existed, discovered is therefore used ironically in this sentence.) that folksongs flourished in the mountains, prompted the leading British folksong collector, Cecil Sharp to make several trips to the southern highlands in the late 1910s. Folksong collectors began turning their attention to the Appalachian South in the late 19th century laying the groundwork for major collecting efforts in the 1910s when the region became the focus of study for collectors of old British ballads.
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