{{Short description|American academic}} {{Infobox academic | name = Howard Wight Marshall | image = Howard Wight Marshall at the MU School of Music.jpg | alt = | caption = | birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1944}} | birth_place = Moberly, Missouri | death_date = <!-- {{Death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} (enter DEATH date then BIRTH date (e.g., ...|1908|31|8|1967|28|2}} use both this parameter and |birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> | education = | alma_mater = University of Missouri (BA)<br />Indiana University Bloomington (MA & PhD) | occupation = professor, fiddler | years_active = | organization = | known_for = Missouri and Regional Art and Culture, especially fiddling | notable_works = <!-- produces label "Notable work"; may be overridden by |credits=, which produces label "Notable credit(s)"; or by |works=, which produces label "Works"; or by |label_name=, which produces label "Label(s)" --> | style = | workplaces = University of Missouri | children = | website = | signature = | signature_size = | signature_alt = | footnotes = }}
'''Howard Wight Marshall''' (born 1944) is an American academic, author, folklorist, historian, and fiddler. He is a professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Art History and Archeology at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.<ref>https://www.ksmu.org/culture/2017-12-28/missouri-fiddle-traditions-began-in-mid-18th-century Missouri Fiddle Traditions Began In Mid-18th Century</ref> In addition to his work on regional folk architecture he researches fiddling traditions in Missouri and the Ozarks, especially the style known as Missouri fiddling.<ref>https://mofiddledance.org/profiles/howard-marshall/ Howard Marshall Profile at Missouri Traditional Fiddle and Dance Network</ref> Marshall is the founding director of the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center. In 2018, he received the Missouri Humanities Council Distinguished Literary Award.<ref>https://www.unboundbookfestival.com/howard-marshall Howard Marshall Unbound Book Festival</ref>
==Early life and education== Marshall earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri, and graduate degrees from Indiana University Bloomington. He served in the United States Marine Corps in the 1960s.
==Historical research== A significant amount of Howard Marshall's research is centered around folk music within Missouri. Of any singular topic, he has written the most about Missouri fiddling and Missouri fiddlers generally and biographical. Marshall's work on historical topics like Missouri Fiddling is highly detailed and respected for its depth and scope, particularly in his detailed biographies of musicians.
''Now That's a Good Tune, Masters of Missouri Fiddling,'' details Missouri fiddling across various styles, contexts, and locations. Marshall argues that the genesis of the modern Missouri fiddling style is rooted most strongly in Southern and South-Eastern British-American cultural regions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.<ref>Marshall, Howard W., Phil Williams, and Vivian Williams, eds. Now That's a Good Tune : Masters of Traditional Missouri Fiddling. Rev. ed. Voyager Recordings and Publications, 2008. https://www.worldcat.org/title/71788804</ref> This influence is heard throughout different geographic regions, which can be broadly sorted into North Missouri, Little Dixie, and the Ozark area. However, the style of Missouri fiddling has been influenced by the development of sheet music, radio, tunebooks, and television, making the overall sound across regions more homogenous over time. The work describes the effect of technological development as significant enough to consider it as a style separate from geographic regions.
In ''Play Me Something Quick and Devilish : Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri,'' Marshall argues that the violin was the most important instrument in Missouri's folk history before the end of the nineteenth century when piano and eventually guitar became more prominent. This is partly because it was much easier to travel with compared to other instruments. Other factors include the violin's versatility across styles and its similarity to the human voice. Marshall states that the fiddle's great musical flexibility allows it to vary greatly across numerous ethnic and cultural heritages, ranging from indigenous American influences to how jazz influenced certain fiddle styles in the twentieth century. <ref>Howard Wight Marshall 2012, Play Me Something Quick and Devilish : Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri Columbia Mo: University of Missouri Press. </ref> Though Marshall has written in detail on abstract cultural and geographical differences in fiddling, he focuses in detail on the experiences of particular violinists, allowing him to elaborate on the source of generalizations and how and when these generalizations are relevant and applicable. For example, it is generally true that very fast, upbeat, and technical hoedowns win fiddle competitions, but this isn't always the case. Marshall's biography of Nile Wilson in ''Now That's A Good Tune: Masters of Missouri Fiddling'' details Wilson's personal experience of winning a fiddle competition with a slow waltz despite all the other contestants playing faster tunes. Some historians criticize Marshall's work, stating that he omitted key analyses regarding cultural politics.<ref>Bidgood, Lee. 2018. “Fiddler's Dream: Old-Time, Swing, and Bluegrass Fiddling in Twentieth-Century Missouri by Howard Wight Marshall (Review).” Journal of Southern History 84 (3): 781–82. doi:10.1353/soh.2018.0225.</ref> Marshall is also critiqued for being overly celebratory and uncritical in his biographical accounts despite their detail and for failing to connect his accounts into an overarching framework successfully. However, highly critical and more amicable reviews praise Marshall's depth of study and ability to record and describe different types of folk music.<ref>Goertzen, Chris. “Fiddler's Dream: Old-Time, Swing, and Bluegrass Fiddling in Twentieth-Century Missouri.” ARSC Journal 50, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 280–81. https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2018.0225.</ref>
==Works== *Folk Architecture in Little Dixie: a regional culture in Missouri (1981) *Bucakroos in Paradise: Cowboy Life in Northern Nevada (1981) *Missouri Artist Jesse Howard with a Contemplation on Idiosyncratic Art (1983) *The German-American Experience in Missouri (1986) *Paradise Valley, Nevada: The People and Buildings of an American Place (1995) *Barns of Missouri: Storehouses of History (2003) *Play Me Something Quick and Devilish: Old-Time Fiddlers in Missouri, Vol. 1 (2013) *Fiddlers Dream: Old-Time Swing and Bluegrass Fiddling in 20th-century Missouri (2017) *Keep it Old-Time: Fiddle Music in Missouri from the 1960s Folk Revival to the Present (2023)
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://visualstudies.missouri.edu/people/marshall Howard Wright Marshall, Professor Emeritus]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Howard Wright}} Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century American fiddlers Category:21st-century American fiddlers Category:University of Missouri alumni Category:Indiana University Bloomington alumni Category:University of Missouri faculty Category:20th-century American historians Category:Folk musicians from Missouri Category:Musicians from Columbia, Missouri Category:Educators from Columbia, Missouri Category:People from Moberly, Missouri Category:United States Marines Category:American folklorists Category:American music historians Category:American architectural historians Category:Historians of the United States