Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York

Like the other great reform movements of the 19th century, Anti-Rentism had a soundtrack. Tenant farmers of the Hudson-Mohawk region—while engaging in organized protest against monopoly ownership of the land they worked—expressed their aspirations in poetry and music.

In her new book, Nancy Newman joins these lyrics and their corresponding tunes into one publication for the first time. Come hear how the Anti-Renters argued their cause in newspapers and on broadsides with sound and song.

Professor Nancy Newman teaches at the University at Albany–SUNY. She is also the author of Good Music for a Free People: The Germania Musical Society in Nineteenth-Century America.

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