Heading down long dusty roads after S&P

It’s the end of the semester and I am a ball of stress heading into finals, but as I reflect back on my classes, I am very glad that I was able to enroll in VS185X (the alternative was a class on the sociology of culture, which would have been a very different experience…)

There really is no experience like Songs & Places. My initial reasons for wanting to join the class was to become educated and immersed in American folk music—a genre of music that is so ubiquitous yet so foreign to me— and to get back in touch with my artistic capabilities that have been neglected for the last few years. I have accomplished both those goals, and along the way have been continuously fascinated by the richness of American culture and navigating its history through music while interacting with a group of creative and talented (and maybe a little eccentric) people. Maybe I’ve even improved my singing ability…

Songs & Places stands out as the most unique class I’ve taken at Cal, in every aspect possible. Throughout the course of the semester, I've tried to engage every song, every story in a way that made sense to me, but this wasn’t always easy because the sentiment behind each song is undoubtedly unique to the place and the people the song belongs to. But I will continue to sing and attempt to understand, though I'm probably too young and naive to fathom what exactly created the songs.

All in all, the songs have changed me by making me more American ;)

My favorites:

• Down by the Sally Gardens
• Red River Valley
• Since I've Laid My Burden Down
• San Francisco Bay Blues

Blues!

For some reason, I think of blues and jazz synonymously- is that uncultured and uneducated of me?
I understand that blues is not jazz and vice versa, and though it may be that blues music gave birth to jazz and that they have a shared relative in work songs, I can't seem to effectively separate the two in my head. With my project I tried to capture the mood of experiencing live blues music, and ended up being inspired by this photo I took of a performance at a jazz club in New Orleans:



Blues is like poetry spoken out loud, with music to enhance the meaning of the lyrics. I could easily imagine a spoken word performance translated into a blues song with its integrity and raw emotion still preserved. It's interesting to consider the roles of the voice and the guitar as answering each other. Personally, I feel as if the two components intermingle to produce a single entity.

Corrina, Corrina is my favorite song out of all the blues songs listed (I also really like the name Corrina). Taj Mahal adds a sort of reggae feel to Corrina Corrina, but my preferred version is Muddy Waters' upbeat, heartfelt interpretation (This version, to be specific, which sounds very jazzy - maybe that's why I like it so much).

After reading some of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka's Blues People, I've come to greatly appreciate music as a means of tracing a people's history... African-American culture is definitely unique in how it is immensely influenced by music, and in the way that its music has influenced us all.

"..... the only so-called popular music in this country of any real value is of African derivation."

I found it particularly fascinating how African slaves altered their music to identify with their situation, whether it be for communicating in the fields, expressing their psychological struggle to find self and place in an oppressive white society, or even for providing entertainment - in a way that successfully created a strong sense of identity. Blues and jazz are so distinct because they were created to be.

Woody's Land

How did Woody become a "spokesman for the common man"?

Woody lived and continuously presented himself as if he was the quintessential common man. Maintaining this working class image was probably also important for his professional success, in a time where Americans were struggling and immigrants were desperately trying to become American. In a lot of ways he was a common man - traveling out of the Dust Bowl to find work, contributing to the US's efforts in the war any way he could, losing and gaining loved ones, et cetera, but in a lot of ways he wasn't. I don't really know to what extent Woody's life path was unique in the context of that era, or whether the tragically recurring theme of destructive fire in his life was commonplace; Woody's almost as much of a mystery as Leadbelly. I'm also curious to know more about the role of Huntington's disease in his life philosophy. Did Woody live so positively and so adventurously, striving to influence as many people as possible with his music, because he knew that his life would end rather prematurely and in rather bad circumstances?

This machine kills fascists.

I read somewhere (probably Wikipedia) that Woody was actually not very political at all, but that he was just inevitably immersed in political times. Did he really believe that his music could kill fascism? That his guitar was a machine? Because I don't particularly hear that in his songs (maybe I need to listen to the more fascism-centered ones). What I do hear is patriotism and a strong sense of solidarity. I can also hear the essential role music took on in Woody's life - his guitar was his pride and joy, his meal ticket, and what defined his being in his travels and his work. Woody unfortunately didn't succeed in killing fascism (or fascists) with his music, but he did succeed with This Land is Your Land which is almost certainly more well known and widely sung than the national anthem...

Studs Terkel's introduction of Bound for Glory reveals Woody's core ingenuity and humbleness, but Woody's family history and his musical, artistic, and journalistic work reveal much more that is not explicitly expressed. Woody was an artist in all the ways possible, and I believe that he could have achieved great success (though maybe only after his death, as with many other great writers) with his writing alone.

The Singing Convict

"Raiding the Lead Belly Vault" (NPR)

It was probably mentioned in class before, but there seems to be so much emphasis put on the fact that Leadbelly was a criminal. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this man who created such rich, wonderful, influential music killed his own relative and was imprisoned for multiple attempted homicides, but maybe that's just a display of my naivety.

There are articles that state that John Lomax, who "discovered" Leadbelly, eagerly crafted this image of murderer musician who "sung his way out of prison" (see newsreel). Given the circumstances that drove Leadbelly to eventually sue Lomax and deliberately jeopardize their mentor-mentee relationship, I'm curious to know who Leadbelly really was, what drove him to such violent acts, and did it stem from the same passion that he put into his music? Who was the man that Martha Promise looked at with such genuine affection in that photograph?

With my project, I aimed to illustrate the hidden side of Leadbelly... we don't really know who Leadbelly was and probably never will. We'll always be speculating...

In Take This Hammer, I believe Leadbelly may be singing about prison life, maybe of his time in the chain gang that he later escaped from.

I don't want no cornbread and molasses; it hurts my pride

This lyric of the song particularly resonates with me because it so starkly simplifies the experience that the song is alluding to, with just a mention of the meal that was fed... Some internet-digging led to me to learn that cornbread and molasses was a major part of the slave diet, which was lacking in both variety and nutrients and closely resembled the diet of prison convicts. So maybe Leadbelly is singing of both slavery and imprisonment and the tragic parallels between the two...

Leadbelly's prison experiences are a central theme in his music, with the Midnight Special (according to Mudcat) referring to a legend from the Texas Sugar Land Penitentiary (where Leadbelly spent some time) that if the lights of a night train passing by the prison fell upon a prisoner's cell, that prisoner would be given a ride out of prison. Knowing this, and knowing some of where Leadbelly comes from, inspires me to appreciate his music more and listen to his lyrics more closely.

As for why Leadbelly (the film) is so hard to find, it's most likely due to the same reason Leadbelly did not have a very profitable recording career despite the immense attention he received. As Wikipedia so elegantly put it, Leadbelly had fame but not fortune.

I would say that this was largely due to racial prejudice.

What would Leadbelly's life have been like if he did not possess such musical talent? He was a man regarded as impulsively violent (as seen in the film), whose musical career was tainted by the sensationalist notion that the hands playing the guitar were the same hands that killed a man... His history actually reminds me a lot of the prison crisis in the South today, and I imagine that there could be another Leadbelly right now singing in one of those prison cells (but probably not)...

More Appalachia + Songster

With this project, I aimed to illustrate the essence of murder ballads (but didn’t necessarily mean for it to look like a murder scene – shouldn’t have used so much red!). Barbry Allen was my main influence, with its Romeo and Juliet-like storyline. The song stands out initially due to its length, but is compelling and provocative in its classic tale of unrequited love culminating in death. The way Jean Ritchie sings it is quite eerie and effective, similar to her treatment of The Cuckoo. To quote Cecil Sharp:

“how far from that gentle tune was this - so strange, so remote, so thrilling.”

One passage of the Cecil Sharp article in particular caught my attention…

“Folk music is the product of an unselfconscious peasantry; a peasantry which refuses to transmit the eccentricities of any individual; which simply omits and forgets what does not belong to the spirit of the people...  But this is a doleful theory to propound to Americans who feel the urge of nationality.  How can we have any folk music?  We are in the clutches of compulsory education.”

What does Sharp mean by this? What is “unselfconscious peasantry”? Does this mean a peasantry in which one’s societal rank is not questioned, in which no attempt is made to improve one’s condition? Culture is not monolithic, and I contest his claim that folk music stems from such a culture… and what exactly is the role of compulsory education in discounting folk music? Does education not contribute to the “spirit of the people”? Is an educated population unable to produce songs of a quality comparable to those created by the peasantry?

So many questions, very little answers…

On a brighter note, this week also included one of my favorite S&P songs to sing: Down by the Sally Gardens. J

Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor is my favorite Mississippi John Hurt song. Funnily, I always imagine a wooden pallet on the floor even though I know he is singing of a bed… MJH is described to have a gentle, guileless voice - the word guileless describes his ingenuity perfectly, and I would characterize Ollie Gilbert in the same way, though her voice is raw rather than gentle. It’s interesting that John Hurt adopted the nickname Mississippi, given that his musical roots and style are distinguished as “un-Mississippi”. The fact that his greatest influence was himself and his own musical insights reveals his innate musicality.

Candy Man is unembellished in the way that it can be taken at face value just as a fun song to sing and listen to. Realistically, its myriad of versions with drastically different lyrics suggests some sort of meaning within the song. As for me, I love the way it takes me back to New Orleans, with its imagery of jolliness, beer, and salty alligator hot dogs.

P.S. San Francisco Bay Blues is also one of my favorites. So many great songs!

The Cuckoo sings of murder

I agree with Lida that the songs assigned for this week all sounded very similar (they are indistinct, so to say) but I think the similiarity in sound is a hallmark of any song within the same genre. And that leads to the reason I chose The Cuckoo as my project - the instant I heard Jean Ritchie sing the first words "Oh, the cuckoo-" I felt something that none of the other songs were able to evoke. The Cuckoo made me feel particularly uneasy, not necessarily due to the lyrics, but in the way that it is sung so beautifully by Jean Ritchie.. she evokes a sense of despondency disguised in words of hope, intermixed with a sense of poignancy.  I'm having trouble finding the right words... maybe there aren't any. I'm posting the lyrics here because they are so starkly different than Doc Watson & Clarence Ashley's version of the song - not only because it is a woman's perspective but more so in the general meaning of the song. Jean Ritchie's cuckoo bird symbolizes femininity and empowerment (the cuckoo only "sings" during spring, a season characterized by beauty and warm weather) while Doc Watson & Clarence Ashleys' cuckoo bird only "hollers" on the 4th of July, a date which I think was only chosen because July rhymes with flies, though I may be wrong and the date may be significant in symbolizing independence or freedom.

O the cuckoo she's a pretty bird, she sings as she flies;

She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies.

She sucks all the pretty flowers to make her voice clear

And she never sings “cuckoo” till the spring of the year.

Come all you young women, take warning by me,

Never place your affection on the love of a man.

For the roots they will wither, the branches decay,

He'll turn his back on you and he'll walk square away.

If you do forsake me I'll not be forsworn

And they'll all be mistaken if they think that I'll mourn;

For I'll get myself up in some higher degree

And I'll walk as light by him as he can by me.

During class I had a lot of thoughts running through my head pertaining to the discussion of Banks of the Ohio - of how it's such a dark song that is sung so lightly, even playfully, and how could they sing of murder so lightheartedly?

Maybe it stems from the foundation of Appalachian music, from Appalachian life.

The Appalachias were initially settled by poorer people -

"It is generally perceived that this 'lower' class of immigrant resulted in the 'poor white trash' or 'hillbillies' of Deliverance fame, although the truth is that to survive in the Southern Mountains you needed to be resourceful, healthy, and knowledgeable." (source)

Mountain life was undoubtedly difficult, and I would imagine the Appalachian communities were largely isolated from greater American culture. After doing a lot of online research on Appalachian culture and history to try to understand the darkness of Appalachian folk songs like Banks of the Ohio and Barbara Allen, I was led to examine murder ballads, a subgenre of traditional ballads. I didn't understand why murder ballads are so prevalent other than the fact that they are narrative songs in which the narrative is particularly provocative. Then I came across this article -

"The cultural insulation of the Scots and Scots-Irish denizens of the [Appalachian] hills and hollers, often coupled with an outsize concept of personal honor, preserved an age-old reliance on violence as an acceptable means of resolving problems. Isolated by geography from the world of electricity and internal combustion engines—and often of literacy—this tradition carried well into the 20th century..."

With a quote from Lomax's Folks Songs of America:

“Willful and cold-blooded murders…came naturally to people whose ancestors were…moonshiners and feudists. The old [Scottish] Border ballad tradition, which linked love and death, fitted the code of the backwoods.”

So I guess the simple answer is that these songs are so dark is essentially because it alludes to the cultural origins of the people of Appalachia, while also being a thriller (equivalent to a tabloid story, interestingly, according to the article above). I'm looking forward to examining each narrative further...

Oh Mary, don't you weep!

My personal interpretation of Mary Don't You Weep was that Mary was being told not to weep, because you are strong and God will protect you, just as God protected Moses and the Israelites by drowning Pharaoh's army.

It was mentioned during class that Mary was a strong woman who did very courageous things, such as wash Jesus's feet in the referenced bible verse.

But even the strongest people have their own moments of weakness, and I wanted to depict in my illustration the strong Mary weeping in privacy - but with the big wave behind her representing and reminding her of God's power and her own strength to overcome her hardships.

John 20:11-15
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Out of all the versions posted on the class blog, Inez Andrews' take is by far the one that resonated the most with me. Undoubtedly she is a great performer and the song is a great performance in itself, but the sincerity in her voice gives her version of the song a quality that the other versions posted lack (in my opinion, of course...).