Friday Video: Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story.

From PBS.

While in Memphis for the Folklorists in the South retreat we visited the amazing Stax Museum and heard a little bit about working behind the scenes at the museum from Levon Williams, curator of collections.  The visit to Stax was inspiring, and an excellent example of the power of music to work toward change.  So this week’s Friday Video is a trailer from PBS’s 2007 Great Performances presentation, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. 

Stax was amazing for many reasons, especially its integrated approach to music in the same town where sanitation workers were paid less-than-human wages, leading to the Sanitation Worker’s Strike which was linked to MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign.   In addition to the genre-altering and community-building music, they also produced documentaries like the Wattstax concert and documentary in Los Angeles,  a film, according to PBS POV, that “captures a heady moment in mid-1970s, “black-is-beautiful” African-American culture, when Los Angeles’s black community came together just seven years after the Watts riots to celebrate its survival and a renewed hope in its future.” To enable everyone a chance to attend, tickets were sold for only a dollar each.  On many levels Stax was a movement a gave birth to a new form of music, soul music,  a raw and transcendent blend of gospel, blues, country, and jazz.

Here’s what PBS says about Stax and this film:

The legacy of Stax Records is a unique one that spans more than half a century. Stax Records is critical in American music history as it’s one of the most popular soul music record labels of all time – second only to Motown in sales and influence, but first in gritty, raw, stripped-down soul music. In 15 years, Stax placed more than 167 hit songs in the Top 100 on the pop charts, and a staggering 243 hits in the Top 100 R&B charts. It launched the careers of such legendary artists as Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Sam & Dave, Rufus & Carla Thomas, Booker T, & the MGs, and numerous others. Among the many artists who recorded on the various Stax Records labels were the Staple Singers, Luther Ingram, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Big Star, Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, the Rance Allen Group, and Moms Mabley.

But Stax Records was more than just a label. It was a culture. While segregation was fervently supported in the South during Stax’s formative years in the 1960s, Stax was one of the most successfully integrated companies in the country – from top management and administration to its artists. With more than 200 employees, it was the fifth-largest African-American owned business in the United States during its time.

Teachers should take note that this film comes with a lesson plan including assignments that help students to both identify genres of music and the role Stax played in the community.  Check out the lesson plans by clicking here. 

For more information on the film and viewing options click here.  

The Seed and the Story: Alive Inside Documentary. What Can Be Done Where You Are?

Image of Henry from the film.

Earlier last week a friend called my attention to an online preview of the documentary film, Alive Inside.  Produced by Ximotion Media, the film follows social worker Dan Cohen as he brings IPods filled with music to residents in a nursing home.  It’s not long before the patients—many of whom were previously silenced by dementia—begin communicating again.

The clip that’s been circulating online features Henry, a man who’s confined to a wheel chair, is virtually nonverbal, and doesn’t even recognize his daughter who visits him daily.  After he’s given headphones to listen to Cab Calloway, one of his favorite musicians, his eyes light up and he begins to sing along.  It’s not long before he’s speaking again, expressing how music encapsulates feelings of love and humanity. Social worker Dan Cohen seeks out the expertise of neurologist Oliver Sacks and together they investigate how music affects our brains in the most profound of ways.  The patients aren’t cured of their dementia, but they do find news ways to communicate, which clearly provides a huge dose of hope to the family members and staff who care for them, an oft under-recognized casualty of the illness.

Chances are that you have, or will, care for someone with dementia. Watching a loved one lose their ability to communicate is one of the more difficult things any of us will face. The fact that music remains so powerful in the lives of those with dementia will probably come as no surprise to anyone who’s grown up with music, be it in church, on the radio, or in juke joints.  Music is a link to our past, a connection to former generations, and can encapsulate hope for the future.

In watching the film preview I was reminded of all those times as a child when we visited area nursing homes to sing to the residents, many of them joining us and singing along to songs decades old.  I thought about how my own grandmother, fully overcome with dementia, didn’t always know where she was but could remember every word to the gospel songs her husband once sang as a song leader in the rural Chickalah Church of Christ.  And I remembered how her roommate, a woman who often mistakenly brushed her hair with a sock, was the one who had to remind me of many of the melodies that afternoon when we broke out the old hymnal in their room in Stella Manor.   I’m sure you have similar stories.  Music is a bridge builder across years and generations and possesses a mysterious power that is beyond our ability to articulate.

The producers hope this film will be more than just a moving story. They want it to fuel a grassroots movement of everyday folks thinking of ways they can bring music to their own loved ones and others in area nursing homes.  After all, we are surrounded by Ipods and other forms of technology.  Too often they’re just sitting in drawers gathering dust. The film begs the question: How can we use the technology we take for granted to reach out to our elders? And, of course, the bigger question becomes: what are each of us doing to care for the aged in our community?  I’d love to hear what you’re doing and other ideas you might have that can help all of us transcend generational gaps. You can watch the film clips at http://www.ximotionmedia.com.   And for those of you who care for the aging in our society:  thank you.  Your job is one of the most important in all the world.

You can watch the preview below.  You can learn more about the Music and Memory Project by clicking here.  

Alive Inside Trailer from Michael Rossato-Bennett on Vimeo.

Persistent Story: Celebrating the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum

Michael Morrow with students from Russellville High School, Russellville, Kentucky.

We’ve been sprucing things up around here and reorganizing files.

You can now watch the film Persistent Story: Celebrating the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum at our Boiled Down Juice Vimeo Page. This film was made in 2008 in the Folk Studies graduate program at Western Kentucky University in partnership with Michael Morrow and the West Kentucky African American Heritage Museum in Russellville, Kentucky.  The film is used today by the center for educational and promotional purposes. Disclaimer: The film was made over the course of one semester and was my first film making experience.  Therefore, it’s not without its share of imperfections in audio, editing, and the like.  I’m sharing it here because I hope the message of the film outweighs the technical mistakes.

The Center is an excellent example of  community-based grassroots organizing, the power of oral history to unite a community, and the role of intergenerational research in planning for the future.  Working with Morrow and the center was life-changing for me and informs much of my work today.  If you haven’t been already, I highly recommend you visit the center! It’s an amazing place doing amazing work!  Once we’re finished sprucing up the files we’ll have more photos and information to post.  Thanks to Dr. Kristin Dowell for help in the production of this film.

Here’s a great article about Morrow from the Amplifier. 

Persistent Story from Boiled Down Juice on Vimeo.

The Seed and the Story: Learning From Students and Folkstreams films

The Landis family. From the film, A Singing Stream. Image from Davenport Films.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

I’ve had two exiting developments recently. I recently found out this column will be running every week rather than every other week! Thanks so much for your support.  I’m looking forward to more opportunities to learn from readers about this area’s history and its present day, and I’ll be working toward making this column more interactive, featuring more voices from our diverse and culturally rich community.

Secondly, this past week I began teaching an online class at Arkansas Tech entitled “Folklife and Oral History.”  I’m thoroughly impressed with my students and their level of engagement.  I’m a firm believer that the best part of teaching isn’t sharing your own knowledge but rather learning from the students themselves.  Their questions require me to think more deeply about the readings, and their observations are opening my eyes to new ways of conceptualizing the importance of traditions, music, and the role of tradition bearers (a phrase folklorists use for people who carry on traditions) in a community.  Plus, they’re teaching me about their own family and community traditions, which I find endlessly fascinating.

This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to teach a subject like folklife and oral history—a subject that dwells heavily on the past and its role in the present day—in such a modern, online format. I’ll be the first to say that I deeply appreciate the lines of communication the Internet provides.  It can be a tool for greater democracy and a way to reestablish connections lost over the miles or years.  Yet I feel strongly that younger generations could use more exposure to a life a bit more unplugged.  Funny how online resources can actually introduce students to traditions that are decades, even centuries, old. So last week I had the students watch a few films via Folkstreams, an Internet site housing hundreds of folklife films.

To give them an introduction to traditional singing styles I chose two films: A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle produced by Tom Davenport and Alemda Riddle:  Let’s Talk About Singing produced by George West. The first film explores traditional African American gospel music as it is passed down in the Landis family from rural North Carolina.  The film highlights how music plays a key role in the family’s fight for civil rights and provides an example of how a study of traditional music opens a window into family, political, and community histories.  This musical link to the past provides a source of strength to fight for a more just future.

The second film profiles Ozark ballad singer Alemda Riddle, a woman who lived her entire life near Greers Ferry, Arkansas.  The well-known ballad Hunter, John Quincy Wolfe, met her in 1952, and began recording her songs, some which dated back to the 16^th century.  Riddle became a hero of the folk revival and recorded and traveled extensively.  The songs she was singing may have been hundreds of years old, but her role as a widow traveling the country made her quite a radical figure in her day and age.

Many of the students noted how this traditional music, centuries old, can provide a source of strength for the present day and how the music was a tie linking family members across generations and miles. As I watched the two films together, I began to notice how each individual, in their own unique way, held on to the past with one hand while reaching out for the future with the other. And ultimately that’s what a healthy tradition is about: a link to the past that builds a bridge to a better future.  You can watch these, and countless other folklife films, at www.folkstreams.net.  I love hearing stories and traditions from readers.   Or send me a letter with your stories.  I especially love those.

Friday Video: Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.

From the Arkansas Encyclopedia

This past week I had my students watch a few films from the wonderful resource, Folkstreams, an internet site hosting hundreds of folklife films.  One of the films we watched was Almeda Riddle: Now Let’s Talk About Singing.  The film was produced by George West in 1985.

It had been a few years since I’d seen the film, and after watching again I discovered how many layers can be found in this story.  There are underlying discussions about the role of music and memory, tradition and future, even tradition and tradition bearer.  In case you are unfamiliar with ballad singer, Almeda Riddle, here’s a short description of the fim from the Folkstreams site:

Almeda Riddle was born in 1898, near Greer’s Ferry, Arkansas and lived her entire life in that area. Her father was a fiddler, a singer, and a teacher of shaped-note singing. The church she attended throughout her life used unaccompanied singing and this practice reinforced her use of traditional unaccompanied style as a ballad singer.

This video tells how and where Almeda Riddle began her 10 year stint of singing old ballads all over the country. In an informal manner, folk musician Starr Mitchell chats with Riddle about her singing tours and her commitment to preserving the past for the future. The video was filmed two years before Almeda’s death in 1986.

Almeda was “discovered” by John Quincy Wolfe, a professor at Arkansas (now Lyon) College who brought her to the attention of Alan Lomax, John Lomax’s son. Alan had, by this time, taken up the work his father had begun and was the best known collector of American traditional music. Usually called Granny Riddle, Almeda traveled to such places as Harvard and the Newport Folk Festival to sing, and she left behind an extensive body of recorded traditional songs.

More than eighty field recordings of Almeda Riddle can be heard, along with scores by other Arkansas singers, on the website “The John Quincy Wolfe Collection: Ozark Folksongs”.

Due to copyright  laws I can not embed the video here.  Click here to stream the video from the Folkstreams site.  

To learn more about Almeda, read her entry at the Arkansas Encyclopedia here. 

Friday Video: Truck Farm

From Truck Farm film.

This week’s video is a teaser from one of the films they showed last week at the Dig In Festival in Fayettveille, Arkansas.

Based in Brooklyn, this film chronicles the making of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the back of a 1986 truck, an effort to supply healthy, locally grown food in urban centers.  The concept has grown and there are truck farms popping up all over the nation.

Follow the project online and watch portions of the film via truckfarm.com.   Check out the film teaser below.

Would something like this work in your hometown?  Maybe you already have a truck farm.  We’d love to hear about it!

Friday Video: Seed Swap Documentary

From Seed Swap Documentary

This week’s Seed and the Story column looked at the organization Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage (CAAH) and the annual Seed Swaps currently taking place throughout the state.  This afternoon we will be posting a radio piece which will air on KUAF today  profiling voices from the swap last year in Russellville.

In keeping with this coversage of CAAH, today’s Friday Video is a trailer for the film, Seed Swap Documentary.  Produced by Zachariah McCannon, the film documents the early days of the CAAH organization and the work of anthropologist Dr. Brian Campbell as he organizes the first seed swap in Mountain View, Arkansas.   According to the film’s Facebook page:

This documentary film uses the development of a seed exchange and agricultural biodiversity conservation project in the Ozark Mountains as an ethnographic lens to explore the seed saving subculture of the region. 

To learn more about the film, follow the project on facebook here.

To read more and to keep up with screenings around the state, visit the film’s webpage.  It looks like there will be screenings coming up this March in Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Eureka Springs.

And don’t forget there will be a swap this Saturday in Russellville and one Sunday in Conway.  Go here for a full listing of swap dates and times. 

Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap Box Documentary

Dr. Bronner.

While scanning the Netflix streaming options last night in search for a good documentary to accompany my evening knitting, I came across Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox.  Produced by Sara Lamm in 2007, it’s both an exploration of eccentric beliefs and a profile of a social responsible company.  If you’ve already seen it I’d love to hear your take on it .

You’re probably familiar with the soap, or more so its label, a jumbled series of prophetically sounding run-on sentences about hard work, moral ABCs, and God, all culminating in the phrase, “All-one!”    A master soap maker who lost his parents in the Holocaust, Dr. Bronner escaped from a mental institution before traveling the U.S. selling his soap and, more specifically, the message printed on the bottle. His teachings were a mixture of astronomy, religion (specifically the unification of all faiths), and social commentary, specifically the belief in equality of all humankind.

The documentary centers around Bronner’s youngest son, Ralph Bronner, who travels the United States telling the story of his father and his belief in what he dubbed the “moral ABCs.”  According to the film producers, “68-year-old Ralph endured over 15 orphanages and foster homes as a child, but despite difficult memories, is his father’s most ardent fan.”

It’s a compelling film, unraveling the character of Dr. Bronner from the man himself, a flawed human who put his belief in the need to “unite spaceship earth” above his own children.  Although slow-moving at times with less than perfect footage, the film does a great job teasing out the wisdom of Dr. Bronner’s teachings from his numerous shortcomings as both a visionary and a father.

What I found most fascinating about the documentary (besides an inside look at an eccentric self-proclaimed rabbi), were the slivers of information about his descendants who run the company today.  Ralph is clearly more emotionally complex then he ever lets on, and the film follows his travels as he attempts to connect with strangers, striving to bring his father’s legacy to new generation even as he seeks out his own identity. He meets a New York subway worker and talks of the beauty of the common man. He befriends a piano player who’s caring for his dying friend. Somehow the legacy of soap continues to serve as a window to our common humanity and underlying eccentricities.  (You can read Ralph’s response to the film here).

Alongside Ralph’s bittersweet tale is a glimpse into how the company is run today, the product of Bronner’s relatives who clearly have a deep respect for the man even as they live with troubling memories.  Everything within the business is operated under Fair Trade agreements, workers are paid incredibly well, and the operation focuses on environmental, economic, and social sustainability.  The family doesn’t go around preaching Bronner’s teachings, but rather apply some of the more accessible policies of what Bronner dubbed “constructive capitalism.” According to the film, all of the Bronner descendants have “capped their salaries so that they make no more than five times that of the lowest paid employee.”

Have you seen the film?  What are your thoughts?

You can read more information from the fim’s creator here.

Also check out her interview on NPR here.

Friday Video: Immokalee: A Story of Slavery and Freedom.

Lucas Benitez, ICW. From Yes! Magazine. Photo by Jeffrey Slater

Earlier this week we posted about Yes! Magazine’s Breakthrough Fifteen. One of the people profiled in the issue is Lucas Benitez, a man who helped to form the  Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  The Coalition works to fight modern-day slavery in the agricultural industry and organizes for better pay. They operate a low-power radio station, “Radio Conciencia”  as well as a co-op to give families access to affordable food.  They have also led hunger strikes and multiple marches.

From Yes!:

IW started in 1993 when Lucas and other workers got together to discuss working conditions. In 1995, they staged a weeklong protest that forced a grower to change his decision to lower pay. But an incident in 1996 galvanized Lucas and CIW. A teenage field worker had asked his foreman for a water break. The foreman refused; the worker stopped for a drink anyway. The foreman beat the worker brutally. Lucas helped spread news of the attack and more than 500 workers gathered in protest, waving the victim’s bloody shirt. The action grew to a boycott of the foreman lasting several weeks. In keeping with his belief in acting as an animator, Lucas was not the leader of this action. Instead, he used it as an opportunity to build confidence among the farmworkers in their own power and the power of collective action. Lucas keeps the teenager’s blood-stained shirt with him to this day.  To read the entire profile from Yes! go here.

This week’s Friday Video is a short documentary produced by Jeff Imig about the CIW and their fight against unfair wages and practices, including their effective boycott of Taco Bell.  The video highlights both their struggles and successes.

Friday Video: Alice Walker

From AALBC.

We’re back up and running with a Friday Video after a few weeks without a dependable computer.

This week’s video features poet, novelist, and activist, Alice Walker.  She’s most well known as the author of the novel The Color Purple and the person who saved Zora Neale Hurston from historical obscurity.  The name of this blog is drawn from a Zora Neale Hurston quote, and no doubt I’d never come across her work if it weren’t for the diligence of Walker, who revived her legacy and place a tombstone at her burial site.

A few years ago when working full time for public radio I had the opportunity to interview author Evelyn White about her then recent book, Alice Walker: A Life.   I’d loved Alice Walker for years—poured over Once during college and underlined 3/4 of the story “Everyday Use.”  But it wasn’t until I read her official biography that I began to fully comprehend the layers of Walker’s influence as author, social radical and freedom fighter. Walker is both loved and hated, lauded and discredited.  Her work brings out strong emotions, asking people to wrestle with questions of race, peace, environment, and self.  Her biography remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Yesterday ColorLines magazine posted this video, in honor of Walker’s 68th birthday.  It was originally released in 2010 by Google, but I’d never seen it until yesterday.  It’s full of timeless concepts, so it’s not dated.  It’s a long one, and I have not had a chance to get through the whole thing yet.  But what I’ve watched so far discusses her work in Gaza regarding International Women’s Day, her belief in the power and democracy of new media, and the importance of imagination in empathy and action.  She also talks about her “literary formothers,” including Hurston, her own mother, and others.

You can visit Walker’s blog here. 

If you have’t read it already, I highly reccomend her biography written by Evelyn White.