Monday Music: “Black is the Color,” Nina Simone, 1969

It’s a wonderful day for Nina Simone.  But then again, every day is a wonderful day for Nina Simone.

Here’s an amazing live version of “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.”

Friday Video: The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes, and the Course of Country Music.

The Carter Family. From the Winding Stream.

The Winding Stream: The Carters, the Cashes and the Course of Country Music, a film by Beth Harrington, is now in post production!

It’s impossible to overestimate the influence the Carter family had, and continues to have, on country, roots, and traditional music. Mother Maybelle’s guitar playing revolutionized the instrument and she popularized the auto-harp, as well. Their songs have been covered by countless musicians off all genres and all of their recordings are still in print today.

There’s been much written about the Carters and the Cashes, but this is the first film to trace and explore all aspects of their continual influence in the world of music. Here’s a short synopsis from the film’s webpage:

Starting with the seminal Original Carter Family, A.P., Sara and Maybelle; this film-in-progress traces the ebb and flow of their influence, the transformation of that act into the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, the marital alliance between June Carter and music legend Johnny Cash, and the efforts of the present-day family to keep this legacy alive.

The film features interviews with Johnny Cash (who granted an interview shortly before his death), Roseanne Cash and the living Carter family members, as well as performances by roots musicians like the Be Good Tanyas and Jay Farrar.

Beth Harrington is also the producer of the film Welcome to the Club: Women in Rockabilly, which received a Grammy nomination in 2003.

To complete post production they’ve turned to Kickstarter to help raise some funds.  Check out a few of the previews below.  And, if you feel so inclined, help them out with their project. This is such an important story! To visit their Kickstarter page click here.   And if you’re a Twitter user, you can subscribe to the film’s tweets, which tell the story of the Carters in one tweet a day!  Check it out there.

And here are a few of the clips available via The Winding Stream’s webpage.

The North Carolina Chocolate Drops:

And here’s a pieced-together song circle featuring several musicians singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

Monday Music: Sam Amidon “Tribulation”

Photo from Uprooted Music Revue.

Today’s Monday Music comes from Sam Amidon, a folk singer from Vermont whose reinterpretations of traditional music are layered both with familiarity and an eerie sense of deconstruction.

In an interview with Uprooted Music Revue Amidon explained his craft this way: “Well, I’ve never actually written a song. What I do is take old folk songs from one source or another – a children’s singing game from the Georgia Sea Islands, a New England shape note hymn from the early 19th century, or a North Carolina folksong from Dock Boggs – and then I sing it for awhile and maybe rework the music and change it around. ”   To read the interview click here.

Here’s an excellent song, “Tribulation,” from his second album (which has one of the best album titles ever), But This Chicken Proved False-Hearted.  

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.

The Seed and the Story: Paths of Tradition Bearing

Delegates from the Kentucky Remembers! camps. 2007. Photo by author.

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 recently mentioned the online folklife and oral history class I’ve been teaching and that I’m a big believer that learning should always be multi-directional. Teachers come to class with knowledge and years of study, but engaged students come with open minds, questions, and curiosity, a form of wisdom that is truly under-recognized in our society. This willingness to ask questions and to seek out a greater understanding not only helps students think more deeply about the world around them, but it also encourages the teacher to view their work in new ways. Everyone learns together.

I first noticed this when working with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights back in 2007. I was the staff oral historian for the Kentucky Remembers! Camps where I helped students prepare to interview community members about the civil rights movement in Kentucky. Our goal was to document some of the lesser-known figures in the movement, the every day people who fought, and are still fighting, for equality. I was there to helps the student do research, conduct interviews, and formulate in-depth questions. I soon discovered, however, that the students were teaching me. Their willingness to be inquisitive, their desire to understand more about their communities, and their willingness to connect the stories of the past with the realities of today helped me to rethink my role as a teacher. And at the end of the camps when I sat down and listened to their interviews with community elders, I began to realize that there’s nothing quite as powerful as the young and the old speaking together.

This is all to say, I’m deeply appreciative of what my students bring to the table. So I want to share one example from my current class. The students have been reading texts and watching videos about various cultural traditions including Laotian weaving, African American gospel, and Ozark Balladry. I’ve asked them to think about the concept of tradition bearers, of being someone in their community who carries traditions from one generation to the next. In the film A Singing Stream, a film by Tom Davenport about African American gospel singing traditions in a North Carolina family, the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Landis, isn’t one of the main singers. But she sees to it that her sons learn to sing, providing them encouragement, surrounding them with singers, and giving them time and space to soak it all in. As one of my students, Jeffrey noted, “It’s her tradition to maintain the tradition.”

His phrase stuck with me. So often people tell me they have nothing to pass down. They can’t cook; they don’t garden; they can’t sew. They’re not tradition bearers, they conclude. Of course, that’s never true. We all have skills worth passing down. That aside, the important point here is that Mrs. Landis didn’t have to be a singer to be a tradition bearer. She opened up her home and assured her sons access to the tradition. We may not all be excellent quilters or know how to speak the language of our foremothers and fathers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t support those who do, partially by making sure the young people in our society gain exposure. The tradition bearers can only carry it on if we help them and the young people won’t know if we don’t tell them. That’s something we can all do.

Please don’t forget about the garden book we’re working on! More information here and here. 

Monday Music: Freakwater “Gravity.”

An old photo. Janet Bean and Catherine Irwin. (Dave Gay often plays bass with them).

Back in the days before webpages, facebook, and Spotify,  I read a lot of record label catalogs, scouring the artist descriptions for something that sounded worth taking a gamble on.

As a big fan of  The Sea and Cake, Tortoise, and Seam, I was reading through the Thrill Jockey catalog when I came across Freakwater.  I think there were Carter Family references, something about honkey tonk country, and probably a mention of gritty Americana/folk.  I remember becoming giddy with excitement and sent off for my copy of of their newest release, Springtime.  

It was a pivotal discovery for me. I soon ordered everything they’d ever done and kept all the albums on endless repeat.  I’d grown up with this style of music, but for years had been surrounded by noise rock and shoe gaze.  Discovering Freakwater helped bring me back to traditional music and led me to numerous other musicians channelling early country music.   They’ve had a huge impact on the way I relate to music.

What about you? What’s your Freakwater story?

So here’s a good one from the 1995 album, Old Paint.   

Freakwater doesn’t have a self-run webpage, but you can find out all kinds of great stuff here at this trustworthy fan site. 

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. 

Monday Music: Sister Clara Hudmon “Stand by Me.”

Today is a good day for Sister Clara Hudmon.  This song, which is one of my favorites of all time, can be heard on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4.

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Music Monday: Secret Sisters “House of Gold.”

Or Music Tuesday, rather. So sorry for being a day late.

Folklorist Rachel Reynolds Luster told me about these ladies a while back, specifically mentioning their version of “House of Gold.”  She was so right.  I listen to this song sevearl times a week, and every time I get the chills.

Follow the Secret Sisters here.