Quick take: The Smothers Brothers

The Smothers Brothers sing the "anthropologist" verse of the song "My Old Man."


 

Strange...

Ok, so we're about halfway through the first week of classes, and I'm noticing more women students sporting tattoos.  Not the subtle little bees and butterflies, but big honking tattoos that cover arms and legs.  Makes me think of a song by David Holt, "Strange Woman Blues," see below.

This one time, at banjo camp...

Here are two of the many reasons why Suwannee Banjo Camp is so awesome.  Cathy Fink and Adam Hurt play "Coleman's March."

Culture being learned

We like to say that culture is learned and shared within a social group. Here's an example in a video from Cultural Equity.  Young folks on Carriacou, Grenada, are practicing a Nation or Big Drum song.



Traditionally, these songs were performed to encourage the participation and blessing of the Ancestors on important occasions such as launching a boat, moving into a new house, setting up a permanent tombstone, and so on.  The drumming patterns are associated with specific Aftrican Nations, such as Kromanti, Igbo, Kongo, etc.  The songs are mostly in French Creole, but sometimes in English Creole and also sometimes containing phrases that may be African in origin.

Bill Moyers on Woody Guthrie

Yesterday was Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, and Bill Moyers has a nice video essay:

Another song for Memorial Day

For Memorial Day last year, I posted Pete Seeger's "Bring them Home."  This year, I give you his "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy," which he sang on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on February 25, 1968 (he had sung it on an earlier show, but CBS censors cut it).  It was aimed at the Vietnam War then, but it's still plenty relevant.

Sherwood, Tennessee

My old friend John Lynch has produced (and narrates) a short film on the history of his hometown, Sherwood, Tennessee.



He asked me to record some banjo music for the sound track, which I did.  And we can all thank him for the tasteful way in which he put it well into the background.

Conference blogging 3

We're back home now, but I have to share this. In one of the panels I met a Cuban musicologist who had been part of a team recording folk music on Carriacou back in the 1980s, just before the Grenada Revolution imploded and the US did their "intervasion," as some Grenadians called it.

So, here Rolando Pérez Fernández presents me with a copy of the record he produced from that fieldwork. I promised to reciprocate by transcribing what I could of the French and English Creole that might be heard on the record. But first, I have to find someone to convert the analog LP to digital. Wow!

A song for Memorial Day

Now it's just Peter, Paul...

Mary Travers (1936-2009).

Yesterday Peter and Paul, and many others of us, lost Mary Travers to a long struggle with cancer.

I took our daughter Aimee to see the trio just a few years ago here in Jacksonville. They put on a great and moving program, despite the fact that Mary was already ill and had to sit in a chair most of the time. They sounded just like they did when I first heard them 40-odd years ago now.

It was the guitar playing on their renditions of Libba Cotten's "Freight Train" and Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" that first tickled my ear enough to make we want to play the guitar in that finger-picking style. But it was their songs for peace and justice that first got me thinking contrarian thoughts at a time when, with the Vietnam War still raging, if you were against it you were assumed to be some sort of "communist."

Here they do one of my favorite songs, perhaps one you haven't heard. Mary is not the prominent voice here, until she brings it all together at the end.