I forgot all about posting pictures from New Bedford on this blog: I'm sorry. Go to
http://pix.karleklund.net and look up "summerfest". I'll have to post some more on flickr, maybe some from past years.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Sugar In The Gourd ...
is the name of an internet broadcast that plays "all old-timey, all the time". It is narrower in scope than Sandy Sheehan's Traditional Folk stream on WUMB, but of as good quality. I have been filling up iTunes for the last couple of weeks from both sources. I recommend them.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
New Bedford
The folk festival at the New Bedford Summerfest is coming up soon. I'll try to add some images to this blog.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Joshua Gone Barbados.
Eric Von Schmidt's "Joshua Gone Barbados" is one of the few well-known songs that refers to St. Vincent. Some background (part of which only appeared after Eric's death) can be found on http://svgblog.blogspot.com
Me & Folkmusic, Part Eight
Back in the 1990s I figured, as I said in the last part, that I had written my last word on folk music. I wrote that on a Macintosh computer and stuck it up on the internet in a primitive way. I had no idea that Steve Jobs was going to change the face of music.
It took me a while to catch up, but as a retired old codger with more time than money, iTunes and the iPod was a perfect way to get reinvolved with folk music.
The first thing was calypso. Calypso still exists, more or less, but it had a Golden Age after World War 2. American soldiers who had been stationed in the Caribbean guarding the Panama Canal brought it back to the mainland and the Andrews Sisters diluted it enough for American tastes. But it remained what it had been in the Caribbean and particularly in Trinidad, for another generation. I had enjoyed Calypso in the late '40s, what little I could find, so when we started comind down in the winters I looked for CDs. Eventually, in the airport in Antigua, I found a record of The Mighty Sparrow. Then a couple more, here and there, on Rounder Records or the Smithsonian. But Calypso was old fashioned. Finally I ran across Irwin Chusid on WFMU. He plays an hour a week of Calypso and Soca and I have downloaded three thousand or so Calypso tunes since I started listening. He plays some soca and pan (steel drum) but no ska, dub and reggae. There's plenty of that elsewhere.
I have also been downloading, and sometimes purchasing, old Timey and Gospel music.
Later I'll add to this a list of links. I intend to go back and add links to these essays, too.
It took me a while to catch up, but as a retired old codger with more time than money, iTunes and the iPod was a perfect way to get reinvolved with folk music.
The first thing was calypso. Calypso still exists, more or less, but it had a Golden Age after World War 2. American soldiers who had been stationed in the Caribbean guarding the Panama Canal brought it back to the mainland and the Andrews Sisters diluted it enough for American tastes. But it remained what it had been in the Caribbean and particularly in Trinidad, for another generation. I had enjoyed Calypso in the late '40s, what little I could find, so when we started comind down in the winters I looked for CDs. Eventually, in the airport in Antigua, I found a record of The Mighty Sparrow. Then a couple more, here and there, on Rounder Records or the Smithsonian. But Calypso was old fashioned. Finally I ran across Irwin Chusid on WFMU. He plays an hour a week of Calypso and Soca and I have downloaded three thousand or so Calypso tunes since I started listening. He plays some soca and pan (steel drum) but no ska, dub and reggae. There's plenty of that elsewhere.
I have also been downloading, and sometimes purchasing, old Timey and Gospel music.
Later I'll add to this a list of links. I intend to go back and add links to these essays, too.
Me & Folkmusic, Part Seven
By 1966 I had accomplished what Yale wanted me for, so I allowed myself to be recruited by SUNY Stony Brook, who wanted to create a similar laboratory. I went on the grounds that I wanted to influence the Physics Department to develop in a more humane direction.
What I did was to run into the student protests of the late '60s: drugs, antiracism, antiwar, hippiedom and their reflections in the middle-class student body at Stony Brook.
It did give me the opportunity to go to the Newport festival, where I met the lady who would be my first wife. In the 1966 Newport Bob Dylan used an electric band for the first time, sending "folk" careening toward "Folkrock".
I had met Dylan, briefly, in a folk club in London the summer before, where he and I were both "visiting American folksingers". When he did the concert in Festival Hall later that week it was no question who the "star" was. The had oversold my, ticket so I ended up sitting in one of the best seats in the house (Dylan's guest seats) with the young lady who was our mutual acquaintance.
Stony Brook was desperately trying to go from an obscure teachers college to a major player, and we were able to use some of the funds this effort made available to promote some small concerts of folk music. We were, for instance, able to give John Roberts and Tony Barrand one of their first concerts in this country.
About that time there suddenly appeared on the scene a group called the Young Tradition: Peter Bellamy, Heather Wood and Royston Wood. They sang intense arrangements of traditional english songs and ballads with harmonies based on those of the Copper family and medieval church music.
I had just met a young tenor, Bob Stuart, through a Linda Hughes who had a folk music program at C. W. Post college. Linda, Bob and I performed such of the Young Tradition repertoire as we could manage, some from a tape she had of the Watersons, and some of our own arrangements. We sang at a few festivals and, when Linda graduated, she was replaced by my then wife. The group did not last long after that: Bob wanted to do his own songs and I was finding that you can't lead a group from the bass part.
Among the people I met during this period on Long Island were Frank and Anne Warner, their sons Jeff and Gareth, and Jeff's friend Jeff Davis. One of my memorable experiences was being able to sing "The Texas Ranger" while Jeff Davis played the Grayson accompaniment on fiddle.
We managed to have one gathering at Stony Brook that included 85 folksingers and relatives, but relations with my job and my wife soon soured.
Lou Killen had come over to the states in '67 and when he gave a concert at Yale we went over to hear him and meet other friends. They introduced me to Howard Glasser, who had also been introduced to folkmusic in the 40s in New York, gotten fascinated with scottish singing, and was trying to do in Southeastern Massachusetts University what I had been trying to do in Stony Brook.
I went up to the first Eisteddfod in 1971, and attended every one after that until it stopped in 1996. I met my present wife, Sally, there in 1974, moved to her goat farm in Myricks in 1976, and have been here ever since.
From 1978 to 1983 I edited the official publication of the Eisteddfod, Ceilidh Columns, including:
Yankee Ingenuity,
Sage and Hero,
Columns and Fragments, and
Modes and Scales
After 1983 the support for the Eisteddfod had diminished beyond the point where it would support a publication.
Not long after that Sally and I were relegated to a passive part in the organization of the Eisteddfod.
In the mid-80s a young man came to be a pastor at the Methodist Church down the street (which had had no pastor for a while) and he boarded with the lady next door. He came over to visit, (curious about the hippies who had been living in the old Baldwin place for the last ten years) and it turned out that he played banjo and guitar and had been in a folk-rock-gospel band in the 60s.
We introduced him to the style of old-timey gospel and formed, with a couple of the members of the choir, a band that did concerts for church-related affairs. We also did a gospel tune as part of the regular morning service at the Methodist church.
After he left (leaving some uncomfortable feelings and taking a new wife) Sally & I continued doing the gospel song at sunday services, trying for something new every sunday. (That stretches one's repertoire.)
We also put groups together that sang at village christmas programs, but the enthusiasm was waning. When the Methodists reflected the growing conservatism of the time by inveighing against gays we dropped out of the Methodists.
Since the late 80s we have not performed and have followed developments in the folk music scene at some distance. In the mid-90s Sally had serious skull surgery that made it difficult to sing. We had also bought a house on St. Vincent towinter in. This web site and this memoir probably marks my final effort toward promoting traditional folkmusic.
It has, however, been an interesting time.
What I did was to run into the student protests of the late '60s: drugs, antiracism, antiwar, hippiedom and their reflections in the middle-class student body at Stony Brook.
It did give me the opportunity to go to the Newport festival, where I met the lady who would be my first wife. In the 1966 Newport Bob Dylan used an electric band for the first time, sending "folk" careening toward "Folkrock".
I had met Dylan, briefly, in a folk club in London the summer before, where he and I were both "visiting American folksingers". When he did the concert in Festival Hall later that week it was no question who the "star" was. The had oversold my, ticket so I ended up sitting in one of the best seats in the house (Dylan's guest seats) with the young lady who was our mutual acquaintance.
Stony Brook was desperately trying to go from an obscure teachers college to a major player, and we were able to use some of the funds this effort made available to promote some small concerts of folk music. We were, for instance, able to give John Roberts and Tony Barrand one of their first concerts in this country.
About that time there suddenly appeared on the scene a group called the Young Tradition: Peter Bellamy, Heather Wood and Royston Wood. They sang intense arrangements of traditional english songs and ballads with harmonies based on those of the Copper family and medieval church music.
I had just met a young tenor, Bob Stuart, through a Linda Hughes who had a folk music program at C. W. Post college. Linda, Bob and I performed such of the Young Tradition repertoire as we could manage, some from a tape she had of the Watersons, and some of our own arrangements. We sang at a few festivals and, when Linda graduated, she was replaced by my then wife. The group did not last long after that: Bob wanted to do his own songs and I was finding that you can't lead a group from the bass part.
Among the people I met during this period on Long Island were Frank and Anne Warner, their sons Jeff and Gareth, and Jeff's friend Jeff Davis. One of my memorable experiences was being able to sing "The Texas Ranger" while Jeff Davis played the Grayson accompaniment on fiddle.
We managed to have one gathering at Stony Brook that included 85 folksingers and relatives, but relations with my job and my wife soon soured.
Lou Killen had come over to the states in '67 and when he gave a concert at Yale we went over to hear him and meet other friends. They introduced me to Howard Glasser, who had also been introduced to folkmusic in the 40s in New York, gotten fascinated with scottish singing, and was trying to do in Southeastern Massachusetts University what I had been trying to do in Stony Brook.
I went up to the first Eisteddfod in 1971, and attended every one after that until it stopped in 1996. I met my present wife, Sally, there in 1974, moved to her goat farm in Myricks in 1976, and have been here ever since.
From 1978 to 1983 I edited the official publication of the Eisteddfod, Ceilidh Columns, including:
Yankee Ingenuity,
Sage and Hero,
Columns and Fragments, and
Modes and Scales
After 1983 the support for the Eisteddfod had diminished beyond the point where it would support a publication.
Not long after that Sally and I were relegated to a passive part in the organization of the Eisteddfod.
In the mid-80s a young man came to be a pastor at the Methodist Church down the street (which had had no pastor for a while) and he boarded with the lady next door. He came over to visit, (curious about the hippies who had been living in the old Baldwin place for the last ten years) and it turned out that he played banjo and guitar and had been in a folk-rock-gospel band in the 60s.
We introduced him to the style of old-timey gospel and formed, with a couple of the members of the choir, a band that did concerts for church-related affairs. We also did a gospel tune as part of the regular morning service at the Methodist church.
After he left (leaving some uncomfortable feelings and taking a new wife) Sally & I continued doing the gospel song at sunday services, trying for something new every sunday. (That stretches one's repertoire.)
We also put groups together that sang at village christmas programs, but the enthusiasm was waning. When the Methodists reflected the growing conservatism of the time by inveighing against gays we dropped out of the Methodists.
Since the late 80s we have not performed and have followed developments in the folk music scene at some distance. In the mid-90s Sally had serious skull surgery that made it difficult to sing. We had also bought a house on St. Vincent towinter in. This web site and this memoir probably marks my final effort toward promoting traditional folkmusic.
It has, however, been an interesting time.
Me & Folkmusic, Part Six
To have a term for what "folk" meant in the 1940s, a new term had to be adopted. When I use "traditional" I mean music that is:
Louis Killen was my introduction to the latter sense of "traditional". At his best Louis is a better singer than any of the elderly gentlemen from whom he learned some of his songs: I have heard field recordings of Sam Larner and his contemporaries. I suspect that Louis is a better singer than any of them ever were in their prime. Louis can take a ballad with an excessively plain tune and overipe lyrics and, by a subtle use of pacing and decoration, give the words passion and make no two verses of the tune identical. Louis was not brought up in an isolated rural community so that the traditional aesthetic was the only one he knew; but he was brought up in a family that sang harmony, so he has an intuitive sense of how much a tune can be varied and still be "the same", and he has an ear for what can be done to a tune and still leave it within the bounds of a musical aesthetic and how that variation can be used in another tune.
And he has the intelligence to do the scholarly homework that allows him to place that tune in a geographical, temporal, social and occupational context.
Over the thirty-odd years that I have been listening to Louis I get a greater appreciation for his art. At times it was only when I tried to duplicate one of Louis' performances and fell short that I was able to hear what it was he was doing. Louis can be an education in the traditional aesthetic by himself.
But the notion of traditional style was not restricted to Great Britain. The vanguard of the american traditional folkmusic revival was Mike Seeger, Pete's half-brother, who, with John Cohen and Tom Paley formed The New Lost City Ramblers. Mike Seeger's home page says "Mike learned the old ballad Barbara Allen at age five from the singing of his parents. Soon he graduated to their collection of early documentary recordings. He began playing in his late teens, learning from Elizabeth Cotten, and later seeking out guitarist Maybelle Carter, banjoists Dock Boggs and Cousin Emmy, and autoharpist Kilby Snow. Mike's love for traditional music led him to produce documentaries and to organize countless tours and concerts featuring traditional musicians".
He says elsewhere "Old-time music was the old-time name for real mountain- type folk music. It is the kind of music that Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers and in fact most rural people prior to the mid nineteen twenties, were raised with. It is the old unaccompanied English ballads like Barbara Allen, new American songs like Wild Bill Jones, old fiddle tunes like Devil's Dream, and newer banjo tunes like Cumberland Gap. It's a rich and varied heritage of music - as rich as the roots music of any country. "
Even in New Haven we could feel the beginnings of a new phase of the folk music revival. When the interest in folkmusic and the number of excellent performers outgrew the back room of a bookstore a Folk Coffee house was started. This gave our group of enthusiasts a degree of coherence.
When the City of New Haven suggested that it might be good to put on some programs during the summer in school auditoria we formed the New Haven Folk Music Society so that there would be an organization that the city could deal with. That summer program was a disaster (neither local kids nor Yale undergraduates ever showed much interest) but there was a steady group of faculty, grad students and townspeople.
One of the members ran a restaurant, so The Society then had the opportunity to do singing gatherings during their slow time on Sunday afternoons. I was the first President of the Society (probably because I was older, and therefore more respectable than the rest of the folkies) and I began to do some performing, at least partly so that somebody (me) would be doing something on the stage when all the other performers were late.
My repertoire consisted of songs cribbed from Ewan McColl's records, from my hearing of Lou Killen and Sydney Carter, and various other bits and pieces that I remembered from years of listening. I occasionally played the autoharp and the harmonica.
By leaning heavily on the songs learned from Lou Killen and Sydney Carter, which were entirely unfamiliar to even a sophisticated American audience, I managed to disguise my lack of skill as a performer. Eventually enough practice made me more at ease on a stage.
About this same time the Indian Neck Folk Festival expanded from a weekend house party for Yalies and the Folkie friends of their girlfriends to an invitation-only festival for performers. The only "event" at Indian Neck was a Saturday Night concert for all comers. I never got comfortable with an audience of seasoned performers, but there were some memorable moments. The rest of the weekend was spent in sharing ad hoc music with whoever was around.
I'm an early riser, so one of my favorite memories of Indian Neck was hearing Alan Block playing softly to himself in the soft dawn light.
Indian Neck provided another venue and an opportunity to hear performers doing a variety of different styles. What continued to interest me were those people who were trying to capture the essence of traditional music without merely being biological tape recorders.
a survival from or a copy of music of a rural community in the pre-recorded period or
music that is an attempt at reconstructing what pre-recorded folk music may have sounded like, done with a sensitive interpretation of the style of such music as is available through scholarly sources.
Louis Killen was my introduction to the latter sense of "traditional". At his best Louis is a better singer than any of the elderly gentlemen from whom he learned some of his songs: I have heard field recordings of Sam Larner and his contemporaries. I suspect that Louis is a better singer than any of them ever were in their prime. Louis can take a ballad with an excessively plain tune and overipe lyrics and, by a subtle use of pacing and decoration, give the words passion and make no two verses of the tune identical. Louis was not brought up in an isolated rural community so that the traditional aesthetic was the only one he knew; but he was brought up in a family that sang harmony, so he has an intuitive sense of how much a tune can be varied and still be "the same", and he has an ear for what can be done to a tune and still leave it within the bounds of a musical aesthetic and how that variation can be used in another tune.
And he has the intelligence to do the scholarly homework that allows him to place that tune in a geographical, temporal, social and occupational context.
Over the thirty-odd years that I have been listening to Louis I get a greater appreciation for his art. At times it was only when I tried to duplicate one of Louis' performances and fell short that I was able to hear what it was he was doing. Louis can be an education in the traditional aesthetic by himself.
But the notion of traditional style was not restricted to Great Britain. The vanguard of the american traditional folkmusic revival was Mike Seeger, Pete's half-brother, who, with John Cohen and Tom Paley formed The New Lost City Ramblers. Mike Seeger's home page says "Mike learned the old ballad Barbara Allen at age five from the singing of his parents. Soon he graduated to their collection of early documentary recordings. He began playing in his late teens, learning from Elizabeth Cotten, and later seeking out guitarist Maybelle Carter, banjoists Dock Boggs and Cousin Emmy, and autoharpist Kilby Snow. Mike's love for traditional music led him to produce documentaries and to organize countless tours and concerts featuring traditional musicians".
He says elsewhere "Old-time music was the old-time name for real mountain- type folk music. It is the kind of music that Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers and in fact most rural people prior to the mid nineteen twenties, were raised with. It is the old unaccompanied English ballads like Barbara Allen, new American songs like Wild Bill Jones, old fiddle tunes like Devil's Dream, and newer banjo tunes like Cumberland Gap. It's a rich and varied heritage of music - as rich as the roots music of any country. "
Even in New Haven we could feel the beginnings of a new phase of the folk music revival. When the interest in folkmusic and the number of excellent performers outgrew the back room of a bookstore a Folk Coffee house was started. This gave our group of enthusiasts a degree of coherence.
When the City of New Haven suggested that it might be good to put on some programs during the summer in school auditoria we formed the New Haven Folk Music Society so that there would be an organization that the city could deal with. That summer program was a disaster (neither local kids nor Yale undergraduates ever showed much interest) but there was a steady group of faculty, grad students and townspeople.
One of the members ran a restaurant, so The Society then had the opportunity to do singing gatherings during their slow time on Sunday afternoons. I was the first President of the Society (probably because I was older, and therefore more respectable than the rest of the folkies) and I began to do some performing, at least partly so that somebody (me) would be doing something on the stage when all the other performers were late.
My repertoire consisted of songs cribbed from Ewan McColl's records, from my hearing of Lou Killen and Sydney Carter, and various other bits and pieces that I remembered from years of listening. I occasionally played the autoharp and the harmonica.
By leaning heavily on the songs learned from Lou Killen and Sydney Carter, which were entirely unfamiliar to even a sophisticated American audience, I managed to disguise my lack of skill as a performer. Eventually enough practice made me more at ease on a stage.
About this same time the Indian Neck Folk Festival expanded from a weekend house party for Yalies and the Folkie friends of their girlfriends to an invitation-only festival for performers. The only "event" at Indian Neck was a Saturday Night concert for all comers. I never got comfortable with an audience of seasoned performers, but there were some memorable moments. The rest of the weekend was spent in sharing ad hoc music with whoever was around.
I'm an early riser, so one of my favorite memories of Indian Neck was hearing Alan Block playing softly to himself in the soft dawn light.
Indian Neck provided another venue and an opportunity to hear performers doing a variety of different styles. What continued to interest me were those people who were trying to capture the essence of traditional music without merely being biological tape recorders.
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