Please check the blogroll for your blog

I've copied all the addresses of your blogs based on the comments you posted in class today. There are 31 there (including me), which makes me think that I'm one short. Copying those over was all done by hand, though, so it's certainly possible that I just missed someone by accident. Could everyone please check that their blog is on the list? If yours is missing, let me know ASAP and I'll fix it.

I just made up link names based on what I had in front of my (your screen name and your URL), and some are more probably more useful as discriminators than others (many are very similar and could easily be confused). If you'd like me to change the label of your link, just let me know, as it's a pretty trivial thing for me to fix.

While most of the info in your comments is enough for me to know who's who, there are several blogs that are currently anonymous to me. If yours is anonymous, and if you haven't sent me an e-mail with the info, please do so soon. Thanks.

Lastly, you should have gotten an e-mail informing that you've been invited to join this blog as a co-author. Clicking the link in that e-mail and logging in with your Google account e-mail and password will then complete the process of making you a co-author of this blog. All your personal blogs will remain personal, and only you can post to them. This blog, though, will be shared, with anyone able to post. My intent is that any personal writing (e.g., my answer to the meme questions) will go on individual blogs, but that material that's likely to be of general interest (upcoming events, certain assignments to be discussed next week, questions about pizza preferences) would go here. I'm hoping that this co-author invitation will be pretty straightforward, but I've not used this before so let me know if you have any difficulties or just find it strange and baffling. Thanks!

Initial blog assignment

Think of this as being one of those blogging memes, where one blogger "tags" another blogger with a set of questions (sometimes profound, sometimes ridiculous), and the recipient of the tag is then expected to write a post on their own blog addressing the given questions. Thus everyone in the class (including me) is now "tagged" and should write up the answers on their own blog (which we'll set up in class today). Feel free to answer these either in a single, longer post, or a set of smaller posts. (Using smaller posts may be better strategy since you can then break the task up into more managable pieces that you can sneak in between other bits.)

So, the questions:

• Why did you sign up for a roots music FYS section? (It's totally OK if the answer is something like "I didn't really want to, but everything else was full.".)
  
• If you could take 5 pieces of music with you to a desert isle, what would they be? (The definition of "piece of music" here is always tricky. Think "song", but I'll let you get away with a more extended piece like a symphony. A 4 CD compilation of 70's punk just isn't going to count as a single piece of music, though, no matter how cool it might be.)
  
• What's a piece of music you associate with a parent, grandparent, or someone you know well that's at least a generation older than you. (I'm particularly interested in people like grandparents that are two or more generations older than you, but I realize that not everyone is going to have an association for that.)
• If we all decided to replace the national anthem with a new song, and everyone agreed that you got to choose, what would you recommend?
• What kinds of music related performance stuff (if any) do you do? I interpret this pretty broadly so it can be playing one or more instruments, singing, dance, DJing (dance or radio), etc. (It's totally OK if the answer is "None".)
  
• Given the readings and what (little) you know about Governor Blanco, if you had a chance to ask her one question, what would it be?

This is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, 5 Sep 2006. Given the many distractions of the long weekend, I'd recommend doing it right away.

Let us know your blog address

Now that everyone has their own blog, everyone should add a comment to this post with a link to their personal course blog. I'll then collect those in the blogroll over in the left bar of this course blog. Thanks!

If you've chosen to anonymize your blog, you should also send me an e-mail letting me know which blog is yours. I'll keep your secret, but I do need know so I can credit you for your many brilliant remarks :-).

You should do this today in class.

Let's all learn a song on the kazoo

Yup, I'm serious :-). I'm purchased enough kazoos for everyone, and I'll pass them out in class today. For next Tuesday (5 Sep), I'd like everyone to spend a little time "learning" a song ("L'Amour Indifferent (Careless love)" by Cleoma Breaux Falcon and Joe Falcon (freely available on-line). (I've chosen this because it's not overly complex and it avoids the crazy rhythms that make a lot of the cajun stuff pretty tough to learn. You might try a few other cajun songs just to get a sense of how tricky some of them can be.)

No one is expected to be virtuoso by Tuesday, and no one will have to perform solo. The idea is to have all 15 or 17 of us kazoo along in the classroom as a mass kazoo orchestra. So go through the song a 3 or 4 or 5 times, happily kazooing along until you have the basic structure sorted out. We'll then put all that together in class and see what happens. It almost certainly won't be high art, but it ought to be a heck of a lot of fun!

Dawidoff is now in the bookstore

I just wandered through the bookstore, and there are nice happy piles of Dawidoff's In the country of country ready for you to rush out and purchase. Have fun!

Opportunities to meet with Governor Blanco

As part of her visit to UMM next week, Governor Blanco has agreed to arrange several times where she will be available to meet with (FYS) students, answer questions, and discuss issues. None of these times are while our class actually meets, so I can't require you to attend any of them, but I think this is a pretty excellent and rare opportunity, and as intelligent, enthusiastic (new) members of a community of ideas, I would hope you would take advantage it.

The schedule as I understand it gives you the following opportunities (and you may attend any or all):

• A punch/cookies reception at 8:30pm in the Student Center just after her convocation talk on Tuesday.
• From 10am-noon on Wednesday in the Science Atrium (the big open space one floor up from the bookstore).
• From 2-4pm, also on Wednesday. The location for this has not yet been finalized.
  

If you can come to one of these, you'll probably get more out of it if you have a question or two worked out in advance. You may never get to ask it, but if there aren't many people there everyone (including you and the Governor) will appreciate a question or two to get things going. (Long awkward silences aren't lots of fun for anyone.)

I've added all these to the calendar at the bottom left, but remember that the darn times are still Pacific, so you need to add two hours :-( !

The lost year: The failure to rebuild

Another UMM faculty pointed out a recent article in the New Yorker entitled "The lost year: The failure to rebuild" (available on-line here). The piece is about the complex history and politics in New Orleans, and the many problems and issues in rebuilding (or not) since hurricane Katrina, and highly topical given next week's visit by Governor Blanco. The complex racial and ethnic history of the city differ quite a lot from the history of the cajuns we've been reading, but both are indicative of the incredibly rich and varied cultural rivers that are brought together in Louisiana. The article also makes painfully clear how even terrible disasters like Katrina aren't free from politics and economics, issues of skin color and class.

And even in a piece about hurricanes, both natural and political, music plays its role:

I had glimpsed that stubborn affection in October, when the first secondline since Katrina wound its way through the debris-strewn streets of Treme. The secondline is the quintessential traffic-disrupting New Orleans art form; in this case, the Black Men of Labor, a social aid and pleasure club, marched in matching yellow print shirts, with matching hat bands and parasols, while the Hot 8 Brass Band followed behind them, blasting music into the mostly vacant neighborhood.

One thing I find odd about the article (esp. given the broad range of issues it covers) is that it says nothing about the larger questions of whether we should expect more massive storms like Katrina as a result of climate change. 'Cause if the answer is "Yes" (and I've certainly not seen a convincing argument that it's "No") then that has profound implications for these issues of rebuilding, and makes the failure of FEMA and others to objectively and scientifically identify the highest risk areas particularly troublesome. (Note that I'm not suggesting that all such high risk areas be abandoned without discussion. But certainly that data is vital if good long-term plans are going to come out of those discussions, and people should understand the implications of increased storm activity for a re-built New Orleans.)

The other thing I find troubling, and this is a complex issue we're probably going to wrestle with all semester, is the assumed relationship between hardship (in this case poverty) and cultural innovation. Much (probably most) of the music we'll listen to this semester was made by people were by no means wealthy, and in many cases extremely poor. A remarkable thing, then, is this wonderfully rich and valuable music that they brought out of that experience for all of us to share. Is hardship necessary for the creation of certain kinds of great art and innovation? Do we collectively need places like the Lower Ninth Ward to create new cultural ideas? If so, are those new ideas worth that price? Who makes those judgements? The children growing up there, or reasonably comfortable folks at a distance (like us)? How do we even begin to talk about such things in a meaningful way?

'Nuff. Feel free to discuss further in the comments section of this post.

Listen to the first listening list

In class today we'll go over the whole business of coming into the classroom in the evenings and weekends to listen to music via iTunes on the computer there. Our first listening assignment is a collection of cajun and zydeco music, ranging from early recordings from the 1920's to fairly contemporary pieces.

As an assignment, write down three questions that this listening list raises for you and bring them to class Thursday, 31 Sep. These can be factual questions (if so, try to answer them as well - you can still use the question even if you find the answer) or more open ended questions that might be good discussion questions in class. Note that this works best if you can come to the classroom sometime between today's class and Thursday's class, so make sure you schedule a slot for that.

The playlist:

• Amede Ardoin and Dennis McGee - "Madame Atchen"
  
• Ardoin was a creole accordion player and McGee was a white fiddle player. Against the racial/social odds, they played together and made several recordings together in the late 1920's and 1930's. It's likely that Adroin was severely beaten (or killed - the stories differ quite a lot and the records are very spotty), perhaps for having the audacity to accept the offer white woman's handkerchief to wipe his face during a performance. This is from the excellent 4 CD collection American Roots Music, the companion set to a fine PBS series of the same name.
  
• Cleoma Breaux and Joe Falcon - "La Vieux Soulard Et Sa Femme"
  
• A great husband and wife team; these early recordings of theirs were extremely popular. This is from the great Anthology of American Folk Music edited by Harry Smith.
  
• Iry LeJeune with the Oklahoma Tornadoes - "Evangeline Special"
  
• Shows the development of the cajun style in the 40's and 50's, and it's just a ton of fun! His whoops and singing blow out the mic now and then, but we'll all cope.
  
• Dewey Balfa, Marc Savoy, and D. L. Menard - "J'ai Passé Devant Ta Porte"
  
• Dewey Balfa comes from a giant musical family in the cajun universe, and the Balfas were vital in the surge of national interest in cajun music and culture in the 1960's. Marc Savoy also comes from a long line of cajun musicians and is a master at both playing and building accordions. (I'd love one of his accordions, but they're a little too expensive for my wallet.) D. L. Menard is often called the Hank Williams of cajun music. The three of them recording together is just pretty darn cool.
  
• Beausoleil - "Hey Baby, Quoi Ca Dit?"
  
• A contemporary cajun band led by Michael Doucet. I saw these guys play at the Maple Leaf Bar in New Orleans back in the late 80's and people were dancing inside and all up and down the sidewalk; it was enormous fun. I love the amalgam of languages in this song, and only wish I could play accordion like this.
  
• Michael Doucet and Cajun Brew - "Wooly bully"
  
• There's a long tradition of cajun musicians covering popular (non-cajun) songs, and this is just another link in that chain.
  
• Clifton Chenier (the "King of the Zydeco") - "Zydeco cha cha"
  
• Truly one of the greats. His accordion playing, etc., really defined much of what we now call zydeco music, and it's just too much fun. I love the little crawfish bit at the end, so listen up!.
  
• Buckwheat Zydeco - "Think It Over One More Time"
  
• Played in Clifton's band for quite a while, and then went on to a very successful solo career. Here he combines his driving accordion with a seriously funky groove.
• The Flatlanders - "Jole Blon"
• This is actually a bunch of (non-cajun) guys from west Texas who were exploring "traditional" country in the late 60's/early 70's as a response to the increasingly smooth and heavily produced "Nashville sound" that dominated country music at the time. Here they're covering one of the classics of the cajun repertoire (Note their use of a saw in place of an accordion.) I've got a zillion other recordings of that song
  

Hello, Babylon!

I just got an amazing 6 CD set of old gospel music (mostly from the 1920's and 30's, but some up to 1960) called Goodbye, Babylon on the very cool Dust-to-digital label. I ended up babbling on about it way too long on my blog, and rather than repeat all that here, I'll provide a thoroughly over the top quote and the link, and let you chase it down if you feel inclined.

There are some beloved old treasures ("Present joys", Blind Willie Johnson's devastating "Lord, I just can't keep from crying", and Carter Family gems) as well as tons of great stuff I've never heard before. One of the most impressive things about it is the sheer diversity and scope of the collection. Most collections tend to be fairly focused, but here Mahalia rubs shoulders with the Louvins (literally - one her songs immediately follows one of theirs) and the Stonemans share space with the Holy Ghost Sanctified Singers (an African-American gospel jug band!). I become incoherent in the face of all this wonderful music...

Cajun readings/listenings for the first week

The bulk of the course will focus on blues and country, since these are arguably the forms of roots music that have had the broadest influence on music around the world. We will, however, explore other types of roots music (e.g., gospel), and our keynote FYS speaker (Governor Blanco of Louisiana) gives us a nice excuse to start with cajun and zydeco, two wonderful local Louisiana musics that reflect the complex and amazing history of the cajun and creole peoples of the region. (Make sure you mark 7pm, Tuesday, 5 Sept, for that talk, as attendance is required as part of the course. We'll talk more about that when classes start.)

The main purpose of this post is to share links to some useful resources. We'll have to get up and running really fast (the Governor's talk is the second week of the semester and we only meet twice a week), so hop to it!

History of the cajuns and overview of cajun/creole music:

• http://www.lsue.edu/acadgate/music/history.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun

A large and wonderful collection of (mostly) very early cajun recordings:

• http://npmusic.org/artists.html

There's a ton of good stuff here, but you need to be pretty open to these scratchy old recordings. Remember that this stuff was recorded on what we would consider pretty primitive equipment, and most of these early musicians were used to performing without amplification, so they often just blow out the poor microphones. Still, there's some wonderful ballads and dance music here. Try to imagine these people sitting on a porch, or playing a party in someone's living room, then try to combine the readings and the music to create an image of who these people were.

Some names or songs to particularly check out:

• "Evangeline" by Iry LeJeune
• Amede Ardoin
• Dennis McGee
• The Falcon family
• Amedee Breaux
• Blind Uncle Gaspard

When we meet tomorrow I'll show you how you'll be able to come in and listen to lots of music, and we'll start with some (more) modern descendants of these musicians like Clifton Chenier. For the most part these aren't available for free, though. One pleasant exception is Buckwheat Zydeco (who played in Clifton Chenier's band for quite a while) who has several complete songs available on his website:

• http://www.buckwheatzydeco.com/bwzydecomusic/bwzydecomusic.html

I especially recommend "Hot tamale baby". It's worth going back and forth between Buckwheat's more contemporary songs and the early stuff and think about how things have changed and (perhaps harder, but more important) how these things are connected (what's remained much the same).

McTell: They got me killed for forging

I was listening to my American Roots Music Radio on Pandora and this smoldering couplet drifted by:

They got me killed for forging
and I can't even write my name
-- "Death cell blues" by by Blind Willie McTell

Man, there's an awful lot of history and commentary there in 13 words.

I had to rush right out and buy it, and used that as an excuse to try out emusic, which Chris Hamrin had been saying some nice things about.

Some (limited) biographical info on Gov. Blanco

Our convocation speaker this year is Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Governor of Louisiana. She was actually scheduled to come this time last year, but Hurricane Katrina rolled in and she (quite understandably) felt she needed to remain in Louisiana. Her convocation is 7pm, Tuesday, 5 September, in Edson Auditorium. Attendance is required for all FYS students.

Her life history is very interesting and quite unusual for someone at that level in any field. She was a stay-at-home mom for many years, and then a high school teacher. To quote the Governor's official bio

Governor Blanco began her career as a public servant in 1984, when she became the first woman ever elected to represent the people of Lafayette in the state Legislature. Five years later she was elected to the Public Service Commission, where she became the first woman to serve as a Commissioner and, later, as the first woman to chair the Commission (1993-94).

She then served two terms as Lieutenant Governor and was elected Governor in 2004.

The official bio doesn't say much beyond what I've said here, but it's also worth noting (especially in the context of our course topic) her cajun heritage, giving us that nice segue into some cajun music to start the course with.

For an alternative bio, check out her entry in Wikipedia. Note the announcement at the top that "The neutrality of this article is disputed." Going to the "talk page" for the entry reveals an interesting (if sometimes tedious and mudslinging) discussion that raises some important points about what it means to be neutral in this sort of writing. While that discussion isn't always at the highest level, it does provide a nice example of a careful, critical reading of a text, and spending some time reading both the entry and the discussion would be worthwhile.

Something to unpack this semester

I really liked what Chancellor Johnson had to say at the welcome event today about unpacking and repacking ideas, and one thing that we'll definitely have to unpack this semester is how we think about recording production and quality. We're all surrounded by highly polished music, and anyone with a computer can generate fairly slick tunes. During the semester, however, we're going to listen to a lot of old recordings made on early recording equipment that's incredibly limited by today's standards.

The challenge, then, is to push through all the scratch, hiss, and distortion and re-imagine what it might have been like to have experienced that music live, and how the people who made it and loved it might have felt. Or, to unpack our experience of the music, try to separate at least some of the baggage and expectations we bring to it, and take it for what it is and not for what we expect it to be.

Thoughts?

Welcome to the UMM Roots Music FYS blog

This is the general course blog that we'll use for the Fall, 2006, Roots Music sections of UMM's First Year Seminar (FYS) course taught by Nic McPhee.

To the new students just joining us - Welcome!

To outsiders - you're welcome to join in and participate in the discussions as long as you do so in a respectful and constructive manner. Thanks!