Let's listen to some old (time) religious music

While we're working on our Jamboree stuff, I'd like to open up another box of roots music goodies, namely gospel/religious music. There are three major reasons for heading into this:

• Most of music we've been listening to is either solo or in small groups; a lot (but not all) religious music in performed by groups, often large groups.
  
• Religious music is wonderfully eclectic in terms of styles; the set I've picked out includes blues, country, choirs, quartets, and sermons.
• (Early) religious music features a significantly higher percentage of female performers than the blues and country we've been listening to; religious music was a more socially acceptable (and safer) venue for women.

Note that religion itself is not the point of this. While it was obviously important to (many) of the people that made this music, we don't need to like or dislike, agree or disagree with the religious views, anymore than we have to agree or disagree with the views expressed in any of the other music we've listened to in order to explore and discuss it.

I've created two roughly hour long listening lists of religious music in my iTunes library, and I'd like everyone to come up to the classroom (evenings or weekends) to listen to them over the next few weeks. Let's plan on listening to the first set by next Tuesday (14 Nov), and the second by the following Tuesday (21 Nov).

The sets contain music by a lot of names that should be familiar by now (Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Skip James, the Carter Family, Hank Williams), lots of important people that you may not be familiar with (Mahalia Jackson, Fisk Jubilee Singers, Dorothy Coates), as well as lots of really obscure people that I know little or nothing about.

This leans more to the vocal than the instrumental, and there are some amazing bits of singing (solo and group) in these sets. (I only wish I could sing like that!) There are also some remarkable sermons. African-American sermons were commonly recorded and released in the 20s and 30s, and they demonstrate some wonderful relationships between speech and music in those churches. Most of these sermon recordings are old, but there are two from the 60s from the great Long road to freedom collection. One combines a song with an excerpt from a speech by MLK (nicely illustrating the important connection between gospel music and the Civil Rights Movement), while the other is a completely creepy re-creation of a slave church service combining "Amazing grace" with a most unsettling sermon (you have been warned).

While most of the songs are old (the bulk is pre-1940), I've also included a few contemporary songs. There are three variations of "Ain't no grave", one of which is quite recent, and there's a wonderful song by Lyle Lovett that combines country song writing with gospel performance style in a great way.

As you listen to each group, pick out a song to blog about. As well as writing about your general response to and thoughts on the music, I'd like everyone to say a little about one specific song and how it relates (preferably in a substantive way) to something else we've listened to, read about, or discussed in the class.

It's great music - enjoy!

Listening assignment for next week

We were originally scheduled to read an article this week, but I think I'm going to have us listen to some podcasts instead. I would like everyone to listen to episodes 3, 4, and 5 of the The Folkways Collection. This is a very cool 24 episode podcast covering the strange and wonderful history of Moses Asch's great Folkways label, which was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution upon Asch's death. The Folkways label recorded and released an enormous variety of music, poetry, and spoken word material, all of which are discussed in various ways in these podcasts.

The particular episodes I want you to listen to are about Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music [Smithsonian pages about the anthology, with info on each song][Wikipedia article][AllMusic review] that Eagan talked about when he visited our classes last week. This is a truly remarkable collection, and had a profound influence on me both musically and in how I've always thought about this course. It's a sign of its importance that they devoted a full 1/8 of their podcasts to a discussion of this one release.

Each episode is just under an hour long. I'd like everyone to listen to at least the first two by Tuesday (24 Oct), and then the third by Thursday (26 Oct). For each episode, write a blog post with a specific quote or bit of music from that episode that you found important. Indicate why you think it's important and how it connects to our course. (So I'm expecting three separate posts on each of your blogs to result from this.)

This is very cool stuff - enjoy!

Songs for our initial Pandora radio playlist

Tomorrow in class we'll go over how to set up an account on Pandora and create "radio stations" based on a set of seed music. For our first such radio station, I would like everyone to create a station containing the following songs:

• "Got my mojo working" by Muddy Waters
• "Death letter blues" by Son House
• "Lord, I just can't keep from crying" by Blind Willie Johnson
  
• "Wreck of the Old 97" by Pink Anderson
• "Death cell blues" by Blind Willie McTell
• "Sitting on top of the world" by Mississippi Shieks
• "My Oklahoma blowed away" by Pete Seeger
• "Stand by me" by Sister Matthews
• "Jesus is a mighty good leader" by Skip James
• "Feather bed" by Memphis Jug Band
• "Worried man blues" by The Original Carter Family
• "Midnight special" by Leadbelly
• "Parchman Farm blues" by Bukka White
• "Jump the boogie" by Boozoo Chavis
• "Wabash cannonball" by Roy Acuff
• "A spoonful blues" by Charlie Patton
• "This land is your land" by Woody Guthrie
• "Oh happy day" by The Edwin Hawkins Singers
• "Move on up a little higher" by Mahalia Jackson
• "Cross road blues" by Robert Johnson
• "Cold, cold heart" by Hank Williams
• "Uncle Pen" by Bill Monroe
• "Wildwood flower" by The Carter Family
• "Waiting for a train" by Jimmie Rodgers
  

You should then listen to this station. I don't know for sure what will come up. If you keep listening, you'll get eventually get quite a few of these to come up, but there are no guarantees as to what will play and when. I would encourage at least two kinds of listening. First, do some background listening just to run through a lot of different songs and get a sense of the breadth and range of these many types of music. Second, do some more detailed listening where you really paying attention to all the songs, taking some notes, marking what you like, and writing some remarks on your blog about things that particular struck you (good, bad, confusing, amazing). And bring some of these things up in class!

I'm hopeful that this use of Pandora will be both cool and convenient. You'll have to let me know how it works for you. Thanks!

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.

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?