Sat. January 5th, 2007 Nimrod Workman was an extraordinary character. He was born in Kentucky and started working in the mines as a teenager, he was a socialist, a powerful and effective and funny public speaker, and a union organizer. He knew Mother Jones and was involved in the West Virginia Mine War of 1920, the largest labor uprising in American history. He was an excellent singer of ballads and also wrote his own songs. Late in life he began a career as a ballad singer, playing at folk festivals and other venues. In 1986 he recieved a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He had black lung from working in the mines, smoked unfiltered cigarettes and lived to be 99 years old. Although I only played one Nimrod Workman song in this show, I will be doing a whole program or at least a big segment on him some time in the near future- so look out for that. Nimrod Workman was in several films: A documentary about him called " Nimrod Workman: To Fit My Own Category," produced by Appalshop Films. He appeared as himself in the documentaries "Harlan County, USA," "Chase the Devil: Religious Music of the Appalachians," and "The Grand Generation." He also appeared in Coal Miner's Daughter, which also featured Phyllis Boyens (his daughter). "The Grand Generation" is available to watch any time, free of charge on the website FolkStreams.net . There's a lot of good stuff on there, well worth checking out.
ENTRY #1 1. The preparations for
launching the show are nearing completion. I have already
put together the first program, which features some real awesome
African-American banjo playing and string band music as well as
an in depth look at the African origins of the banjo. I play
some field recordings of an instrument called the Akonting, a lute
played clawhammer style by the Jola tribe of Senegambia. It
is a very clear predecessor to the American banjo and also a very
interesting piece in our social history. I also talk with
Bela Fleck about his recent trip across Africa and his experiences
playing with musicians he met there, including Akonting players.
This trip was facilitated by my friend and associate Daniel Jatta,
a Jola Akonting player and researcher currently living in Sweden
who, along with some others is opening a Jola cultural center in
Gambia over the summer. Very exciting and click this link for a more extensive article put together by Shlomo Pestcoe.
2. Periodically I will be bringing
you good quotes I come across. This is a great one, and oddly
contemporary considering it was written in 1938. -Now that is a great quote. Reading further
I thought I might include a bit more for context sake and to show
where he is going with that idea:
3. A couple of months ago Pete Seeger
loaned me his copy of his father's collected works "Studies in Musicology
1935-1975" (Charles Seeger, University of California Press, Berkeley
1977). Pete had underlined a few passages. They are
as follows: 4. Recently Mat Callahan, musician and author of the recent book "The Trouble with Music," which is a great analysis of what is going on in our culture industry, forwarded me an article from the British newspaper The Guardian and asked me to respond to it. Below is that response. The original article is at this link. I will respond paragraph by paragraph to the original
article. 1. An album itself can by no means affect a political situation, to say that is very crazy. 2. These so called anthems that the author is romantically speaking of, what he is really refencing is some of the songs that came out of the civil rights movement which were folk songs, created and spread in a very communal manner among the "folk" and/or with the participation of folk-lorists/culturla workers such as Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan. These songs were made by taking old hymns and spirituals and changing the words to reflect the political and social situation, people's needs and concerns and demands. Even Neil Young's "Ohio" is not really an anthem, its just a song about something that happened which was listened to and appreciated by people his own age within a vibrant youth movement with a fairly coherant fairly counter-cultural aesthetic. Things are much more confused now, the movement is confused and disorganized, and specifically not grassroots organized and it is not a youth movement, and there's no counter-cultural aesthetic capable of producing that sort of reaction. If anything it would come from hip-hop, but hip-hop is so wordy that people can't readily learn it, in fact it takes some study just to appreciate it at all. People aren't gonna go out and sing "Lets Impeach the President" its not that kind of song. Its a song Neil Young sings to you. Which is fine. I like the album. Also, Neil Young does not have a good political record, didn't he support Reagan? Who knows what this guy is thinking. But all that stuff about him being an aging hippie readily dismissed by neo-cons? Who cares about them. Do we have to appeal to neo-cons? No.We need to show something real to people. Are people so shallow, even "neo-cons," that they can't be swayed by a movement with real information on its side? I hope not, at least not outside of a small group of zealots with tunnel vision. 3. Neil Young is a rock star who as smart and insightful as he is is by necessity out of touch with the life of ordinary Americans. He is also apparently out of touch with other music that is happening since other people do play "political" music and have been doing it all this time, producing very radical songs. So he shouldn't congratulate himself to early. So maybe he means put out a political album that gains commercial success and media attention. Well, maybe he forgot, but the record industry and radio is locked up, can't do it. That kind of stuff is circulating on the internet, independently. There would need to be a huge mass movement that was big enough to represent a profitable record buying public which could force the big capitalist companies that control the music/entertainment/whatever industry to put out an album like that thereby "selling us the rope to hang them with, etc." for the profit in it. Plus no young people know how to really write those kinds of songs because they are musically and politically confused 4. Yes, we are still struggling from the break up of the movement that happened after the end of the Vietnam war. 5. ok. 6. Yes, you have to be very very clear in your songs. Anything less will not be understood and will not be useful in a mass setting. Also, in a certain sense musicians are like politicians, they represent their constituency. If there was more of an organized grassroots movement, especially among the youth and even better among the working class/youth then from those groups would emerge musicians who would speak to those groups in their own language and there would be a nice reciprocal relationship between the artist the audience, and they would be writing great, real political songs. The bigger and better the movement, the bigger the pool of musican talent and the better and more genuine the songs. 7. Who cares about a "new Dylan"tag. If you can't free yourself from the kind of stuff then forget it. Learn from the past, learn from mistakes. What did Bob Dylan do right? What wrong? Also, Bright Eyes' music is unclear, depressing and introverted- ill suited for a proactive for real mass movement. 8. This guy obviously doesn't know shit about folk music. When he says folk music he means the kind of pop music that was based on traditional music in terms of some of its melodic and lyrical content but not (pretty much) in terms of its style. This is the kind of "folk music" that was lampooned in the film "A Mighty Wind." It was a fad that was exploited by the music industry for money and today it sounds very dated and cliched. This guy doesn't understand the need for, the full dimension of or the nature of a counter culture. The Rock music that was the counter cultural music of the white youth movement that happened in the 60's with famous acts like Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Led Zepplin (even the Beatles with the skiffle thing) and others as well as many less known groups was based in large part on traditional ("real") folk music. The cultural workers that created this music were folk revivalists listening to recordings of vernacular, orally schooled musicians. Many many young people still look back to the youth music of the 60's, the same music that their parents still listen to. The traditional music offered a way to get some perspective on the culture as it stood in the 50's, which in its rawest and most prevelent "pop" form was very bubble gum, much like now. It was a way out. Traditional folk music offered an alternative very viablle, great sounding aesthetic with which to identify as part of other forms of rebellion and non-conformity. But they wanted their own sound and music, and the traditional folk music ended up being a spring board for innovation. I offer this music once again as a way to get perspective, get some real, non-cliched facts about music history and the diversity of homegrown sounds that we've got here, and as a spring board for innovation. We need it again and more than ever. 9. That's good. 10. True. What we need is more grassroots organizing. Local organization that have meetings and teach-ins. An internet community is not a community. Physical organizing is key. 11. That's cool, but those people are are pretty much cultural, certainly at this point, I know it can be hard to define but there needs to be a more of an explicit counter cultural element. Also, of course the energy is going to dissipate, a concert or series of concerts can't keep the political energy going, only the local physical organizing can do that. 12. Its true. But apathy and despair can be over come by first working in your own local community. Tangible results are encouraging. 13. That's also true. Like I say, I think there needs to be some kind of counter cultural thing going on, and those "American idols" that ain't it. And also music is not politics. I think they are working on an incorrect premise of doing these big concert tours to support candidates, as counter intuitive as that may seem. Its a worthwhile thing I guess, but there's other stuff that has to go on that they are really more responsible for, such as synthesizing and expressing reality. They weren't going to swing the election for Kerry, and that' s a lame gig anyway. Although the distinction between culture and counter culture has been blurred by what Abbie Hoffman termed "hip capitalism." The capitalists appropraite counter cultural symbols almost immediately and very thoroughly, leaving us in a weird limbo. We are very often engaged witht he capitalists, fighting over the same images, and symbols. 14. See #12 and its a lot more than just Bush. 15. Yeah, in a sense they found a way around the "Vietnam syndrome". 16. Yeah, Steve's right. "Artists aren't qualifed to comment" that's ridiculous. Of course they are. Although clearly artists are not economists, political organizers or union leaders, etc. But artists are careful observers in a sense. Although the debate goes back a long way, I think it was some ancient philosopher (Aristotle, Plato?) who said that that artists aren't qualified to comment, that they are a menace in in fact because of it. Stuff like "just because a painter paints a bridge, should they be allowed to construct one that you would feel safe walking on?" Its the, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV thing. I guess that's true but its a false premise. 17. That's cool, but still need the counter-cultural element, and grass roots style, not necessarily mass-media dependent. 18. I definitely agree, although I think there are some false premises in there too.
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