Theses on: Whither Youth and ‘Classical Music?’
October 23, 2011
Once, when I was waiting tables, I ran across a young lady who played an orchestral instrument (I don’t recall which one), and she asked me, exasperated, why it is that, as she put it, ‘young people don’t care about classical music anymore.’ I don’t know that that’s really answerable, but I’m gonna give a few shots at why, and what can be done about it. Specifically I’d like to encourage anyone, young or old, who has no interest in or is intimidated by classical music to venture into the waters and also maybe gently indict friends who aid in classical’s bad press and relative irrelevancy.
Whether or not it’s true, I think many people associate a classical music with upper-class snootiness: tuxedoes, ties, champagne (in champagne glasses), glove tapping, monocle wearing, nonsense. People who like classical, the thought goes, can’t like Bruce Springsteen (I actually don’t much care for the Boss, but it’s a good blue collar example). Worse yet is when classical folk, and I’ve seen this done, get down on popular music as some form of crude, barbarous, primitive, art form. Thus there is a sense of a high price for entry into the classical world. You’ve gotta have lots of money and you need to denigrate the music you actually like.
Speaking from my experience, not having any knowledge other than a few ‘big names’ made me feel overwhelmed. Here’s this mass of music with a tradition that spans centuries, how could I approach that? If someone says that I should check out a rock artist, it’s fairly easy to find them and listen to them. If I really like them, I can get through much of their entire library, usually, without much effort. But have you seen the complete works of Bach? How do you start with that? Or what about all these fancy names for genre? What’s the difference between a fugue and a symphony? And knowing that I’d not be able to ‘get’ a composer, can be a strange and frustrating feeling.
Moreover, I long found the classical music I did hear to be rather boring and unexciting. I’d only hear it in lobbies and elevators.
It was really a combination of two forces that made me start looking to get to know classical more. 1) I felt that I was rather uncultured and wanted to grow more in this regard. So I started looking at art, reading poetry, and listening to music. 2) There were several theologians who commended classical, primarily Bach and Mozart. But whatever reason works for you is fine. I think you really should give it a shot.
In that spirit, here are a few of my recommendations.
- Realize that you’ll probably never become ‘expert’ in knowing Beethoven the same way you know the entire U2 discography. It’s just harder to do and takes a ton of time.
- Don’t be afraid to say you don’t like something. Just because someone says something is great, doesn’t mean you’re stupid or a fungus if you don’t. For instance, I’ve never been able to feel anything but contempt for Joseph Hadyn’s music. It sounds like really boring math problems making love. Maybe you don’t like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Maybe, like me, you think John Cage is a quack rather than a genius. Whatcha gonna do, pretend to like music you hate?
- Don’t be afraid to like something. I have all six soundtracks to the Star Wars films as well as that for Braveheart, Lord of the Rings, Shindler’s List, and a few others. I like them, and I listen to them.
- Find a nerdy friend who does know more classical than you and ask them for recommendations. Not just for pieces and artists, but for recordings. You’ll find that a single piece can sound radically different among recordings due to varying interpretations or sound quality, and not all are created equal. For instance I really like ‘slow’ versions of the Debussy’s Claire de Lune.
- Realize that if you’re going to experience any music, not least potentially complex and layered pieces, you can’t just throw it on in the background. You’ve gotta sit and just listen to it. Many composers will state a theme or a melody and play off it; turn certain notes minor, make unexpected shifts in emphasis. I sometimes took this to be merely vague repetition, but it’s more than that. It’s a game.
- Trust and distrust authorities. As I said, don’t be afraid to say you don’t like something. But also realize there are reasons that some consider Bach’s Mass in b minor or Mozart’s unfinished requiem to be great works. You can’t really do the ‘indie’ thing of liking ‘underground’ acts very well if you’re only just starting. Hit the big names first. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc…
- Find instruments or styles you like. I like pianos, organs and choruses, symphonies, sacred music, and fugues, for instance.
- Don’t denigrate popular music or John Williams soundtracks. Not only can you find genuinely creative pop music, but John Williams is the man.
- Make sure you make your kids take music lessons and music appreciation. If you want them to like it, then make sure they’re exposed to it. Take them to concerts too.
- Don’t be a judgmental jerk.
- Consider that maybe much of the abstract, abrasive, narcissistic ‘art for art’s sake’ of ‘modern classical’ is an adventure in ego stroking. If classical isn’t actually connecting with people, then it might not be attentive to the spirit of the people. Music should speak to people.
- Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor – You’ll recognize the opening organ lick surely, but the whole thing is a masterpiece. As James said, Bach’s fugues are an adventure in the infinite.
- (Many of these links, btw, are to reliable interpretations by a gentleman who also uses visuals to help you ‘see’ what is going on. I’ve genuinely found his graphics helpful in visualizing pieces. He’s got over a hundred videos and you can trust that they any of them are worth hearing.)
- Bach’s cello suites are all great, but the first one – in six parts total- is probably his most famous.
- Eventually look at Bach’s Mass in b minor, his Brandenburg Concerti (sample here), and his fugues. There’s a reason that he’s considered one of the best.
- Beethoven’s fifth and ninth symphonies and his own “Great Fugue” is shockingly ‘modern’ and very powerful.
- Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Arabesque #1 are a great place to start.
- Among the small group sometimes called the ‘Holy Minimalists,’ I find particularly wonderful John Tavener and Arvo Part. For Tavener, see his The Lamb, Song for Athene, God Is With Us, and Funeral Ikos; For Part, Beatitudes, De Profundis, from Missa Syllabica, the Sanctus, and his organ music, like this.
- For more sacred music, Tchaikovsky’s Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrystostom is an absolute must. It truly proclaims the Gospel.
- There’s much more to add. For instance Chopin’s nocturnes and preludes, Rachmaninov’s own Divine Liturgy and Vespers, and his Prelude in c sharp minor, and others. But I don’t want to make this too long.
- Finally, if you’re on the music program Spotify, I’ve got a few classical lists that you can check out. Just search for Tony Hunt.
Dead Shopping Malls
September 1, 2011
This is a longer version of an essay I originally wrote for The Living Church. I’m posting it here to contribute to James’s music series.
When the Grammy for “Best Album” was awarded to an alternative rock band from Canada for an album named The Suburbs over such mainstream acts as Eminem and Katy Perry, various electronic social webs were a flurry with outrage. Many people simply had never heard of them. This despite the fact that Arcade Fire is hardly a small band, regularly selling out very large venues and touring tirelessly. Critics claimed that the Grammy’s had lost touch with pop culture by making such a choice (a notable exception being Kanye West) – see for instance Steve Stoute’s letter to the Grammy’s. I take issue to this accusation. To be sure, Eminem is unquestionably more influential in the pop realm and more indicative of mainstream music in general, but Arcade Fire is among the most culturally aware bands now writing. Lady Gaga is a spectacle of contemporary culture but Arcade Fire is a mirror.
Their first record, Funeral, is a profound expression of unfettered youth, a polyphony of parts barely yet successfully held together by thunderous drums and a chorus of vocalists. It is considered universally to be a modern classic. The Suburbs, their third record (Neon Bible is the sophmore), is in many ways the negation of that record and a searching tale of the modern “Suburban” person. Their first two records abounded in movement, in running, in singing, The Suburbs struggles even to remember what movement was like (“Ready to Start” & “We Used to Wait”). Instead the “Modern Man” waits in a line, accepting with total passivity the hidden and pervasive authority of forces outside of their control. Suburbs are the erie realm of the endlessly flat “Sprawl” on the one hand, and the the rising peaks of “dead shopping malls” on the other. Such an oppressive space feels like “A City With No Children” in it, a space from which vigorous life has been drained, where there is “No Celebration” and where hours now are “wasted” and the “half-lit” nights are spent driving through the streets, recalling when friends used to listen to music together, grow their hair long and dream of getting out.
The album speaks of an exceeding aimlessness to life. Perhaps the suburbanite has a job, indeed perhaps they even have cars and a 70′s house, but there is no real life there. And this situation has been resigned to; there is no sense in which the narrator(s) show us any struggle against the powers, no anger, no zeal. This shows up sonically too. In previous records accompanying vocalists were infused in almost every song, but on The Suburbs they show up rarely and never have the effect of rallying the listeners. Likewise there is a near singleminded focus on the guitar which either drives a fuzzed and droning tempo or drifts listlessly above the chord structure, but the organs, pianos, violins and accordion that we’d become accustomed to are very rarely heard.
Does this sound nothing like a youth culture where there is endless stimulation but few job prospects? Where one might simultaneously be poor yet have several electronic devices and where college is still normed but where students remain skeptical that such education leads to a more prosperous future? Where kids live at home into their 30′s and change careers multiple times?
It is this uncomfortable clarity with which Arcade Fire sees contemporary youth culture that makes them so important. If what they say is true, then it poses the political and social question, to what extent are the politicians and the preachers adequately dealing with this widespread pessimism and skepticism.
Live at Radio City by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds, Part 2 [Theological Liner Notes]
August 24, 2011
Read Part 1
“Don’t Drink the Water,” a song which evokes images of both the South African apartheid and the persecution of Native Americans, is Matthews’ moving indictment of oppression and empire. The song is narrated by the oppressor who possesses the other’s land with confidence:
“I have no time to justify to you/ fool you’re blind / move aside for me.”
Toward the end, Matthews breaks into the first verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” and then ends the song, still singing as the oppressor, who now explains how it really is with a disturbing clarity that deserves to be quoted at length:
“This land was made/ And I’ll build heaven and call it home/ And I’ll live with my justice, and I’ll live with my greed in me/ live with no mercy/ and I live with my friends at feet/ and I live with my hatred/ and live with my jealousy/ oh I live with the notion I don’t need anyone but me/ Don’t drink the water / There’s blood in the water”
These lyrics expose the poverty of the oppressor himself, who drives away, and crushes, and burns all others, so that he is finally consigned to a kind of hell—living with himself alone.
Implicitly, this song critiques wide swathes of Christianity that are historically responsible for going along with, and in many cases providing the ideological backbone for, oppression, and imperialism. The condemnation is complete whether we are talking about the Dutch Reformed church of apartheid, the pietistic Protestants behind American expansionism, Catholic “missionary” activity among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, or Anglicanism which “held the coat” for the British rape of several continents. It is a crushing indictment of all those who believe they can build heaven on the backs of the poor and the dispossessed.
But the song is not without a subtle note of hope. “Don’t the water/ There’s blood in the water” is surely a reference to the terrible slaughter of innocents that was the result of South African and North American apartheid. These lyrics also make the historically accurate point that through brutality, the oppressor poisons the resources he fights so hard to take. However, I believe there is a biblical allusion in these lyrics. Blood in the water references the Exodus narrative when God plagues Egypt for refusing to end the oppression of the Israelites. So, Matthews evokes—perhaps inadvertently—that great story of liberation, how God freed the Israelites from slavery, how through Christ God “brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly” [Luke 1:52] and how, in the final shakedown, God will vindicate the oppressed and the downtrodden.
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As a self-identifying agnostic who writes lyrics replete with Christian and biblical themes, you would expect Matthews to insert a healthy dose of skepticism to his songs, and he indeed does. In “Eh Hee,” in addition to that faith in love mentioned in part 1, we a find a deep suspicion of religious leaders and teachers:
“Be wary of those who want to try to convince you/ that they know answer no matter the question / Be wary of those who believe in a neat little world/ Cause’ it’s just fucking crazy, you know that it is.”
Could you ask for a more succinct and devastating critique of the Truth Project? These lyrics comprise the warning label that every postmodern would put on the products of modernity, especially the Christian products of modernity. These are the lyrics that keep Dinesh D’Souza up at night.
Of course, Christianity does not have to be that way. Making truth claims, as the Church most certainly does, doesn’t mean you have to be an ass about it as some in the Church most certainly are. It doesn’t mean we have truth completely figured out, nor does it mean that we’re the only ones who posses truth in our faith tradition.
“Praise God who has many names…”
There is such a thing as absolute truth, but there are also truths that bend, truths that are not always true for everyone at all times (There, Baby Boomer generation of Christians, that wasn’t so hard, was it?). Matthews lyrics call us, the Church, to stop focusing on being right and start focusing on overcoming evil with good (love).
Continuing with songs where Matthews directly engages with Christianity, we come to the “Save Me.” In an imaginative retelling of Christ’s temptation in the desert, Matthews casts himself as encountering a man in the desert (Jesus), and becomes his “tempter;” he offers Jesus food and drink—a perfectly humanitarian thing to do, but he refuses:
“No, my faith is all I need.”
To which Matthews replies,
“Then save me/ Mr. walking man/ If you can.”
As the song progresses, Matthews role as the Adversary who dares Christ to save him morphs to a humble person who wants to believe, who wants to be saved, but can’t figure out how, and wonders if it even still possible:
“You don’t need to prove a thing to me/ Just give me faith, make me believe/…Save me, Save me/ Stranger if you please/ Or am I too far gone/ to get back on?”
Expressed in these lyrics is a real sense of longing, of wanting to find faith in God, but coming up short. In the video recording of the Live at Town Hall concert, a totally hammered Matthews introduces the song in an interesting way: ”This song is a comedy…song. Maybe, no, maybe it’s tongue in cheek. I don’t know, maybe it’s a plea for help from the heavens. I don’t know. You decide.”
By the end of the song a third voice enters,
“You might try saving yourself.”
In this fractured soteriology, then, we have a God who doesn’t have time for sinners such as Matthews, we have a satan who cries to God for faith, and we have a Pelagian who tells the penitent to save himself.
There is a danger in the Church to write off such people as the narrator of this song. Sometimes the attitude is that if you don’t simply have faith in God, if it doesn’t come easy, then there is no room for you in the Church. But faith doesn’t always come easy. Who hasn’t felt abandoned by God? It’s not that Matthews didn’t have faith before. He asks if it’s too late to get back on. Matthews the agnostic and many like him are having an extended (permanent?) Dark Night of the Soul. The Church should not only welcome these folks, and encourage them, but we should also welcome their voices and opinions, and let them challenge our own over-confidence, our own self-assuredness. Maybe we are afraid of them because they threaten to expose our own doubts and frailties to the members of our community and to ourselves.
Part 3 (coming soon, including some notes on the song, “Bartender”)
Live at Radio City by Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Part 1 [Theological Liner Notes]
August 22, 2011
I am pioneering a new sub-genre of theological writing, here. Maybe Tony Hunt would care to follow suit with some of his hipster indie music, or even Shawn Wamsley with some his angry music (if he can find some that isn’t of the devil).
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At first glance Dave Matthews may seem like an unlikely source for discourse on Christian spirituality. He grew up a Quaker, but in a 1998 interview Matthews spoke of how the death of his sister led to the losing of his faith, “I’m glad some people have that faith. I don’t have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he’s done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.” In 2001, he indentified himself as an agnostic. However, in some ways he and his music are natural places to turn. His songs are filled with theological references and biblical allusions; he is undoubtedly the heir to a long, venerable folk-rock songwriting tradition, which includes Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and others, and which is deeply conversant in Christian scripture, theology and spirituality.
Focusing on songs from his seminal 2007 RCA release Live at Radio City which Matthews recorded with long time collaborator, Tim Reynolds, I want to explore some themes in the lyrics of Dave Matthews’ music which speak about Christian faith and practice, and to experiencing—or more accurately, confronting—God in surprising and authentic ways. Some of these themes are bluntly critical of certain aspects of Christianity, while others seem to document an authentic search for God, who appears in the music almost as an unrequited lover to agnostic Matthews.
Don’t expect to find anything systematic about theology a la Dave Matthews. We’ll be relying on two sometimes-competing hermeneutical principles. Sometimes Matthews makes overt references to God and the Church, several of his songs are directed at God specifically as agnostic prayers. These we will interpret in a straightforward way, relying on authorial intent. Other songs, however, allude to scripture or use theological language to speak about human relationships and experience without trying to say anything about Christianity or the divine. In these cases, we veer toward a hermeneutic of audience created meaning, reading God and the Church in where Matthews probably did not intend. If this methodology irks you, you should be reading Justice Scalia opinions, not this.
As an example of these two hermeneutical methods being used together in a single song, I will briefly look at one of my favorite songs on the album, “Two Step.” The song itself is about two lovers celebrating life in all its bitter-sweetness. The chorus offers this:
“Celebrate/ Celebrate we will / ‘Cause life is short, but sweet for certain/ Hey, we climb on two by two/ to be sure these days continue.”
“We climb on two-by-two” references the animals boarding Noah’s ark. By alluding to Noah’s mission of repopulating the earth after the flood, Matthews seems to be suggesting that it is our God-given duty to live, and enjoy life, and make babies. So we arrive at a two-liner theology of sex that isn’t too far away from where Matthews intended to go.
Within the same song we find these lines:
“Hey, my love/ You came to me like wine/ Comes to the mouth/ Grown tired of water all the time/ You quench my heart…”
Here, Matthews is obviously making no allusion to God or the Divine at all, but that doesn’t mean I am not free to rip it from its context and find in it a wonderful bit of Eucharistic poetry. Doesn’t Christ come to us, like wine in our mouth? I certainly grow weary of the blandness of a watered-down, purely symbolic understanding of Communion, and I certainly find my heart sated in taking the Eucharist. It’s a completely unintended interpretation—Matthews would probably be appaled by it—but still provides an accurate and poignant theological reference point.
So, you’ve been warned. I will play loose and free with lyrics.
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It is almost cliché to say that much of Matthews’ music is about love and sex (almost as cliché as it is to say that much of Matthews’ concerts are about pot). Many songs are very simply rhapsodies in praise of having sex with beautiful women (i.e. “Two Step” above). While some might find these conjugal hymns shocking, there is, with a few notable exceptions, nothing in the lyrics that explicitly denies biblical sexuality. In fact, they are a site of resistance, an oasis of refreshment for those of us who have grown up dealing with the puritanical, and quite simply repressive body-hatred of certain parts of Evangelical church culture.
On the whole, love for Matthews is a keystone thematic principle that transcends sex. Love is the only sure thing; the bedrock of life. For example, “When the World Ends” is a song about two lovers who will endure the end of the world in each other’s arms. Typical lyrics include:
“When the world ends/ Passion rising from the ashes,”
and
“When the world ends/ We’ll just be beginning.”
Matthews makes a bold claim here that love transcends catastrophe, even apocalypse. In the song “Oh,” we find a similar theme, but this song is written not about lovers but Matthews’ grandfather:
“The world is blowing up/ The world is caving in/ The world has lost her way again/ But you are here with me/ But you are here with me/ It makes it okay.”
Love makes anything bearable; disaster and suffering lose their finality in the presence of a beloved one.
In a third song from the album, “Eh Hee”, Matthews makes the claim that, “with the love that my mother gave me/ I’m gonna drop the devil to the floor.” Here love is martial. Love does not simply make evil bearable, love destroys evil. Back in the chorus of “Oh,” we discover that this love is intense, unstoppable, and gratuitous:
“I love you oh so well/ Like a kid loves candy and fresh snow/ I love you oh so well/ Enough to fill up heaven/ Overflow and fill hell.”
All three of these songs are speaking of human relationships with lovers, grandfathers and mothers; yet in each, Matthews’ images of love are couched in eschatological and theological language, leaving an opening for us to apply these ecstatic visions of love to God and to Divine love. When St. John writes that God is love, and when St. Paul writes that nothing can separate us from the love of God, did they mean to go as far as Matthews goes? Can the imagination of the Church keep up with Matthews’ imagination when trying to understand the unfathomable love of God? Does God’s love for all of us “fill up heaven, overflow and fill hell?” Some Christians’ definition of hell is precisely that place where God and his love end. And yet Matthews’ love for his grandfather transcends that boundary, as did St. Paul’s love for his kinsmen (Romans 8). If God is God, can his love for his children be any less?
When applied to love that God’s children are commanded to have for each other and the world, Matthews’ vision of love certainly stands in contrast to some prevailing notions in the Church. Whereas, like St. Paul’s, Matthews’ concept of love overcomes evil, some in Christianity at least appear to believe that love is optional and that hateful rhetoric, militarism and the tea party will somehow conquer evil and end suffering in the world. Can Matthews’ lyrics call the Church back to a place where indefatigable love for all people is truly our bedrock; where we stop striving with the weapons of this world and rely on the self-sacrificing love of Christ to transfigure everything with which it comes into contact?
Part 2 (coming soon, with reflections on “Don’t Drink the Water,” “Save Me,” “Eh Hee” & more!)
If I Had An Orchard
May 13, 2011
The Fleet Foxes are a wildly popular band within certain circles, but if you’ve never heard of them that doesn’t surprise me. They are arguably one of the country’s most popular “indy” bands—which is somewhat of a oxymoron if you think about it.
However, Fleet Foxes are a band of contradictions. The two core members grew up in a wealthy suburb of Seattle yet they sing about places like the Blue Ridge Mountains and idealize the simplicity of rural life. The band gained notoriety playing folk music but their most recent release seems to channel a bit of 60’s rock, Simon and Garfunkel-type stuff. They have a mountain-man, flannel sort of look but the Fleet Foxes are most popular with urban hipsters and Europeans.
Below is a new song of theirs that has intrigued me since it’s release. The lyrics (as best as I can tell) are posted below. I’ve bolded the bits that seem interesting to me.
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond meBut I don’t, I don’t know what that will be
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will seeWhat’s my name, what’s my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don’t need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say “sure, take all that you see”
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for meAnd I don’t, I don’t know who to believe
I’ll get back to you someday soon you will seeIf I know only one thing, it’s that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I’m tongue-tied and dizzy and I can’t keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?And I know, I know you will keep me on the shelf
I’ll come back to you someday soon myselfIf I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the storeGold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen
The singer’s attitude (as I interpret it) is one that resonates with me and, I believe, many of my generation. We grew up being told that we could accomplish anything that we set our mind to. We were told that we were special and destined for great things. More so then any American generation before us, we were pampered, protected, praised and pushed to insure we could reach our highest potential.
Unfortunately, while we were given many tools, we were not told what to build.
Consequently many of us have sobered as we’ve entered adulthood, wondering “just who we should be.” I find it ironic that a chief mouthpiece of the ‘me’ generation would long for being a “cog in some great machinery” provided that he served “something beyond me.” I wonder how many tattooed, independently-minded, 20-somethings out there are secretly asking the same thing.
Where is the Orchard that the poet longs for? Where is the idealistic cause that’s worth believing in whole heartedly?
Christians believe that we’ve found something worth living for in the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s the story of the renewal of all things. More than anything else, this is the most scandalous thing that Christians believe—that this Jesus who died and rose again is the purest expression of what it means to be alive.
Mainline Protestans in particular are notorious for encouraging young people to find their own way. Perhaps we should reconsider whether or not young people wish to be constantly building their own meaning. Maybe it’s time we be more confident in the orchard that we’ve found in Christ. I’ll admit that there is a fine line between tying someone to your boat versus leaving them to float home alone. My friends know I am not one to quickly embrace someone else’s inexorable dogma. But at the same time, I hope that if anyone ever asked me, “what’s my name, what’s my function?” I could give them an answer worth believing in.
NOTE: This post is based on a sermon I preached on the Third Sunday of Easter, 2011
Lonesome Dan Kase
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia.
Toward the end of my time at North Central University, which is located in downtown Minneapolis, MN, I began to frequent a nearby coffee shop/music venue/art space called E.P. Atelier (this wonderful place closed closed down awhile back). It was there, that I was introduced to a young blues musician named Lonesome Dan Kase. It was a Saturday evening, and business was slow for the coffee shop, I was the only customer. Lonesome Dan began to sing, and stomp, and play his 1938 Gibson guitar. It was the first time I had heard the country blues, and I was transfixed. Later, I wrote an article about Lonesome Dan for The Northern Light (the venerable student newspaper of North Central):
The music he plays hasn’t been heard (at least by most) in 70 years. It is captivating music, full of raw and throaty vocals, and intense finger-picking guitar work. It’s foot-stompin’, knee-slappin’ music of a bygone era; nostalgic music that takes you back even if you’ve never been there before. When you hear it, it makes you wish you had a name like Lonesome Dan, or Reverend Gary Davis, or Sleepy John Estes, riding from town to town on a freight train and playing the country blues on your old beat up guitar.
Back in the ’20s and ’30s the country blues was called “race music.” Back in those days it the popular genre of African America, and you can trace the development of modern rock, blues, R & B, and rap back to those gritty voiced black singers who got their start and their sound during the Great Depression: Mississippi John Hurt, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson (Eric Clapton’s muse), Son House (Jack White’s muse), Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the Reverend Gary Davis. The best word to describe the music of these men, and of Lonesome Dan is genuine. One man, a guitar, sitting on stool, in a bar or a road house, (back when such places were still filled with the smoke of cheap cigarettes) singing of love and religion, place and tradition, agriculture and crime and racism. These men lived the life they sang about, and it was not a glamorous life, either. They did not own mansions, or drive Escalades. They were many times homeless, and rode freight trains (Lonesome Dan ran away from home and hopped a freight train when he was eighteen…or so the legend goes). They didn’t lip sync their concerts or use computers to edit out their mistakes and correct their voices. The country blues is some of the most authentic music every made, and that’s why when you hear it, it makes your heart ache. It calls you to the open road, it makes you want to pack a knapsack and head for the train yard. It gives you nostalgia for a way of life you’ve never lived.
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Nostalgia is a yearning for authenticity, for a time when things were simpler, more real; but it is often a paradoxical yearning. These days, nostalgia has been commercialized, plasticized and outsourced. We’re flooded with cheap Elvis clocks, and Betty Boop commemorative plates that are supposed to remind us (well, actually our parents) of a better a time, back before suburban sprawl and big box stores, back when Americans actually manufactured things. So much for authenticity.
It is in this culture so filled with hype, with mind-controlling advertising, with disposable everythings, that the search for authenticity becomes urgent. My generation wants authenticity so badly–almost as badly as we want the new I-phone. And ultimately, that’s the problem, our search for authenticity always seems to get sidetracked, co-opted, packaged and sold back to us. But, good, raw, real music keeps on calling us back to the search, to the road…even if that music gets played through ear-buds.
The Difference Music Makes
February 25, 2010
Saw this and decided you all needed to see it, because I couldn’t stop laughing. It’s amazing how the scene takes on a different meaning when you change the soundtrack – what was surely an emotional, ecstatic situation looks like something Dante would write about. Hilarious {Sorry for the double-post, Tony – you can drop it in post order if you like, but you guys had to see this, now}
Tony Hunt
jstambaugh
Shawn Wamsley
