Der Kreisel

Alan Lomax

Bernie Dunne, at the time the patriarch of the Dunne family of Irish travelling musicians, a practical, witty character too, teaches a BBC interviewer how he can play a tune on the fiddle in two seconds, leaving a life motto that really counts for me:

Anyone can play a tune

carolinepeq:

Sounds just perfect for such an imposed inertia that knocked at the door on a sunny saturday afternoon. What a stoic state of apathy and fake calm.

You must breathe vernal thoughts I say. But there’s cold sun outside and warm rain inside my head. Repetition of the fake Antístenes cinism all over my mind.

This is good, oh look, is that Alan Lomax?

Tommy Jarrell plays Let Me Fall, in this 1983 recording by Alan Lomax, at the Edwards-Franklin House in Mount Airy, North Carolina.

I’m in a mood for folk tonight.

If I get drunk, if I get drunk
Let me fall, little darling, on the ground

Cultural equity

• Tommy Jarrell fiddle
• Chester McMillian and Frank Bode guitars
• Ray Chatfield five-string banjo

(Source: slevenback)

Now you can watch it right here.
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Jazz Parades is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991).

Jazz Parades shows the cathartic Sunday jazz parades of social clubs in New Orleans and an overview of the jazz scene in the convergence of “the Uptown Blacks with the Downtown Creoles.” In interviews the participants explain the ritual aspect of “turning loose” the dead, celebrating Mardi Gras, and sublimating violence by dancing in the streets.

Their heroes (Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Buddy Bolden, Johnny Dodds, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Kid Ory, Manuel Perez, and John Robichaux) started out in the red light district, where the madames became the first patrons of jazz. Crosscutting between African and jazz parades reveal their common links.

The documentary features the Majestic Band, the Preservation Hall Band (Willie Humphrey, James “Sing” Miller, Emanuel Sayles, Alonzo Stewart, Kid Thomas Valentine and Chester Zardis) and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Greg Davis, Charles Joseph, Kirk Joseph, Roger Lewis, Jenell Marshall and Ephrem Townes) at the Glass House and participating in a funeral parade.

Narrated by Alan Lomax.

The Association for Cultural Equity’s Alan Lomax Archive channel on YouTube additionally streams outtakes from this film: other strong performances by Flo Anckle and the Majestic Brass Band, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, White Eagles Mardi Gras Indians, Chester Zardis, the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and Beatrice Austin and Iona Raybon on second lining, funeral parades, and various social aid and pleasure clubs.

This is one of the things that have left a strongest impression in me lately.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band play Voodoo in New Orleans, at the jazz funeral parade for Marshall Poland, Sr.
Filmed by the omnipresent ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in 1982.

Mind the main theme, wait for it. Impressive, isn’t it?

Some African cultures are known to celebrate funerals much differently, not through mourning but rather with joy and laughter and dancing. I was alerted to this by two different conversations I had recently with two Europeans who have lived there long enough to see it, though they’ve lived there in times that were decades apart.

It seems that Angolans cry when a child is born, because the child is born to a world of suffering, and they celebrate death, because death is the end of suffering. Something along those lines. And these traditions have spread across the Atlantic to the créole communities New Orleans, as you can see here.

Below, the clean album version of this song. Notice how, at one point, a brass instrument mimics the cry of a child being born.

For some reason, this reminds me of the brass band in Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995). Could he have meant to cause that impression?

I mean, the music, likely by Goran Bregović, is so much alike… and the desolate setting, the animality, the mindless violence, death and destruction being celebrated as if they were life. It’s just too strong not to disturb you.

Compare for yourself.

Let’s forget Belgium for a while…

Cuban pianist Rubén González plays Pueblo Nuevo with world famous Buena Vista Social Club. Look in here for the whole song.

Rubén was forced to abandon his studies in Medicine due to financial difficulties and so devoted himself professionally to the piano, which earned him fame around South America. Back to Cuba, he retired in the 1980s, but American blues guitarist Ry Cooder would discover him once again in 1996, after he had not owned a piano for 11 years, and he would eventually release the first album of his second career, Introducing…Rubén Gonzáles.

Ry Cooder, which you can see here employing the bottleneck on his guitar, would then assemble the band we know as Buena Vista Social Club, with Rubén in it, and produce the Grammy-winning debut album of the same name in 1997, leading them on a tour around the world which sparked a newfound public interest in Afro-Cuban music.

German director Wim Wenders would not much later direct the highly acclaimed documentary Buena Vista Social Club (1999), from which this is taken, and which I now feel that I absolutely must watch.

Rubén González passed away in Havana, 8 December 2003, at the age of 84.

Ibrahim Ferrer, lead singer of the ensemble, himself deceased in Havana, 6 August 2005, at the age of 78, would say of him:

Whoever had the chance, and I dare to say, honor, to have met Rubén González, would understand my following words. Mr. González was the simplest and most humble man I had, and will ever meet. It’s hard to describe his perspective of music and how he interpreted it. In the 1950’s, after the revolution affected our beautiful country, many people started seeing music as a way to gain money and a business worthily of exploding. Few were the artists who remained faithful to their musical ideals and tendencies, few were like Rubén González. Did you know that Ruben spent 5 years polishing shoes, despite his talent? He enjoyed playing the piano like no one else. Rubén was a person we all should admire and look up too, and have as a role model. He always acted in the good of people, someone you could trust and rely on if you had a problem. It’s a shame that we lost such a valuable person, but that’s how life works, and there’s nothing we can do.

Now, which of you is really looking forward to explore Alan Lomax’s Global Jukebox?

Recorded by important ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax between 1933-1959.
Read about his life’s work, and his idea of cultural equity.

Alan Lomax’s immense multimedia archive, from which this is taken, is to be made available online this very month, as the Global Jukebox.

The inmates at Angola, Louisiana State Penitentiary sing the work song Rosie in a chain gang, to the rhythm of their own pounding axes.

Yet, that something so authentic, ocasionally even virtuosic, would arise in different places from a setting so despondent, is revealing, I would say, of our very own humanity and personal struggle.

This is supposedly the prison where Alan Lomax would come across legendary 12-string bluesman Lead Belly, most famous for a song which would 50 years later be made popular by American grunge band Nirvana, and first recorded by Alan Lomax, Where Did You Sleep Last Night.

Can you feel it?

Delta bluesman Sam Chatmon (1897-1983) plays Make Me a Pallet on the Floor, in this August 1978 recording by culturally relevant ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) in Hollandale, Mississipi.

Alan Lomax travelled around the world recording roots music from all different cultures for about 50 years, not just documenting the music but also the traditional dancing going on in different parts of the world.

After collecting the world’s greatest folk music and dancing archive, he proposed an ingenious system for statistical music analysis, Cantometrics, and was able to find a correlation, among others, between the level of complexity of singing in different cultures and their primary occupations, in other words, a relationship between a people’s way of life and their music.

To me, that is some of the most beautiful and groundbreaking work that could be done, and you might relate to his drive if you enjoy world music, or roots music for its authenticity.

However, the proliferation of the mass media and the constant loss of cultural identity worried him, and so he created the Association for Cultural Equity, based in the Fine Arts campus of New York City’s Hunter College, which sought to continue research and divulgation of world music.

The ACE would cantometrically compile Alan Lomax’s collection into his original idea of a Global Jukebox, an indexed database of music from all around the world, and the project’s interface had been designed in the 1990s.

Below, you may find a 1998 demonstration of it:

Over the years, the ACE has been publishing a few of Alan Lomax’s records, and they have found relative market acceptance. Also, the association has sought to respect Alan Lomax’s idea of repatriation of culturally relevant data to its place of origin, so that the future generations may benefit from the cultural heritage of their not-so-distant ancestors, including the payment of royalties to the families of some of the published folk artists.

More recently, they have decided to make Alan Lomax’s gigantic collection available online, which is due this very month.

Having heard a few of these recordings, some of which are very impressive (especially the negro work songs in prisons of the American South), I can tell you we are in for some great, interesting music.

Alan Lomax’s studies of cantometrics, as well as choreometrics and parlametrics, were very important in the development of modern digital tools which allow for song comparison, used in services such as Pandora.com, in portable media players, etc.

So mind the ACE’s website (culturalequity.org), and help retardate the spread of Leitkultur, the loss of our global heritage.

And have fun while you’re at it.