Basic Human Needs

(Reuters) - Remains of the earliest known feast in a cave in Israel show that humans have been bringing food to funerals for millennia and suggest that burial feasts may have helped shape modern society, researchers said on Monday.

I'm a traditionalist; I love vernacular culture. I'm into reciprocity and community: sharing foodways, music, and stories in a context that seems to be as old as human social relationships. We live in a world where we alienate ourselves further and further choosing "stuff" over people. In Buddhist words, we'd say that we feed our attachments over and over again in an effort to end our suffering.

I'm writing a paper for this conference that discusses the myth of the "Ancient Celtic Past" in Irish traditional music. Basically the paper argues that rooting contemporary Irish traditional music in a nebulous "Ancient Celtic Past" serves two purposes; 1) marketing and 2) a popular reclamation of traditional community values.

I'd argue that many people who buy into the "Ancient Celtic Past," complete with misguided New Age overtones, are identifying the very ancient ways of fulfilling basic human needs that vernacular Irish culture provides. Things like reciprocity, friendship, community beyond familial ties, and the music, dance, storytelling, and foodways that tend to create situations that nurture these expressions of human interconnectedness; these things feel viscerally ancient. And subsequently, people otherwise disconnected with community feel as though this interconnectedness is somehow undermined if it isn't historically linked to a timeless, picturesque past.

It's a bit of an oversimplification of my paper, because ultimately the ACP is also tied into the marketing of music and movies as well as popular misconceptions of history/the historical past.

But suffice it to say, that basic human needs are the same. People still need interconnectedness, and vernacular culture tends to nurture community as a vital expression of cultural unity.

On Counterculture and Politics

I don't generally consider myself part of mainstream popular culture. For the most part, I don't listen to top 40 on the Billboard charts (with Country music being the exception). I don't really watch a lot of TV, and most of the movies I watch are slowly becoming documentaries/indie films/foreign films that you can only rent on Netflix. The books I read are an amalgamation of musicology, history/historiography, philosophy, feminist/queer theory, and popcorn historical mystery/thrillers (or some not-so-popcorn versions like Name of the Rose). I'm trying to learn more "apocalypse skills;" skills like knitting, baking, cooking, woodworking, and gardening (i.e. skills that would be useful in an apocalypse). I bike to school or take the bus. I'm an unapologetic geek about what I do, and I'm openly gay. I am, for the most part, counterculture.

Now about a year ago, I moved to Oregon, to a city that seems to embody counterculture. Meaning that counterculture here IS mainstream pop culture. I am surrounded by people who are far more radical and "out there" politically and socially, and that's fine with me. I can't, however, stand the pot-shots people here take from the "counterculture" sidelines.

Here's the deal: If there's something in the world you believe is wrong, you don't get to complain and take pot-shots at the activists trying to fix it unless you are actively trying to make the change you wish to see. Period.

This means that joining a "cause" on facebook isn't enough. It means that if you're fed up with politics, or social policy, or the lack of care people tend to show towards their fellow human beings then you've got to try and fix it.

I've learned, living way out on the west coast away from most of the communities I've belonged to, that community building and political activism are two human imperatives for which everyone is responsible.

However, as Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

Appropriation Fridays: New Orleans Five Years Out

Sunday the 29th will be the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast.

Five years ago, I had just moved from the Gulf Coast, my home for 21 years, to Lubbock, TX. During the first week of classes the hurricane hit. I knew my family was safe, but I had friends who couldn't find family members until days afterward. And they were the lucky ones.

If you've never been through a hurricane (and Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 out of 5), different areas have to worry about different things. My family lives on high ground but amidst lots of trees, so we worry more about wind. New Orleans on the other hand, being below sea level always has to worry about floods. Some places along the Mississippi Gulf Coast had to worry about both. When you worry about wind, it doesn't really matter how long the storm sits in one place, but with flooding you want a storm to pass fast. Katrina sat there.....and sat there.....and sat there. And the levies broke.

1,836 people lost their lives in Katrina along the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast. But the bigger tragedy isn't the devastation that Katrina itself caused; the bigger tragedy is our lack of prolonged attention, our lack of compassion, and our inertia towards protecting, defending, and rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Not just for Katrina, but for the BP oil disaster as well.

Lake Ponchartrain overlooks the City of New Orleans. Appropriated below, the incomparable Paul Brady performing Lakes of the Ponchartrain.

Gay Rights

I am a multifaceted human being and there are a lot of parts of my identity, some of which I'm more comfortable with than others. I consider being gay to be a smaller part of my identity than say, being a musician, or being a scholar, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a big part of who I am and who I am becoming.

Tonight I canvassed for the first time. It happened to be for a group called Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) which was getting voter opinions on a possible ballot initiative that would propose giving gays and lesbians in Oregon the right to marry. For two hours I talked to mostly supportive people about something that a lot of people in the gay rights movement feel very passionately about. Oddly enough, I'm not one of them.

That's not to say that I feel we shouldn't fight for the right to marry. It's just that when I look at the list of things that make me feel like a second class citizen, the issue of marriage isn't high up there. I'm worried about being employed, because in 29 states I could be fired because I'm gay. Transgender Americans have to worry about possible termination in 38 states for gender expression/identity. I'm worried about adoption rights, and hate crimes, and an entire demographic being told that they're not worth enough to serve their country. And yes, I'm worried about marriage, mostly because if I ever find someone I do want to marry, I want the ability to visit her in the hospital. I'm worried for transgender/genderqueer people and the idea that the LGBT movement seems to leave the "T" behind. I'm worried that in re-framing the movement to exclude the words "gay," "lesbian," and "transgender" from our organizational names, that we're perceived as being ashamed of our identity.

I want to own that rhetoric. I want to own this fight.

But I've always believed, specifically in politics, that it's easy to make potshots from the cheap seats and to second guess the policy directions taken by others. You don't get to complain about the movement unless you're involved in it. So tonight I canvassed for a right I and my other gay friends should have.

But I want the gay rights movement to be about more than just marriage. We just have to figure out a way to make that happen.

When the universe conspires to make you learn something

This summer is a really busy one. I'm teaching a History of the Blues course (in 16 2-hour classes no less) and I'm also working as a "research" assistant for a folk song project. On top of all of this, I'm trying to do a lot of reading. I'm hoping my dissertation will be on something to do with American "folk" music. Yesterday, background reading and the folk song project overlapped.

My job right now for the folk song project is to "track" 83 trackless CD's of folk music from the Library of Congress. In addition, I have to make a track list. Usually this task is a fairly easy one....line up the LoC's database listing with the CD recorded, but sometimes either the database or the recording identification is wrong, which means I get to listen to folk songs and guess at titles. On one level it's research grunt work, but on another level it's a summer of getting paid to listen to source singers and play around with the LoC database. There are definitely worse ways to spend a summer (i.e. my summer spent washing dishes/cleaning kennels to pay for living expenses).

On top of this project, I've checked out Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n Roll by Nick Tosches. I'm only barely into it, but at the very beginning there's a chapter about Warren Smith claiming he wrote a song he recorded in 1956 called "Black Jack David." Considering I had just tracked about three different versions of a song called "Black Jack Davey" I knew that wasn't true even before Tosches did a fantastic tracing of the history and evolution of "Black Jack David."

On top of everything, I found an incredible source singer identified as Aunt Molly Jackson. Good weekend, but lots of work left to do.

Things Don't Change by Themselves

My ACLU Chapter filed a suit today protesting the No-Fly list.

PORTLAND – The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are prohibited from flying to or from the United States or over U.S. airspace because they are on the government’s “No Fly List.” None of the individuals in the lawsuit, including a disabled U.S. Marine Corps veteran stranded in Egypt and a U.S. Army veteran stuck in Colombia, have been told why they are on the list or given a chance to clear their names. One of the clients in the ACLU’s case resides in Portland and the suit was filed in U.S. District Court here.

“More and more Americans who have done nothing wrong find themselves unable to fly, and in some cases unable to return to the U.S., without any explanation whatsoever from the government,” said Ben Wizner, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “A secret list that deprives people of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional.”

The ACLU of Oregon joined the national ACLU and other affiliates in Southern California, Northern California and New Mexico in filing the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon.

Things don't change by themselves....WE have to change them.

Introducing Appropriation Fridays

This is another one of those set days. I'm pretty sure this will be the last of the "set" days, although who knows. It's my hope that normally I will post a video of me performing something, but I've just gotten over a cold and I have a 2 1/2 hour background music gig, so I'm trying to save my voice.

Music is an art, and yes, can and should exist simply because it's beautiful. Let's be honest, I've devoted my life to studying and performing music, so I'm with you on that one. However, I find music incredibly powerful as a tool: to build community, to comment upon aspects of society that need change, and as an instrument of inspiring change politically and socially. One of the reasons I'm so drawn to "folk" music is because it has historically been used in this way. Look at the 17th century ballad "The Diggers' Song" protesting land rights:

You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now,
You noble Diggers all, stand up now;
The waste land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name
Your digging do disdain, and persons all defame.
Stand up now, stand up now

Look at any number of traditional/folk musicians writing or singing songs in this style today: Dick Gaughan, Andy Irvine, Martin Carthy, and on and on and on. Look at the inspiring African musicians who face abuse, exile, and death both to them and their families: Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba, and the radical Fela Kuti.

The more I grow as a person, I realize that this is the type of musician I wish to become: socially and politically conscious and ultimately with something powerful and meaningful to say. All of this leads to Appropriation Fridays: my co-opting of songs, more than likely folk or traditional in nature, that I feel comment on something I see happening today. As folk music proves to us, there's very little new under the sun.

To that end, here's this week's appropriation:

Barrett's Privateers

McChrystal's comments to a Rolling Stone interviewer caused a political firestorm, including the naming of Petraeus to command American forces in Afghanistan and the questioning of our failing doctrine of counterinsurgency. His comments did something good though: they reminded a forgetful nation that we are at war. They reminded the general public that, despite the flight suit stunt years ago, we're still fighting.

I'm appalled by a lot of things about the wars we're fighting, and Barrett's Privateers addresses quite a few of them: misrepresentation of the wars, questionable recruitment policies (including ads like this one...guys, war is not a video game or a movie), and the lack of support on the ground or when our troops (quite a few of them my friends) get back home. And for the life of me, I can't understand why veterans' affairs aren't a serious political issue for most Americans. If we can't do justice by our veterans, what does that say about us as a nation? We can do better....we have to do better.