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.
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.
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 thisone...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.
So I thought I'd share this story from the June 15 edition of the The Independent detailing a London performance of "The Pearl Fishers'" which should perhaps have given up and gone home.
So I have to applaud the fact that these two women are using their musical talents to raise money for the charities of their choice. I have been told my views toward Rice are a bit too narrow, as in she makes me seethe, particularly by one ensemble director who was proud that such a high ranking official would also be a classically trained musician. My kinship for other musicians reaches pretty far, but I'm appalled by her policy choices, even as far back as her days at Stanford where her first major initiative was to get rid of services for students of color. It's around 35 minutes in:
