With no time, just a suggestion that in addition to Folkways recordings -
personally listening, for example, endlessly and wonderfully to Leadbelly
and Lightning Hopkins - of whom Les Blank would make a great documentary
circa 1969 - there was also. is it Harry Smith(?) who went way into the
anthropology - mainly Southern - of the dark side of lyrics and folktales
(gothic creatures that would knock or eat you in the middle of the night,
etc.) and from whose work Bob Dylan was spoon fed (Greil Marcus writes all
about this). Certainly a source of making songs that would get under the
skin and provide a challenge and spook to the "you don't know what's
happening" Jones.
Mind you - I don't easily dismiss Edgar A. Poe - his stories are also right
under the skin, the urban and rural gothic core. Imagine the guards in
Quantanamo reading "The Pit and the Pendulum" to the detainees. It somehow
all fits as quite part of this country's most sinister practices of the
imagination.
As to music, I always liked the way that Ornette Coleman and company could
be so far out on a free form edge and then (exhausting a particular edge)
could come right back into a sweetly robust rendition of Row, Row Your Boat
Gently...etc. Healing after tough lyric seas. In my opinion, absolute
genius.
Stephen V
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
New blog site / same archives!
> Agreed.
>
> A bit further: while a lot of what's being talked about became widely
> broadcast in the 60s, whenever that was, as one who predates the 60s I can
> tell you that a lot of it was already in place. The folkies I knew listened
> endlessly to Folkways recordings of highly skilled traditional musicians
> and spent days and weeks trying to replicate what they heard. There were
> then no conservatories teaching blues guitar (for instance), but none of
> these guys would have considered themselves untrained, and none were
> chanting their native woodnotes wild. A few of the masters, Van Ronk among
> them, gave private lessons--Danny Kalb was a Van Ronk student--but beyond
> the basics it was not very different from sitting on the porch learning riffs.
>
> The same was true of poetry. There were always lots of young folk who
> thought that anyone could do it just like that--my feelings, my orgasms,
> are so terrific and unique all I have to do is write them down--hey, the
> 19th century was also crowded with similar--but very few of them persisted
> long enough to learn any craft. Those who did hung with older poets or with
> each other and found their chops.
>
> I have to say that I find most of Cage and company pretty boring--I find
> ideas about music less interesting than music, especially after the first
> performance. But again, conceptual music and for that matter visual art
> preceeds the invention of the term by a few decades. What changed was the
> reception--the means of dissemination became more democratic. What also
> changed was the invention of an audience without the patience to learn
> anything, so that for instance minimalism (little m ore than a concept or
> two), which requires little of the listener, found listeners. Phillip Glass
> aint Bach or Carter, in case anyone hasn't noticed. I speak as one who sat
> through the whole of Einstein on the Beach, The Photographer, and
> Satyagraha. Does anyone even remember the last two? Puccini played through
> jello.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 10:11 AM 11/15/2005, you wrote:
>> Although I clearly am on side with those who feel that open form can be
>> poetry, I do sympathize a bit with Dave's feelings about the need for
>> craft, practice, whatever in poetry as in every kind of work/play.
>>
>> As George Bowering once said:
>>
>> for years I have learned to live in the middle of a seeming contradiction.
>> Socially and politically I believe that I am a romantic leftist; but when
>> it comes to the composition of literature I am an elitist. I am not
>> reluctant to say that I'm interested in the art of writing. I like trade
>> unions and hate chambers of commerce, but I am still not going to support
>> an unlearned instinct poet in her delusion that she deserves the attention
>> I will give happily to The Dumbfounding.
>>
>>
>> Yup.
>>
>> Doug
>>
>> Douglas Barbour
>> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
>> (780) 436 3320
>>
>> Each leaf a runnel the
>> roofs now skiffs in green
>> I've never done anything
>> but begin.
>> Lisa Robertson
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