There was a historic music festival in the summer of 1969. But it's not the one that took place in Bethel, NY. The
Harlem Cultural Festival ran from
June 29 to August 24 that summer, presenting a concert every Sunday afternoon in
Mount Morris Park (known today as Marcus Garvey Park).
Three hundred thousand people turned out for the
six free concerts, hearing acts like
Nina Simone , Sly & the Family Stone (the only act to play both Woodstock and the "black Woodstock"), Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, The 5th Dimension, Moms Mabley and. Speakers included Jesse Jackson and "blue-eyed soul brother" Mayor John Lindsay. Security was courtesy of the
Black Panthers, since the NYC police refused to provide it. Filmmaker Hal Tulchin recorded
over 50 hours of concert footage, which has remained unreleased.
Historic Films seems to hold the footage; it was supposed to be made into a movie to
premiere at Sundance 2007, but its
release seems to be continually delayed for reasons unclear.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Aug 20, 2009 -
19 comments
Stan Hugill, often known as "
The Last Shantyman," authored a
book called
Shanties From the Seven Seas, based on his own work experiences in the last days of sail. Influential in the folk revival, the book is one of the most important written sources for music sung aboard ships in the 19th and early 20th century,
the "Bible" of sea music. Decades of chanteying in pubs and at festivals have kept many of the songs alive, but in most cases they've strayed stylistically from the verses and versions Hugill collected, or dropped out of popularity entirely. Now,
one musician is returning to the source and creating a new audio archive for the original versions of the songs as written, by
singing through the more than 400 songs in the book, one song each week, and posting the songs on YouTube, with commentary.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Jun 15, 2009 -
28 comments
Pilgrim Productions Presents: Voices Across America, an archive of gospel music in a variety of genres, submitted for free play and download by church groups and folk and traditional groups across the country and beyond. Style, age, and quality vary greatly, but fans of noncommercial music will enjoy hunting for the gems of blues, Cajun, bluegrass, choral, shapenote, country, vintage, and mountain gospel and more.
posted by Miko
on May 24, 2009 -
15 comments
The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko
on Feb 16, 2009 -
27 comments
Sacred Steel is a
pedal-steel guitar style that evolved in the African-American Pentecostal denomination
The House of God, Which Is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Brothers and lap steel players
Willie and Truman Eason, inspired by the electric blues and Hawaiian steel guitar of the 1920s and 30s, brought the sound to two branches of the church, the
Keith and
Jewell dominions. Its hallmark: "talking guitar," in which the sliding steel
emphasizes and mimics the words of preachers and
singers. In the 1970s, a new "
Motor City" tradition began, featuring the more complicated pedal steel guitar. This body of music was known mainly in church circles until two things happened: first, folklorist
Robert Stone became interested in the music and relased several
CD collections. And then, church player
Robert Randolph (and his
Family Band) began taking Sunday morning's music out on
Saturday night.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Apr 8, 2008 -
19 comments
HONK! is a showcase and annual festival for a "new kind of street band": motley, theatrical, activist protest groups working within the
marching band tradition. From this central site, link to
video and
audio from
twenty bands currently playing in the "honk" genre, from New York's
Rude Mechanical Orchestra to to Atlanta's
Seed and Feed Marching Abominables to Portsmouth, NH's
Leftist Marching Band. Heavy on the brass and percussion, rousing, raucous, and fun, these bands form part of a
worldwide musical phenomenon.
posted by Miko
on Jul 30, 2007 -
19 comments
Waffle House Family and other classics are now available for listening in the comfort of your own home via online jukebox. No longer must you drive the darkness of the American Highway seeking that 24-hour beacon of yellow squares; no longer suck your sweet tea from the straw as you seek out original Waffle House tunes while waiting for your hash browns (
scattered, smothered, and covered, of course) to arrive. Mary Welch Rogers, wife of House founder Joe Rogers, is one of several artists who recorded Waffle House-themed songs for the fast-food chain's jukeboxes. Most were penned by Buckner and Garcia of Pac Man Fever. While you're at it, visit the shrine, and enjoy David Wilcox's song about feel the peace that's cooked in grease.
posted by Miko
on Feb 18, 2007 -
15 comments
Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud, Loud Music Photgrapher
Henry Horenstein's
Honky-Tonk: Portraits of Country Music, 1972-1981 captures a sound in transition. This evocative collection of informal, black-and-white portraits of country musicians and fans in bars, backstage, and on the road illustrate a decade when smoky roadhouses and
venerated venues began to give way to the more mainstream
Countrypolitan or "Nashville" sound. Seminal artists like
Mother Maybelle Carter and
Bill Monroe mingled backstage with shinier newcomers like
Dolly Parton and
Anne Murray. But even as the commercial sound was dominating, youngsters mixing with old-timers sparked
the first wave of old-time/bluegrass revival, and some of the artists who got started then still
carry the
torch for a non-Nashville sound today. In this online exhibit you can watch it all unfold.
posted by Miko
on Feb 2, 2007 -
30 comments
Steppin' is an hour-long documentary on an African-American dance tradition, most closely associated with
historically black fraternities and
sororities (though it's also found in
high schools,
clubs, and
professional dance companies). Combining footwork, hand-clapping, chanting, singing, use of props, and changing configurations of dancers, it's a tightly coordinated dance form in which teams vie for honors in
competitions nationwide.
posted by Miko
on Dec 7, 2006 -
20 comments
Awake, My Soul is a new documentary on Sacred Harp singing, an American musical tradition that's strange, beautiful, and very much alive. Previously discussed and beautifully explicated in
this post.
posted by Miko
on Nov 6, 2006 -
13 comments
That's the Sound of the Man Working on the Chain Gang Among all genres of American folk music,
prison songs may be the most viscerally compelling. They evolved from
plantation songs and
field hollers of slaves in the American South before the civil war (whose origins can in turn be traced to
patterns found in the music of West Africa) but their tone and content is quite different. Limitless in length,
bitter and
pained, offering
little hope of freedom or
redemption, these songs were first heard during Reconstruction. Harsh and unevenly enforced laws incarcerated legions of black American men, consigning them to long sentences of labor for minor offenses like insult, fistfighting, and shoplifting.
To shore up a tanking Southern economy, prisons leased convict labor to plantation owners as a low-cost replacement for slave labor. When reform efforts brought that to an end,
state governments became the contractors. Sweetheart deals awarded lucrative contracts to prisons to provide labor for rebuilding the railroads and highways of the war-destroyed South. Slavery in all but name, these work conditions gave rise to
a body of music that is one of
the most significant antecedents of the blues. In
hundreds of
variants, cadenced to
axe-fall,
hoe stroke, or the
drop of a maul, the songs set a working pace a man could sustain from dawn to dusk, while remaining fast enough to satisfy an armed '
Captain' on horseback.
posted by Miko
on Aug 27, 2006 -
33 comments
Wade in the Water In 2004,
Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured the maritime cultures of the Mid-Atlantic region, from Long Island to North Carolina. Now, this site gives a home on the web to the cultural documentation gathered for the festival --
music,
recipes,
stories and oral history,
an interactive map,
the occupational folklore and natural history of regional fisheries,
photos, video, and more. The material, ably compiled by folklorists and educators, creates a lasting and very accessible archive of festival highlights as well as an excellent overview of the distinct coastal culture of the Mid-Atlantic. Don't miss the great menhaden net-hauling chantey
Help Me to Raise 'Em (links to mp3).
posted by Miko
on Mar 27, 2006 -
7 comments
So You Think You Hate Country Music? Then listen to this. The roots of American country music may surprise you. In this series of NPR programs, trace the gradual development of real country music through the first half of the 20th century. Learn how a woman's instrument of the late 1800s, the parlor guitar, became the the central symbol of country and rock; see how African-American musical forms like gospel and blues meshed with the development of country and early rock and influenced the traditional forms in turn; listen to German-Mexican hybrids of accordian style; find out why women had so many honky-tonk torch songs to sing in the late 40s. The series contains hours of content (narrative, interviews, music tracks), and a multitude of excellent links for deeper digging.
posted by Miko
on Feb 2, 2006 -
111 comments
After the Storm Sometime this weekend, you may be able to hear one of the best expressions of New Orleans’ role in music and culture available in any mass media. It's American Routes, a weekly show carried on
many US public radio affiliates. Programmed and hosted by
folklorist and
UNO professor of folklore and culture Nick Spitzer, the show normally broadcasts from a studio in the heart of the French Quarter, but has found a temporary home on a
Creole/Cajun French/English public radio station in Lafayette. Spitzer
told the NYT that he began planning
the music for this week’s show as he was fleeing the flooding city in his car, playing Fats Domino’s
“Walking to New Orleans."
This week’s show highlights New Orleans’ recovery from disasters past, emphasizing the city’s role as the greatest single wellspring of American music. The Crescent City, after all, has either
birthed or nurtured everything from
jazz,
R & B,
cajun and the related black-influenced zydeco,
soul,
blues,
gospel, and
rock and roll.) With an encyclopedic knowledge of American vernacular music, an utterly democratic spirit, and an unmistakeable respect and love for American musical forms and the people who create them, Spitzer has
stepped forward several times this week to serve as a compassionate and optimistic spokesman for the irrepressible
creative spirit of a suffering city and a
culture in diaspora.
posted by Miko
on Sep 10, 2005 -
19 comments
