366 posts tagged with folk.
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“A female Bob Dylan”, he said of her
To Anyone Who Ever Asks is a widely lauded biography by Howard Fishman of musician Connie Converse, which came out last year. Not everyone liked it, with dissenting voices including her nephew and Joyce Kittenplan on her Substack The Ambiguities [archive link]. Inspired by these reviews, and their own frustrations with the biography, folklorists and musicians Sophie Abramowitz, Sarah Bachman and Emily Hilliard started the podcast The Female Bob Dylan, whose first episode is devoted to Connie Converse. Future episodes will be dedicated to other musicians who’ve been dubbed “the female Bob Dylan”.
Folk legend Happy Traum has passed
Happy Traum, a stalwart of the Greenwich Village and Woodstock folk scenes and longtime friend and collaborator of Bob Dylan, died on Wednesday at age 86. The Hudson Valley magazine Chronogram first reported the musician’s death, and his close friend and fellow musician John Sebastian confirmed to RS that the cause was cancer.
Without You
Mark Gormley has passed away. Not many recognize the name. And because this is the internet, he was constantly mocked and ridiculed. But he wrote good songs, fine ones that stand on their own.
An overview from a couple years ago. [more inside]
'Freckle'
crankin' out tunes
In her article Th'infernal Drone: In Praise Of The Hurdy-Gurdy Jennifer Lucy Allan notes that in "Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights the soundtrack to hell is a giant and infernal hurdy-gurdy". She discusses, among others, Stevie Wishart, who can be seen here giving a quick introduction to the hurdy-gurdy, and performing her composition Vespers for St. Hildegard and duoing with daegeum player Hyelim Kim. Corinna de Fonseca-Wollheim profiled Matthias Loibner in the New York Times [archive link] and his performance with Nataša Mirković of Schubert's Winter's Journey. For an overview of the history of the instrument, hurdy-gurdy player Fredrik Knudsen made a half-hour video or you can read A Brief History of the Hurdy-Gurdy by Graham Whyte.
We had the Sex Pistols play here and you’re worse!
“I was 25,” she says. “I’d go for my mouth and nothing would come out. It started when I was pregnant with my eldest daughter, and I just put it down to the pregnancy, but it wasn’t a happy time in my life. I think my then-husband wasn’t that keen on having a baby, blah blah blah, it was a difficult time, which we got through, but I think it impacted on me a bit.”Folk legend Linda Thompson has been suffering from dysphonia since the early seventies, making it harder and harder for her to record new albums. For her latest, she got other people to sing her songs, called it Proxy Music and recreated the album cover from Roxy Music's eponymous debut. Alexis Petridis interviews her for The Guardian on the album and her personal history in folk.
Folks from round ere ain’t from round ere
Local Music From Out There
Podwireless has just dropped its Best of 2023 episode, featuring an hour of the year's best "folk and roots music and associated weirdos". Toppermost of the poppermost in this particular world is Shirley Collins with her excellent 2023 album Archangel Hill.
"an epistolary novel in the form of twelve folksongs"
Correspondence was a project where Swedish musicians Jens Lekman and Annika Norlin (a.k.a. Hello Saferide) wrote and sent each other songs in English on alternating months over the course of 2018. You can listen to the original versions on the website but the pair also rerecorded many of the songs with strings and released it as an album which is available to buy from Bandcamp or stream on various services.
Bob Dylan with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Orchard Park NY July 4 1986
Bob Dylan with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Orchard Park NY July 4 1986
What it says on the tin. [more inside]
What it says on the tin. [more inside]
The *other* Boris Karlov
Diamonds and Rust
Jake Blount: “a sonic postcard from a future world”
“I play fiddle and banjo music from black and Native American musicians, mostly in the Southeastern United States, which is not a genre, but a sentence.”
Jake Blount has been reinterpreting Black folk music through a modern lens, producing what he terms “Afrofuturist folklore”. [more inside]
"I'll spit poison at all your bad boys"
Duo Ruut
Duo Ruut are an Estonian duo who sing haunting melodies and rhythms together while playing a single Estonian zither between themselves--a traditional instrument played in a non-traditional way. Check out their songs Tuule sõnad and Nightingale. [more inside]
Pogueless? Help is at hand.
The Mary Wallopers are the best new(ish) band I've run across in ages, and if you like the wildest and rudest kind of Irish folk music, there's a good chance you'll love them too. Here's a video of each of the album's 11 songs to help you decide: Eileen Og, Love Will Never Conquer Me, Cod Liver Oil & The Orange Juice, John O'Halloran, The Hackler, The Night The Gards Raided Oweny's, Building Up And Tearing England Down, Lots of Little Soldiers, Frost Is All Over,, The Butcher Boy, All For Me Grog. [more inside]
Bob Neuwirth, born June 20th, 1939; died May 18th, 2022
Bob (Robert) Neuwirth, born June 20th, 1939; died May 18th, 2022
See also
Friend and confidant of Bob Dylan in the 1960s and Janis Joplin in the 1970s, he appeared in both Don't Look Back and Eat the Document as well as on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. He was the OG hipster.
See also
Friend and confidant of Bob Dylan in the 1960s and Janis Joplin in the 1970s, he appeared in both Don't Look Back and Eat the Document as well as on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. He was the OG hipster.
RIP Mark Lanegan
"One of his generation's most soulful singers". Mark Lanegan, lead singer of Screaming Trees and floating member of Queens of the Stone Age passed away yesterday at his home in Killarney, Ireland, age 57. As well as Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age, Lanegan released 11 solo albums, worked with Greg Dulli as The Gutter Twins, released three albums with Isobel Cambell, and was lead vocalist and co-writer on the Soulsavers album "It's Not How Far You Fall, It's the Way You Land".
A 're-re-renewal of the forgotten springs of human creativity.'
This is your decadal reminder that the Lomax Collection exists. It includes hundreds of hours of recordings of 20th century American folk music, and some other neat things. This is a doubles jubillee repost of zarq's lovely 2012 post. (The broken "Now, nearly ten years..." link is replaced by the first link here. Everything else still works.)
Lenny, the One Hit Wonder
Lenny Lipton is a Cornell physics graduate in the class of 1962. He is "recognized as the father of the electronic stereoscopic display industry," and "was the lead inventor of the current state-of-the-art technologies that enable today's theatrical filmmakers to project their feature films in 3D." He holds over 50 patents, including whizbang-sounding inventions such as "electrostereoscopic eyewear," "synthetic panoramagram," and "autostereoscopic lenticular screen." His inventions have been used by NASA and its contractors on the Mars rover and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Lipton was also a prolific filmmaker in his younger days: from 1965-75 he made 25 short films. His filmography is now a part of the Pacific Film Archive at the Berkeley Art Museum. Lipton was also a successful author, having written several books about filmmaking technique including "The Super 8 Book," "Independent Filmmaking," "Lipton on Filmmaking," and a 2021 release about the history of cinema technology.
But to the world outside of 3-D tech and independent film (I guess that's pretty much the whole world when you round down), Lipton is most famous as a songwriter. This is true even though he wrote only one song in his life, and did so inadvertently. [more inside]
Peter Talisman: Lord of the Harvest
Bring in the grain, uncover a mystery, and lose yourself in the dance of Peter Talisman. [more inside]
pure Proustian existentialism - Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree
New 33 1/3 Book Zooms In on John Prine’s Debut Album (No Depression): "Much more than a detailed analysis of the album, though, Osmon’s contribution to the series is a love letter from one Midwesterner to another, as well as an intimate portrait — drawing on archival materials and published interviews — of the folk clubs, neighborhood, and family that shaped Prine and about which he wrote so evocatively in his songs. As “a fifteen-year Chicago resident,” Osmon writes, “I’ve always understood Prine through the lens of our Middle American provenance, and admired his singular ability to convey our commonplace happenings to universal effect." [more inside]
Who Caught and Sang the Sun in Flight
Larry Gordon, founder of Vermont-based folk-chorus group Village Harmony has died.
For over 35 years, Gordon taught American Shape-Note singing traditions to generations of teen and adult singers and their audiences through intensive world-music summer camps. The music is known particularly for the "hard-edged, unselfconscious singing style" he encouraged, that allowed most anyone with a voice to sing along. [more inside]
Mississippi John Hurt Video Collection
Mississippi John Hurt Video Collection
Pretty much what it says on the tin, but, oh, the cameos — both aural and visual.
Pretty much what it says on the tin, but, oh, the cameos — both aural and visual.
Every field recording by Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax's field recordings are available on a newly-redesigned site. Alan Lomax started making recordings for the Library of Congress in 1933, with his father John, and recorded folk music and interviews from around the United States and the world on reel-to-reel tape between 1946 and 1991. These field recordings are the source material that sparked the American folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s. [more inside]
Happy Ruination Day
In the summer of 2001, before the ruination of modern times had become apparent to most of us, Gillian Welch released her album Time (the Revelator). In addition to her breakout song "Everything is Free," it included two tracks about April 14. [more inside]
The Original Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girl
The Charming Hostess lost its frontwoman, Jewlia Eisenberg, last week.
An article in the Forward (originally known in Yiddish as the Forverts) provides a good introduction to the life of Jewlia Eisenberg, who created music she called "Nerdy-Sexy-Commie-Girly" by blending blues, folk music, and Jewish piyyut. [more inside]
"I'm a song catcher."
The Guardian interviews Chris Strachwitz, founder of Arhoolie Records. Just in advance of a free stream of the documentary 60 years of Arhoolie (on Thursday Dec 10, 8 pm EST/5 pm PST), a discussion with the 89-year-old founder of one of the record labels instrumental in capturing, documenting, and popularizing many styles of folk and working-class music. [more inside]
Jerry Jeff has left the building
One of the great ones has passed: Jerry Jeff Walker, the man who invented Luckenbach and Jimmy Buffet, has left us. I can't do justice to his work, or his influence; but Kinky Friedman thought he was a national treasure, he was Todd Snider's muse, and he wrote Mr. Bojangles. Live on Austin City Limits in 1979 is a good slice-of-life; there's plenty more to find after.
Discovering—and Preserving—the Earliest Known Stereo Recordings
In 1901, German anthropologist Berthold Laufer used two wax cylinder recorders simultaneously to record Shanghai musicians, unintentionally creating the earliest-known stereo recordings. ProSoundNews.com gives an overview of Indiana University's recent work in digitizing and restoring anthropological recordings made in the very early 20th century for the American Museum of Natural History.
Much greater context and detail - along with some examples of the newly restored material - are available at IU restoration specialist Patrick Feaster's blog.
The Floor Is...
Game designer Holly Gramazio ran a survey to find out what floors were made of.
Song a Day from Steve White of The Protest Family
Frontman of "the world’s favourite East London singalong political folk punk band," Steve White is writing a song a day while he's stuck away from the rest of the team. [more inside]
The Old Song Resung
“On Cape Breton Island, where coal mining and steel making were once an essential part of the region’s culture and economy, protest song and verse are found in abundance. The Protest Song Project is an initiative of The Centre for Cape Breton Studies at Cape Breton University. The program’s goal is to preserve and promote the protest songs and verse that represent the region’s rich industrial heritage.” Volume 1 - Volume 2
Godmother of Rock and Roll
Rock-n-Roll was invented by a queer Black woman born in 1915 Arkansas. Your disordered hardcore punk rock was sanctioned by a kinky-haired Black girl born to two cotton pickers in the Jim Crow South. The electric guitar was first played in ways very few people could have ever imagined by a woman who wasn’t even allowed to play at music venues around the country. The Patron Saint of rock music is Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The original punk rebel from which we were all born, SRT is muva.[more inside]
"As usual, we're looking at true stories."
Martin Simpson is a British folk/blues songwriter, a virtuoso guitarist & a great raconteur. Here he is relating two of the surprising and touching tales behind songs on his new album Rooted. The capsule descriptions of each song are Simpson's own, taken from this article. "Ken Small salvaged a Sherman Duplex Drive tank from Start Bay in Devon, which led to the story of the tragic Operation Tiger of 1944 off the Devon coast being recognised and told," he explains. "More Than Enough was written by Robb Johnson and it was in the repertoire of my late father-in-law, Roy Bailey for many years."
How little we are, clung to the river's edge
Richard Dawson is a singer from Newcastle upon Tyne. Although his Wikipedia entry lists him as a folk musician, his music strays more widely than that - taking in punk, world music, hints of Captain Beefheart and Derek Bailey, possibly even progressive rock.
His 2017 album, Peasant was Quietus' album of the year for that year. Each song tells a different story of someone living in the sixth century kindom of Bryneich (where Newcastly is now). Shot through with humanity and wit, they detail the minutiae of people's lives - “a panorama of a society which is at odds with itself and has great sickness in it, and perhaps doesn’t take responsibility – blame is going in all the wrong directions” as Dawson himself has put it.
His new album, 2020, does the same for residents of Newcastle today. [more inside]
"Oh, I can sing in my brain; I sing in my brain all the time."
Linda Ronstadt's Parkinson's disease silenced one of the greatest singing voices of our time. Earlier this year she
spoke before a sellout crowd about her life and the concurrent release of her first-ever live album—Linda Ronstadt: Live in Hollywood—made from newly-uncovered tapes of a made-for-TV concert in 1980. This week she spoke with the New Yorker about the upcoming documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
One for the Rook One for the Crow
Sing As The Crow Flies is "a set of nine vocal tracks re-voicing the rural landscape, surrounding reed beds and marshes on the Norfolk/Suffolk border" by Laura Cannell and Polly Wright. It includes "One For the Rook One for the Crow," a "vocal instant composition recorded inside Raveningham Church in Norfolk in Spring 2019." The Guardian: "Cannell and Wright take as their source material a terrifying sounding 19th-century book: The Norfolk Garland: A Collection of the Superstitious Beliefs and Practices, Proverbs, Curious Customs, Ballads and Songs of the People of Norfolk." Sing As The Crow Flies on Youtube.
Who am I next to the moon?
"I was waiting for a moment alone / Sat beside you when you got home / I took a breath and you took out your phone / So I just did the same / I just did the same." A poignant, beautiful music video for Lauren O'Connell's song "Shimmering Silver" from her 2018 album Details. [more inside]
Dragons To Slay
“It is perhaps this undercurrent of moral logic that made fairy tales such ripe fodder for British socialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the recent collection Workers Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain, editor Michael Rosen notes that fairy tales show their politics “less overtly, often as personified social conflict.” The literary tales gathered in Rosen’s collection, by contrast, were adapted and written purposefully to “alert, reform, enlighten, provoke, and educate.” Seizing the Means of Enchantment: What Fairy Tales Can Teach Us About Class and Wealth in the Age of the Mega-Corporation (Catapult)
Newport Folk Festival at 60 (and 59, and 58...)
As the Newport Folk Festival turned 60 this year (Providence Journal), Rolling Stone recapped their favorite moments, including ♀♀♀♀: The Collaboration (Dolly Parton and The Highwomen [prev], and many more!) and Kermit the frog with Jim James (audience recording). RS recapped last year, too, when Jon Batiste’s Songs for Change Singalong closed out the festival (full show from NPR), and from 2017, when there was an unannounced tribute to Bill Withers (audience recording of Grandma's Hands Band performing Lovely Day).
how have I made it this long without knowing about this instrument?
Senegalese musician Salliou playing the cas cas, Gorée Island, Dakar, Senegal. January 5th 2018. The instrument is made by connecting two small, bean-filled gourds with a string. Another video of Salliou, also filmed for the Music of Senegal documentary. (via) [more inside]
A sarcastic quip that probably seemed absurd at the time
One Lord substituted for another. Edward Millar and John Semley consider The Wicker Man (1973; previously) and folk horror (previously) in light of anti-Enlightenment culture and reactionary movements. (SLBaffler)
Music for a rainy Sunday
If you read enough reviews of the music of Bibio one thing you'll come across is repeated use of the word "gauzy". [more inside]
Cold? Try some "Spice on Snow."
The Freight Hoppers: "Fort Smith Breakdown." Alex Kehler and Jeremiah McLane: "Le Pruneau" on accordion and nyckleharpa. Dana and Susan Robinson: "The Flying Farmer." Mike Merenda and Ruthy Unger: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." Ida Mae Specker, Rachel Eddy and Brian Slattery: "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and "Big-Eyed Rabbit."
Another man done gone. Izzy Young.
Izzy Young passed away today in Stockholm. Almost 91 years young -- Talking folklore center. Only last week at our MeFi meet-up in Stockholm Old Town, we were talking about the legendary Izzy. Now he has gone and my FB feeds are overflowing. Swedish national newspaper Svenska Dagbladet writes. Only one previous posting.
In Stockholm he was a legend, an institution even. The story of how he arranged Bob Dylans first performance in New York has been recycled regularly for years. His Folklore Center here has been putting concerts, on and off, for decades. [more inside]
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Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II
As WWII raged, Soviet ethnomusicologists began documenting Jews' lyrical reactions to their lives—Red Army soldiers, women working in factories on the home front, refugees in Siberia. Now a team of Yiddish scholars, performers, and composers has recorded 17 of the songs, long believed lost. [more inside]
Satanist entryism into the UK folk scene
Usually photographed in unassuming knitwear and spectacles, Moult is an accomplished, well-regarded musician; he was a regular member of Irish avant-folk band United Bible Studies and his own music has appeared on labels including A Year in The Country and Fort Evil Fruit. For at least two decades, however, Moult, under pseudonyms including Christos Beest, Beesty Boy and Audun, was a core member of The Order of Nine Angles...[CW: rape, sexual assault, racism, fascism, Nazi imagery, human sacrifice, grave desecration (graphic images). Everything really.] [more inside]
The Enduring Mystique of The Waterboys’ Fisherman’s Blues
Fisherman's Blues turns 30 "Sometimes you hear an album and there is no immediate way to make sense of it. There might be hints, small ways in which you can locate it in the ‘80s or ‘90s or ‘60s or whatever...But it still sounds like it occurred in a slightly altered version of that reality, emanated less from the world you know and recognize and more from an echo or reflection. ...These are the albums that exist out of time, not just removed from the trends of their era but seemingly the product of a visitor who isn’t even aware of that era, but is looking for something more eternal."