Kate McGarrigle, RIP

Sad to read of Kate McGarrigle's departure from us. Along with her sister Anna, Kate McGarrigle created some of the best folk music of the last 40 years. In particular, Matapedia and the early 70s album Dancer with Bruised Knees (long out of print for some inexcuable reason; I have it on an old cassette) are remarkable pieces of work. She's most known for mothering Rufus and Martha Wainwright with her ex-husband Loudon Wainwright. But beyond that crazy family drama, Kate and Anna McGarrigle produced wonderful harmonies with first-rate and often quite touching songwriting.

Kate McGarrigle will definitely be missed.

Utah Phillips, RIP

Utah Phillips has died.

I have trouble knowing what to say about Phillips. He represented both musical and labor traditions that I am ambivalent about. He had a rich baritone and a real love of the music. He kept a lot of old I.W.W. songs alive that otherwise might have died. He wasn't a prolific songwriter but he wrote some really great songs ("Rock Salt and Nails" for instance). But his style of folk singing, particularly the participatory nature of it, is not something I've ever been super comfortable with. This is my own shyness I guess but I like some distance between the artist and myself. Pete Seeger is much the same way.

In the late 1990s, Phillips became more popular than ever before because of the two Ani DiFranco albums that included his work. She set his work to a more hip beat and style, using modern technology to make the work relevant. In principle I like the idea, but this was at the time where everybody on the left was listening to DiFranco like she was the Second Coming and it drove me up the wall. Her music is solid enough I suppose, as were the Phillips albums, but not good enough to make up for the annoying fans.

Phillips' reputation was that of the old-time train hopper and I.W.W. member. He certainly represented that well, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. He was romanticizing a very bad lifestyle through his own actions. He may have known that. I'm not sure. But people who actually had to ride freights to survive lived horrendous lives that should be wept over, not replicated unless absolutely necessary. The cold, heat, train cops, rape, murder, robbery, and danger of getting run over sucked for virtually everyone involved.

From a historical point, identifying with the I.W.W. is interesting to me. Keeping that tradition alive has value. But they have been irrelevant for 80 years and I'm not sure why they shouldn't remain that way. They are still stuck in 1912 and in many ways so was Phillips. They represent an non-bureaucratic, hyper masculinized, individualized form of labor that has been lost through the AFL-CIO. On the other hand, those latter unions actually accomplished things. The I.W.W. accomplished very little. They won a couple of strikes but there way of running things made it almost impossible to build a long-lasting union. Romanticizing these people is OK because it's basically harmless, but it also made Phillips more politically irrelevant than he could have been.

Anyway, I saw Phillips about 3 years ago. His heart was bad but did a really nice show and I'm glad I saw him.

Historical Image of the Day

Maria Garcia, Mexican-American folksinger from California, 1939

Erik's Random 10

Elizabeth Cotten is one of the most unjustly forgotten people in the American folk canon. Real fans of the genre know who she is, but the average music fan does not. Born in 1895 in North Carolina, Cotten, like many African-Americans of her generation, played music but could not survive professionally. We know some of these stories--Mississippi John Hurt for instance. Cotten started working as a maid at the age of 13. She married at 15 and stopped playing to raise her family. In the 1940s, now in her sixties, Cotten began playing again and her recordings caught the attention of Pete Seeger. She was picked up by the burgeoning folk movement and made a number of interesting recordings over the next twenty years. Her most famous song, "Freight Train" has been recorded by a number of artists. Her wonderful, understated voice combined with her unique way of playing the guitar makes her a real treat. I found my first listen to Cotten a very arresting experience.

1. Elizabeth Cotten, I Don't Love Nobody
2. Ali Farka Toure, Tulumba
3. Bob Wills, Faded Love
4. Neil Young, Cowgirl in the Sand
5. Tommy Jarrell, Old Molly Hare
6. John Zorn, Spillane
7. Van Morrison, Cyprus Avenue
8. Sun Ra, Journey Toward Stars
9. Midnight Oil, Shakers and Movers
10. The Killers, Everything Will Be Alright

Lyrad's Random 10

The political and cultural importance of the folk song has declined dramatically in the last full decades, eschewed for prettier, more recordable and, consequently, more marketable forms. Few places is this more true than in Gaellic folk music. A lot of this has to do with the language barrier, and that the language is dying itself, but Joe Heaney fought tooth-and-nail to keep his birthright tradition alive. Joe Heaney is the anglicized version of his real name, Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, and all his songs are in Gaellic. Many of his recorded tracks, however, are spoken lessons and, as below, advice on how to properly sing the songs. His voice was far from pretty, and was often downright harsh, but the feeling and the tradition was everpresent in his cadence, as was an overpowering skill that rendered any need for "pretty" moot. As a result of his dedication to his art, he lived as a traveller and pauper, essentially abandoning his family to perform. Eventually, after years of struggle, he immigrated to the US where he was admired in the burgeoning American folk scene and given a professorship of Irish music at Wesleyan University and, later, of ethnomusicology at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he died in 1984. Here is a fantastic group of articles and interviews on him and the greater subject.

1. Joe Heaney--Advice for Young Singers
2. Blind Willie McTell--B&O Blues
3. Clutch--Impetus
4. Prince--NPG Operator
5. Pixies--Planet of Sound
6. Dmitri Shostakovich--Quartet No.8 for Strings, Op.110; 4. Largo (Borodin String Qt)
7. Mike Post--The A-Team in New York City (from the A-Team Soundtrack)
8. D. Fanshawe Field--Himene Tavara Point Venus
9. Frank Sinatra--I Got Plenty o' Nothin'
10. Ennio Morricone--Senza consenso (from the Soundtrack to Vite Strozzate)