Week 13: A shindig

Wow. What a semester. 

Coming into Songs and Places this semester, I expected it to be a class just like any other: some reading, a lecture, maybe an essay, some form of a final, and a grade. I didn't expect it to throw me out of my comfort zone as much as it did. 

I hadn't made any art since 8th grade, and even then it was very guided, thematic art. 

Every week, I enjoyed creating the art more and more and allowed myself to relax more and more while making it. It was also very humbling to be not only outside of my major, but also outside of my college. CED is a whole new world. I've never been in a class where people were so many lightyears ahead of me in terms of talent. It was a very valuable experience to be in that environment. Even though I struggled a lot with contributing to the discussion on artwork, I really enjoyed hearing about other people's perspectives and insights.

I'm also really grateful that we had a storytime at the end of each session. I'm much better at analyzing prose than visual art so I felt like I could contribute much more when we got there. 

Above all, I am grateful for the encouragement and enthusiasm. Every week, I felt like my art was treated with the amount of respect as everyone else's. Yes, it was infantilized, but not in a condescending manner. I never felt ashamed of my art. For that, I owe a huge thank you to Tony. When exams and papers pile up and everyone is stressed out, Tony still manages to have the enthusiasm to bring us out of that rut -- silly as it might appear at the time. 

Week 12: Sea Shanties and Cowhands

Of all the music, this week's was probably my favorite -- especially the sea shanties. I love being on water and everything that has to do with water so the whole time I was listening to the music, I imagined sailors on the ship singing these songs to get them through the journey.

I really liked the reading for this week as well.

In the Dawidoff reading about the evolution of country music, I found this transition to commercialism very interesting. Suddenly, "country was now fashionable in places - New York City, LA, Clereveland, Seattle - and among people - well-educated professionals, teenagers - that contradicted old assumptions about the music" (14). This quote is fantastic because you can replace "country" with anything else that suddenly becomes popular and it will explain exactly how and why something went from being organic to being commercial. As soon as something becomes popular, it brings revenue, and as soon as money is in the equation, the motivation behind doing it changes.

If you keep reading, this is exactly what happens. "the country charts were dominated by a series of handsome, video-friendly young swains dressed in boots, snug jeans, and the inevitable Stetsons that won them their nickname "'the hat acts.'" All of a sudden, there is an "image." The image sells. If country music wasn't popular, if it was something else, these hat acts would probably be the stars of that too. The whole article reiterates this point... "they've taken the heart and soul out of country music." (19)

It reminds me of a conversation about farmer's markets I had with my friend's father, an American who lived in Serbia. They had moved back to the US and he said that the thing he missed most about Serbia was the farmer's market. When I asked him why, he said, "the farmer's markets here are not real farmer's markets. These people have never been on a farm in their lives, they have no dirt under their fingernails."

A Serbian "pijaca"

My art for the week was inspired by where I was when I sang one of the songs for the first time. After listening to the playlist over Thanksgiving break, I was in rowing practice and I was rowing in a single and I kept singing "Blow Ye Winds, Heigh Ho."

Week 11: Delta Blues

This week was our first week exploring the Blues. It's a bit of a change from what we were doing before but it's also more familiar territory. 

My art for the week was inspired by "Careless Love." It was originally in reverse order, where the heart is going upwards rather than downwards, but my gut told me to reverse the order. 

Week 10: Woody Guthrie

This week's theme was Woody Guthrie. The first thing I noticed listening to his songs are that they are less emotional than some of the other songs we've listened to: they're less about broken hearts and feelings and more about surroundings and stories.

They're also more upbeat than some of the other music we've heard. Guthrie's version of "This Land is Your Land" is much more upbeat, much faster, than Dylan's version of it. Dylan's version also sounds more commercial than Guthrie's version.

My favorite favorite favorite song of the week is "Blowin' Down the Road" (and I prefer that title to the "Goin' Down the Road" title in our song books. "Blowin'" implies attitude and assertiveness. "Going" is somehow less assertive.

I really like the assertiveness and dignity and pride that this song has. It fits very well with the description of Guthrie that began the reading for the week.

"I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work"

In hindsight, I think the glitter backfired on me. I tried to convey the assertiveness that Guthrie has, but I think it made it kind of kitschy - more Liberace, less Woody Guthrie. 

Week 9: Leadbelly

The theme this week was Leadbelly. I really liked all the songs that we got to choose from. When I listen to the songs, I have a playlist on my iTunes and I play it as I walk through campus and I rate the songs that stand out. This week, I rated almost all of them.

My favorites:

1.  "Corn Bread Rough" because it is so much fun, it sounds like something you would hear in a circus. This was the first song I gave 5 stars to in this playlist.

2. "Let It Shine On Me" because it's catchy. It gave me the most vivid visual of all the songs. It's the one I did my artwork on.

3. "In the Pines" what is the connection between this song and "Goodnight Irene?" The last verse of "In the Pines" is in "Goodnight Irene."

In the introduction of the reading, I really liked the part where Lomax says "... If you could count on finding that vase and those flowers on the table every night, wouldn't that be something?" I think it fits very nicely with this theme of recording music to make it last. Whenever you need it, it's always there because someone recorded it and made it that way.

I also really like the part where he sat down and had lunch with his African-American maid. He isn't just taking advantage and profiting from their music, he has a deep respect for them as people that was present even before he was invested in their music.

Another part that struck me was after Lomax had recorded a farm worker singing about the problems they had faced and then there was "immense joy in the group because they felt they had communicated their problem to the big world." I think that's kind of beautiful. Mostly because the joy is two-way, but also because it's very true. The best way that we learn about the conditions and the history of the time is through song.  In one of the readings from week 4, there was a quote, "The music was explaining the history as the history was explaining the music." That's exactly it.

Week 8: Anthology of American Folk Music

This week, we had no class so we focused on the Anthology of American Folk Music. I was actually pretty surprised to find that I actually knew a lot of these songs from before.

A couple that I really liked: Present Joys, Georgia Stomp, Fifty Miles of Elbow Room, Ommie Wise, Fishing Blues.

Here are a few pamphlet entries about some of the songs.

Fifty Miles of Elbow Room
by Rev. F.W. McGee

"It won't be long until I pass into that city fair with fifty miles of elbow room on either side to spare"

While originally written in a spiritual sense, these lyrics can be taken very literally nowadays. Space is scarcer and scarcer with every decade due to over population. This is particularly noticeable when passing through Sproul Plaza between classes, in a large lecture hall during a midterm, or on any Economy class seat in an airplane.

Ommie Wise
by G.B. Grayson

"I'll tell you all a story about Ommie Wise, how she was deluded by John Lewis' lies."

A prime example of a misnomer. Ommie Wise may have had wisdom in her name, but the naivete in her mind prevailed.

Week 7: Mississippi John Hurt

The theme this week was Mississippi John Hurt. We'd been doing his music for a while in the course but now we're going in depth.

My favorite song is still "Since I've Laid My Burden Down," but "Make Me a Pallet on the Floor" is a close second.

However, the song that inspired me most for my artwork was "Candy Man Blues." I think the theme of the song, albeit racy, is not unusual. It's only unusual because as a general rule older songs are not as explicit, and the themes tend to be more profound and so we tend to glorify them relative to today's music. Today's music is focused on money, fame, sex, and drugs much more than music was before, but it's also much more artificial - musically, melodically, dynamically... All that aside, how different is "Candy Man Blues" thematically from "Candy Shop" or "Sexy and I Know It?"

On the reading: I really enjoyed the piece by Elisabeth Dubovsky and I appreciate that Tony put it up for us. John Hurt seems like he's very down-to-earth, very spiritual, and very disconnected from the commercial side of the music. That's also very rare today that the artist is who he says he is. There are a lot of artists that like to have a very down to earth image and anti-commercialist attitude, but it's pretty contradictory to all the publicity they get by taking on that image.