We sung so many song and went so many places.

This semester we went to the Plantation Negro South to Appalachia to America the Great in the lens of the 1940s and 1950s back to the South in the Mississippi River delta post-slavery, up to Chi Town pre- Civil Rights, all the way across the seas to good ole Europe pre/circa Industrial Revolution and then somewhere in between in the land of cowboys and sailors.

Traveling to all these places through song sincerely connected me to people I knew and to people that I didn't know. Songs are the records of time, they are live history, they are bridges, they are comprehensible, they teach us how to understand one another. Music is indeed a language. Granted that we all have different backgrounds that inform how we might understand a song. Listening to a foreign song tells you more than you would ever know than if you never listened at all. 

I have gained a deeper tolerance for Songs and Places through the historic artifacts of the folk songs we sang. And they will always be able to orient me in these Places that I previously never knew.

The best thing I take away from this experience is a mindset. Always be open, be strong and be sure of what you are doing as you learn. In my first blog post I mentioned that I hesitated to take this class because of the artistic component. As the class went on I was comforted by the songs we sang, the people I sang with and the guidance I received. By singing the songs of places I was able to go somewhere and dig deeper into something beyond the me and what I thought I was. As I dug deeper to get to these places I showed bits and pieces of what I was learning and the things I learned, I absorbed and took with me to help me work on discovering who I am.

Where I am today 

W12

What a scary thought to be at sea, responsible for killing one of the worlds biggest beast...for your own survival. When I was in the sixth grade I went whale watching. I remember being about 15 miles from shore looking into the dark blue deep sea, I was terrified yet I still wanted to see the 2 ton mammal first hand. When I saw the the blowhole of the nearly prehistoric creature I was amazed at first then inwardly startled then at last amazed again. The blue whale continued to swim past us and onto the Gulf of Mexico. It was such a cool sight that I will always remember. Connecting my experience to that of a sailor I could not imagine having to engage in warfare with that enormous mammal, we are no match for them. Listening to Greenland Whale Fishery I could feel the sorrow and the dread that went with hunting whales. In my drawing I tried to capture the sad feelings and misfortunes that spelled out life or death in whale hunting. 

W11

City Blues are more close to what I'm familiar with. Even though they come before my time I can draw closer parallels to Black life in America today with these lyrics.
I can only approach this week personally because I am apart of the "us" Bobby "Blue" Bland sings about in Sad Street. The city blues were a modern urbanized soulful and less spririt-ful version of what we sang down in the Mississippi Delta. The blues get deeper as we become more far removed.

I parallel these Blues to the Hip Hop music of my generation. The lyrics we rap today are close to what Black blues musicians sung. Hip Hop is often devalued because of it's so-called derogatory lyrics. But while being devalued audiences fail to contextualize the words of the rhymes. Rappers are coping with todays Black sad streets. When they speak of violence, death, poverty, sickness, drug use, prostitution and all the ills of the Black neighborhood that Bland calls sad street. They are expressively attempting to bring attention to our reality. Through music you can see the evolution of my people (American Negros aka The African American). Because of the inequality and hostility that we have been unwillingly subject to we use the mechanism of music, that has been built into us from the motherland, to deal with whats real. And because of the ruthless reality of our everyday lives we never fail to have our music heard. Ears generation after generation sustain a strange demand to hear and connect with Black music. Sadly most often it is just heard and not understood.

W10

It was nice to go back down South to Mississippi. These blues of the Mississippi River Delta show a new twist on the Negro soul. Reading Blues people I was reminded of the formalities that come with being removed from the motherland. Even though so far gone, she is still with the Negro and defines and informs us in almost every way of life the American Negro has. 

I interpret Blues as the aftermath of the permanent separation of Blacks from Africa. Its like a dream that occurs when you are living in a struggle, go to sleep and dream about your troubles and wake up and realize they are still there. Through the Delta Blues you can hear the musicians coping. The deep emotion and dark sentiment that lies within these songs is not coming from technical performance, training, or anywhere else...it's coming from somewhere. Somewhere that is the someplace where Negros hold emotions of sorrow and consciousness of their positions in foreign White America. Even though the topics of the Delta Blues may be personal it is all directed by where the artist is coming from.  

Despite these Blues coming from  a dark place they are beautiful because they are real and the reality even a white man can not deny. At the common denominator of us all is human and with that comes emotion- reason being why the blues is intrinsic. 

My work this week was meant to show the darkness of the Delta Blues bound up in the intersections of a dark reality informed by a brighter and richer past that was never tangible but somehow seemingly and comfortably exist in this labyrinth. 

Um, hm-hm

Um-hm

Um, hm-hm

Um, hm-hm-hm

You know that people

They are driftin' from do' to do'

But they can't find no heaven

I don't care where they go

                                                                    

                             -Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues -Skip James 

W8/W9

Studying good ole Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie together heightened my social awareness regarding both of their works.

Starting with Leadbelly, the popular image that was portrayed of him was slightly awful. He was Black ex-convict redeemed by his White superior, none other than Mr. Lomax, because of his wonderful talent of musical artistry.

First of all, the fact that his special musical talents could redeem him from his sentence (at the will of Lomax) explicitly says a lot about racial processes at work in this time.  Leadbelly comes across as docile even though physically mighty. His "character" reinforced many stereotypes and socio-racial orders in the Jim Crow South. Even through all this I could see all of Leadbelly's talent and personal character deep behind the filtered image. Yet and still much of what Leadbelly represented was not authentic and was beyond his control in most respects. I wish Leadbelly could have really and truly been exposed as Leadbelly not Lomax's Leadbelly or anyones else's Leadbelly crafted for an audience of others.

Woody Guthrie was a man of men. Guthrie was active in using his music to engage with a social agenda that was behind those who did not have the vehicles to popularize the misfortune that they lived. Guthrie as a musician was honest. Honest enough to make listeners, listen and engage. Singing about the dustbowl and America the Great in positive respects, promoting public works projects and otherwise as sung in This Land is Your Land, Guthrie's place as a popular artist walked a fine line but walked it well enough to successfully get his points noticed.

Guthrie's effective political activism and honest image even though sometimes distorted got his message across in ways that Leadbelly could never dreamt of employing music in. Largely because of racial divides but looking at these musicians together makes it possible to think about who is singing, for what reason and to who and ultimately why. Answering this set of questions makes a clear divide and shows us everything we should know about what we are listening to and what it is subliminally or consciously feeding into...which goes even further and starts to inform our personal positions not only related to the music but in society. 

Left images for Leadbelly, right Woody Guthrie

W7

                   

M i s s i s s i p p i John Hurt

When I first heard Mississippi John Hurt I could hear and see people I’ve known before. When I was a child every summer my grandfather, my mother, my father and I would get into our 1980s blue and white striped Chevrolet conversion van and head South to Mississippi. In Mississippi we would reunite with family in the Mississippi 
backwoods my family calls home.

People that reminded me of John Hurt could be met at our family reunions or should I say John Hurt reminds me of people I've met at family reunions. One man in particular that comes to mind is a man named Jigg. Jigg was a jokester full of life, even though probably not in good health. He was probably more outspoken than John Hurt but Jigg was a story teller. He told peculiar stories about his voodoo encounters, day to day life, and anything else he wanted to talk about. He captured everyones attention and imaginations and made my folks holler with laughter. In my eyes, Jigg and John are cut from the same cloth. Mississippi men who have a way of connecting to people in order to bridge worlds and entertain imaginations.  

Listening to John Hurt I could feel down home Southern comfort and simplicity in his voice. The same type of Southern comfort and simplicity that makes the pallet on the floor (of which I have slept on many times while in Mississippi and at home).

Through his music John Hurt represents the humble Mississippi Negro something like Jigg and even my great grandmother.  John Hurt himself was evidently very simple yet convoluted. Which is the same way I saw my great-grandmother who was never educated a day in her life but was so blissfully complacent yet all knowing.                          

The testament of a friend told by E.G. Dubovsky tells of how a humble Mississippi man of no particular formal education or global exposure had limitless wisdom capable of teaching us all the most important things in life. With that I can affirmatively say that knowledge and wisdom lay at the roots of humbleness and ignorance somewhere in the Mississippi backwoods.

Make me down 
Make me a pallet down, soft and low 
Make me a pallet on your floor 
Up the country 
Up the country by the cold sleet and snow 
I'm going up the country 

W6

This week I was entertained by Barby Allen also know as Barbara Ellen. The song sung by Jean Ritchie is flawless. So much so that I got lost in the lyrics as I let her voice mask everything else in the song but after listening to it over and over again I got the story. The man and woman in the song are distantly close and the objective point of view made the song all encompassing as you could understand the relationship at a glance. In the end they become one in a way as they die in vein of each other. What I showed in my art was the intricate relationship between the two. The blocks of color symbolized the two lovers connection and misconnection in love and in life.

W5

Appalachia is a foreign place in a native land. When listening to Clarence Ashley play the Cookoo on the banjo I understood some element of Appalachia. The trance inducing rhythm of the song took me away to peaks of the cool densely wooded Appalachian mountains. The rhythm of the song was so untraditional yet it was grounded in a style that originated from a place with solid roots, just like the people that live high up and away in the Appalachian mountains. My painting captures my imagination of where this song came from. Of course I had to paint the cookoo that symbolizes a beautiful woman who has a strange yet graceful way about her. She is unexplainably gorgeous and perplexing and can only be explained in a way that cannot be understood. Under the dark sky is the mountains full of mystery and in between them is a road that leads to a place that no one knows. 

W3

I think I was about six years old when I learned that my ancestors were brought from Africa to the American South to be White mens' most important asset. My mom told me "you come from a line of STRONG, HARD-WORKING people." She explained to me that we would do BACK BREAKING work in the hot Southern sun and if we did not work to the masters pleasure we would be brutally and mercilessly beaten with hard leather skin- blistering whips. At six, I felt how I feel now when I think of the matter: perplexed, ANGRY, sad, and for some strange reason I will always wonder why? Why were MY people brought here as slaves to live in a country that promotes our demise and makes it so hard for us to survive. An image that stuck with me from the words of my mother comes from her explanation of washing clothes. "They would take the clothes rub them against the board and stroke back and forth using all their might." The methodical spirit breaking labor that I envision is sorrowful and inhumane but is the same work that brings about beauty and a delightful resilience that testifies to the bold and mighty Negro spirit of my people. My artwork was intended to capture how a simple washing board can be presented as a symbol of the excruciating work that shaped the very character of Negro slaves. I'm glad that I have inherited the strong and resilient traits of my ancestors but my mother said that I would have never have survived as a slave. 

W2

Using last weeks feedback, this week I wanted to do something that involved using my hands. After listening to the various versions of "Down in the Valley" and "You are my Sunshine"  I was left with feelings of contradictory happiness. Both songs elude to better times ahead in times of darkness or sorrow. I chose to channel the positivity and radiance that the the songs hint at. 

I went to the nearest physical space that uplifts me. That happens to be my backyard . From there I pulled the lively pink flowers and leaves off of a tree. The centerpiece of this project was the branch of green leaves with dead brown leaves at the center. This branch embodied both songs that are alive with sorrow. The pink leaves were symbolic of how it is so easy to look over the sorrowful undertones of these songs. I added penciled rays to the project for structure or what I thought might be an artistic element. 

W1

I have to admit, I almost did not take this class because of the artistic component. I have never been good at drawing or being creative. Nevertheless I have always deeply admired art and I long to discover my artistic potential. With that said I figured this class could be a great launching pad to discover some of that potential. For the first project I focused on the song "You Are My Sunshine." I took a very literal view when I thought of how I might represent the song in a visual presentation. I used my little dog Bella who is the most beautiful, blissful and loving eight pound creature in the world (to me of course) and put her up against a yellow background using Photoshop. Even though the work was very simple I did like its outcome. However, I do agree with what Professor Dubvosky pointed out, using a digital medium it served as a veil to my true novice artistic ability. Right: top Bella in Photoshop, bottom Bella in my mind