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On
Saturday, the first event I took in was the blues workshop at Area 2,
one of eight different areas running. I got there midway through a Delta
slide tune played by Rev. Robert Jones that was either by or in the
style of Son House. Jones’ vocal range is close to that of House’s, and
his robust singing and accurate re-creation of House’s slashing guitar
technique uncannily channeled the old bluesman. Scott Ainslie, another
singer who seems to have a cast-iron voice-box, contributed an unusual
version of the Mississippi classic “Another Man Done Gone” in the rarely
used guitar tuning of open C minor.
The
following set at nearby Area 3 featured the tunes of the Irish harper
Turlough O’Carolan (1679-1738). Carolan, the last of the great Celtic
harper-composers, was influenced by Italian baroque music, and in
attempting to fuse it with the harping tradition, produced a body of
now-celebrated melodies that are among the most distinctive in all folk
music. This time, the panelists, who included hammer dulcimer players
Bill Spence and Walt Michaels, fiddler John Kirk, and keyboardist Toby
Stover, played Carolan’s beautiful compositions mostly en ensemble
rather than by turns, as is typical at Old Songs.
“Civil War to Civil Rights,” a musical chronicle of the struggle for
racial equality, was next back at Area 2. Sparky Rucker played banjo for
Henry Clay Work’s 1865 tribute to Sherman’s March to the Sea, “Marching
Through Georgia” (Northern musicians still don’t dare perform this song
in the South). “Marion Anderson” sung by Peter and Mary Alice Amidon,
movingly told the story of the black contralto, who, excluded from
America’s great concert halls because of her race, gave a historic
performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939.
Opening the evening concert at was Andy Irvine, whose sang a hilarious
ditty of recent vintage that had to be a first in Celtic music: a
gender-bender ballad. The lyrics told of a sailor who hires a prostitute
who is actually a drag queen, and then turns to the trade himself.
Later, Liz Carroll, an American who won all-Ireland fiddle contests at
ages 17 and 18, played her jigs and reels with spellbinding skill as
guitarist John Doyle provided seamless backup. Although she didn’t give
the titles of most of the tunes, they were still wonderful—whatever they
were. Wrapping up were the Canadian group Le Vent du Nord (The Wind of
the North) with their vivacious traditional songs and fiddle hoedowns.
Old
Songs stayed up to par this year with ease.
—Glenn Weiser
See the article on
the Metroland website
Index of Metroland
Articles by Glenn Weiser ©2008 by Glenn
Weiser. All rights reserved.
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