Brendan Hogan
I am a performing songwriter, former radio host, and glossy-eyed lover of American music. I think about music a lot. When I'm not thinking about it, I'm playing it. When I'm not playing it, I'm talking about it.
The issue of authenticity rears its stuffy head often and its greasy mitts get on nearly every conversation concerning the aesthetic appeal of our so-called American roots music—music so entrenched and so fertile its limbs bear fruit: blues, folk, country and jazz. Those four holy and unique expressions of the American condition synthesize the bedrock of what is now considered global culture. It's American voodoo at its best.
What ties these distinct forms of American expression together are their almost universal appeal, their unambiguous influence on wide-ranging artistic disciplines, and their ability to deeply affect the listener in a profoundly personal way. Each has contributed infinitely to the construct of a new order of culture, one that places an emphasis on the footsteps of the "common" man or woman, the collective strife and successes of particular and yet far-reaching communities.
What seems to separate them is in the discussion of what makes the practice of each form an authentic act or not. The very definition of this kind of music as having roots implies that it cannot be easily moved. It is dug in. One would literally have to disturb the earth to change it.
It has not always been this way. Or has it? Jazz may be the stylistic form of American music in the last century to first have a figurative dog in this fight. The advent of bebop in the 40's and 50's, with its emphasis on minimal arrangement and less reliance on cohesive melodies, as well as a radically different use of harmonic structure, dismantled the traditionalists' stake to improvisation and structure in jazz music.
Some older Dixieland players questioned the authenticity of bebop as a relevant form of jazz music altogether. Dixieland banjoist Eddie Condon, who performed or recorded in the 1920's and 30's with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong, and Fats Waller, is famously quoted as saying condescendingly of the then-new crop of bebop players, "They flat their fifths, we drink ours."
It can be argued—and correctly so, I think—that without the Beiderbeckes of the world there would be no Charlie Parkers, but the question needs to be asked whether jazz as an art form is more authentically represented by the artist(s) blowing minds 60 years after their peak of creativity, or by the shoulders they stood on to do so.
I'm not sure if the folk music1 world has ever been as clearly divided as its historians would like it to be. Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in 1965, and history would like us to believe that a rift to mimic that was found along the Rhode Island coastline, itself jutted up through the soil at Newport beneath Pete Seeger's frantic, axe-wielding frame. Camps of fans were forever divided between those who supported and encouraged Dylan's creative shift of direction, welcoming it as a logical extension of his development as an artist, and fans who saw the new direction as a permanent break from authenticity, an abandonment of the ideals and commitments to social change that the young singer/songwriter had thrust upon him.
But where were the second guessers, the first guessers even, just a few years earlier when Robert Zimmerman, the middle class Jewish boy from Minnesota, was laying his smokescreen and brewing his personal myth in the pot that was Greenwich Village in the early 1960s? Where were the pointed fingers then, the accusations of inauthenticity? At least jazzman Condon had his side picked out and stuck with it.
If you play country music and break from tradition it's probably best to start calling yourself an outlaw as Waylon and Willie did. To exist outside description is a way of brushing palm prints from your jacket. But this may also explain why a search in the "folk" bin at my local record store or on iTunes will reveal Townes Van Zandt, why the Dixie Chicks may be found in the "pop/rock" section and why Taylor Swift is teamed with Stevie Nicks and heralded as Nashville's next big thing on national TV.
Country music is pop music now, and when you're making pop music, you're making money. That seems to give country music the peculiar ability to call itself whatever it wants. It has the upper hand in controlling the conversation and even controls the language used in that conversation.
Why? Because its epicenter, Nashville, is a town built around its industry, just like Detroit. No wonder Toby Keith is "Built Ford Tough" and lesser-known names—many far from any set of proverbial lips in the nation's households—can make a decent living writing songs for other artists. All you need is the right hat and the right people saying you are what you are in order to pass. Perhaps that's true of all of us.
Blues music seems to allow for the least amount of wiggle room when it comes to negotiating the issue of authenticity, but this is a relatively recent development. Muddy Waters wasn't questioned when he made the move to Chicago and started cutting heads on the South Side with his electrified band. Rather, he was embraced for updating the sound of the "Delta" while maintaining, like the rails that brought him North, a direct and distinct link to it. Why don't we say Muddy went electric as we do with Dylan?
All of those beloved innovators, from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy to Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton had an abiding respect for the previous generation of players. They would have considered it an achievement if they met their mentors' abilities half way. Charlie Patton, Son House, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were the precious metals the golden age masters used to meld their music in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, music that in turn inspired The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Would anyone call The Beatles a blues band? Probably not. But they nursed themselves on the music of Chuck Berry who used some of the same session musicians at Chess Studio in the 1950s as Muddy Waters.
Those kinds of inconsequential connections in art that spur creativity have not been allowed to exist as time rolls away from Muddy Waters' era. It seems that the need to seal the vaunted in a vault has superseded the notion to let it go and see what happens. Maybe it's because the conditions under which blues music came to fruition no longer exist. Sharecropping and Jim Crow have been replaced or swept under the rug, and mass migration of segments of African American communities hasn't occurred the way it had for generations from the 1920's through the 50's. There is literally nothing to go back to in blues culture—the door is closed, and it leaves the rest of us to fight over the scraps. Vaults are useful only when the living need to keep away the smell.
Artists need to satisfy the drive to create as they see fit, and only the artist reserves the right to define, or not define, his or her work. So long as the gates of an open mind are held open when encountering the unfamiliar, this voodoo mix of American culture will thrive—become something else, even—and remain our greatest export as it has for the last century. That's the truth.
1Blues singer and guitarist Big Bill Broonzy once said that all the songs he ever heard in the world were folk songs because he never heard any horses sing them.
The issue of authenticity rears its stuffy head often and its greasy mitts get on nearly every conversation concerning the aesthetic appeal of our so-called American roots music—music so entrenched and so fertile its limbs bear fruit: blues, folk, country and jazz. Those four holy and unique expressions of the American condition synthesize the bedrock of what is now considered global culture. It's American voodoo at its best.
What ties these distinct forms of American expression together are their almost universal appeal, their unambiguous influence on wide-ranging artistic disciplines, and their ability to deeply affect the listener in a profoundly personal way. Each has contributed infinitely to the construct of a new order of culture, one that places an emphasis on the footsteps of the "common" man or woman, the collective strife and successes of particular and yet far-reaching communities.
What seems to separate them is in the discussion of what makes the practice of each form an authentic act or not. The very definition of this kind of music as having roots implies that it cannot be easily moved. It is dug in. One would literally have to disturb the earth to change it.
It has not always been this way. Or has it? Jazz may be the stylistic form of American music in the last century to first have a figurative dog in this fight. The advent of bebop in the 40's and 50's, with its emphasis on minimal arrangement and less reliance on cohesive melodies, as well as a radically different use of harmonic structure, dismantled the traditionalists' stake to improvisation and structure in jazz music.
Some older Dixieland players questioned the authenticity of bebop as a relevant form of jazz music altogether. Dixieland banjoist Eddie Condon, who performed or recorded in the 1920's and 30's with Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong, and Fats Waller, is famously quoted as saying condescendingly of the then-new crop of bebop players, "They flat their fifths, we drink ours."
It can be argued—and correctly so, I think—that without the Beiderbeckes of the world there would be no Charlie Parkers, but the question needs to be asked whether jazz as an art form is more authentically represented by the artist(s) blowing minds 60 years after their peak of creativity, or by the shoulders they stood on to do so.
But where were the second guessers, the first guessers even, just a few years earlier when Robert Zimmerman, the middle class Jewish boy from Minnesota, was laying his smokescreen and brewing his personal myth in the pot that was Greenwich Village in the early 1960s? Where were the pointed fingers then, the accusations of inauthenticity? At least jazzman Condon had his side picked out and stuck with it.
If you play country music and break from tradition it's probably best to start calling yourself an outlaw as Waylon and Willie did. To exist outside description is a way of brushing palm prints from your jacket. But this may also explain why a search in the "folk" bin at my local record store or on iTunes will reveal Townes Van Zandt, why the Dixie Chicks may be found in the "pop/rock" section and why Taylor Swift is teamed with Stevie Nicks and heralded as Nashville's next big thing on national TV.
Country music is pop music now, and when you're making pop music, you're making money. That seems to give country music the peculiar ability to call itself whatever it wants. It has the upper hand in controlling the conversation and even controls the language used in that conversation.
Why? Because its epicenter, Nashville, is a town built around its industry, just like Detroit. No wonder Toby Keith is "Built Ford Tough" and lesser-known names—many far from any set of proverbial lips in the nation's households—can make a decent living writing songs for other artists. All you need is the right hat and the right people saying you are what you are in order to pass. Perhaps that's true of all of us.
All of those beloved innovators, from Howlin' Wolf and Muddy to Memphis Minnie and Big Mama Thornton had an abiding respect for the previous generation of players. They would have considered it an achievement if they met their mentors' abilities half way. Charlie Patton, Son House, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith were the precious metals the golden age masters used to meld their music in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, music that in turn inspired The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Would anyone call The Beatles a blues band? Probably not. But they nursed themselves on the music of Chuck Berry who used some of the same session musicians at Chess Studio in the 1950s as Muddy Waters.
Those kinds of inconsequential connections in art that spur creativity have not been allowed to exist as time rolls away from Muddy Waters' era. It seems that the need to seal the vaunted in a vault has superseded the notion to let it go and see what happens. Maybe it's because the conditions under which blues music came to fruition no longer exist. Sharecropping and Jim Crow have been replaced or swept under the rug, and mass migration of segments of African American communities hasn't occurred the way it had for generations from the 1920's through the 50's. There is literally nothing to go back to in blues culture—the door is closed, and it leaves the rest of us to fight over the scraps. Vaults are useful only when the living need to keep away the smell.
Artists need to satisfy the drive to create as they see fit, and only the artist reserves the right to define, or not define, his or her work. So long as the gates of an open mind are held open when encountering the unfamiliar, this voodoo mix of American culture will thrive—become something else, even—and remain our greatest export as it has for the last century. That's the truth.
1Blues singer and guitarist Big Bill Broonzy once said that all the songs he ever heard in the world were folk songs because he never heard any horses sing them.
Well said, Brendan. In much the same way you must learn the rules before breaking them, I feel like everyone should do their best to learn their musical history, and then sing their own song. The notion that one has to mimic, copy or emulate the founders of any given musical genre in order to be considered authentic has always made me crazy (I guess purists make me crazy). How can there be progress that way? Yes, pay tribute to those who came before if that's what you want to do, but people also need to be able to put their spin on things without fear of judgment or repercussion. I've read some scary stuff about blackballing artists just for crossing over from their declared genre to another (with one song)--in the far more recent past than I would have expected. It's kind of insane. I think one of the best things about the digital age and the consequential restructuring of the music industry in general is that it would be really hard (if not impossible) to get away with that nowadays. I hope. :)
Posted by: Newsongweekly.wordpress.com | 06/03/2010 at 04:10 PM