Monday, June 21, 2021
Where The Mana Flows Like Water
Stumbled across the Alan Lomax Archive, a film-maker who travelled through Mississippi, the Appalachians and Louisiana in the late 1970's, producing a record of the music of these regions, such as these fine gentlemen, the Heavenly Gospel Singers:
The impression these clips give is of a skein of spiritual force that these performers, who are, after all, mostly amateurs, can effortlessly plug into. And when I say spiritual force, I am of course not talking metaphorically. There's an ease here in channelling spiritual mana that would necessitate gut-wrenching exertions from professional musicians if they attempted its replication. This also gives an insight into the sheer artificiality of the music industry, of how it is very much a soiler and a spoiler.
There's also an archaic aspect to these performances; they seem as though they could equally have been recorded in 1958 or even, but for the electric instruments, in 1928. The mass culture ploughs insanely on through its countless mutations, while in the back country the culture remains timeless.
It's amazing to think that this was filmed in a country that had only just finished visiting the moon and was still immersed in the space race. I like to think that you could see similar scenes in the more neglected regions of the USSR, only with the guitars replaced with balalaikas and the root bear substituted with vodka.
I do wonder to what extent this kind of music has persisted into the present day. I would guess the two main threats to it have been rap culture and middle-class hipsters co-opting it in their eternal search for authenticity. I expect the level of poverty is still the same though, or possibly even worse.
One string guitar = me when I get on the subject of Spengler or Jacques Ellul.
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Hobsbawm said in Age of Extremes that only in 1960 did most people enter the 20th century (meaning most people stopped being peasants).
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of Brits don't really appreciate how rural a lot of America was. In that respect, the US is actually more similar to the rest of the world and Britain is the real outlier.
Yes, if Mr. Lomax had brought his camera to England to check out the indigenous music scene, he would have had to make do with The Wurzels.
ReplyDeleteThe Wurzels probably made more money from 'Combine Harvester' than Leadbelly did in an entire career.
ReplyDeleteDon't tempt me to research The Wurzels, Will!
ReplyDelete