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.