Coyotebanjo

Day 49 (Round IV) "In the trenches": braggin' rights edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:07:38 PST

About four times a year, our College's administration is tasked with submitting a report on faculty & student "accomplishments" as part of a report to the university's Board of Regents. Now, I know who some of those people are, and I know some of the reasons that they wind up appointed--by our helmet-haired wingnut Governor--to serve on that Board...and let's just say that I don't invest a lot of effort into hoping they're going to understand the value, or the metrics for determining that value, of what a university does--and particularly not the value of what a "College of Visual and Performing Arts" does. These are people who, having heard a lengthy, detailed and articulate description from my boss of all that we do, are wont to say "yeah...I shore do love that marchin' band!" So I don't hold out a lot of hope that they're going to understand the significance of the range of accomplishments revealed in Musicology's part of that quarterly report.

But I do.

See below:

LJ (MM Musicology) was accepted as a PhD candidate and teaching assistant in Musicology at the University of __ School of Music (Fall 2009).

CG (MM Musicology candidate) began a semester-long internship at the __ Museum in Oxford, England, cataloging the photo-archive of FDW as assistant to Music Education professor SB (Fall 2009).

HD (MM Musicology candidate) began a semester-long Study Abroad experience at Syracuse in Italy as part of her thesis research on ancient music (Fall 2009).

ES presented a paper ("__") at Music and the Moving Image Conference sponsored by New York University (May 2009). Her paper "__" was accepted for the national meetings of the Society for American Music (Ottawa Canada, March 2010). She also received the Summer Thesis/Dissertation Research Award 2009, funding a research trip to Philadelphia (June 2009) to study primary source materials of __.

ES and KR (MM Musicology candidates) both presented papers on their thesis research (on __ and __) at the 2009 Women's Studies Conference.

Dr IR (PhD Musicology), a first runner-up in the awards for Outstanding Thesis or Dissertation, accepted a post teaching at __ Community College in Houston, TX. Dr R continued as coordinator of the MUHL3310 "History of Rock 'n' Roll" distance-education course.

Dr MB (PhD Musicology/Arts Administration) was appointed first Director of the Community Exchange initiative.

Dr MM (PhD Musicology/Arts Administration) joined the staff of the __Symphony Orchestra.

JB (PhD Musicology candidate) accepted a post as Music Director/ Honors Program Coordinator at __ University.

SC (MM Musicology candidate) was accepted into the Law School at __.

RL (MM Musicology candidate) assumed duties teaching MUHL3310 "History of Rock 'n' Roll" on the __ campus, a course enrolling over 425 students per semester.

JS (MUBA-Vernacular Music; percussion) was awarded the 2009-10 Vernacular Music Center Scholarship.

KB (MUBA-Vernacular Music; fiddle), the 2008-09 VMC Scholarship recipient, will graduate with the MUBA in Vernacular Music, with Irish fiddle concentration, in Dec 2009.

Dr Coyote (Chair of Musicology & Director of the Vernacular Music Center) gave a presentation ("__") for the Teaching Academy's "Jump-Start New Faculty series" in August 2009. Dr Coyote also: visited the University of L/L as expert consultant to their new Chair in Music and Acadiana Studies (September); gave a paper at the "Music and Migration" conference in Southampton England and another in the University of Southampton's Musicology Colloquium series (October); taught bouzouki at the O'Flaherty Irish Music Retreat in Midlothian TX (October); served as member of the Program Committee at the national meetings of the American Musicological Society (November).

A contingent from the Musicology program attended and participated in the Fall meetings of the American Musicological Society SW chapter in San Antonio, TX (October).

The Vernacular Music Center was awarded a grant by the Growing Grad Programs initiative to fund Ms AR (MM Musicology candidate) to serve as vMC administrative assistant for the academic year 2009-10; she will engage in promotions, fundraising, and recruitment for both the VMC and the Musicology graduate program.

The Celtic Ensemble gave a concert ("Across the Western Sea: Music of Anglo-Appalachia") in the Legacy Great Hall in October 2009, which program they will repeat as part of a tour to the Metroplex in performance at Tarleton State University (November).

I am bursting-my-buttons braggin'-rights proud of my guys. All of them.

Day 48 (Round IV) "In the trenches": maritime Celts edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:04:38 PST

I've blogged before about my own maritime background, both as regards birthplace and one of the favorite records of my childhood. I've also commented upon the strategies that we use for programming the Celtic Ensemble--and how much I like running that group.

Well, we're in that stage of the Fall 2009 semester when we have to start nailing down concert dates in the available venues for the second half of Spring 2010 semester. Partly these days are a product of available openings in the venues, partly it's a product of what I think the kiddos can get together in time to make a satisfying and effective program, partly (a big part) it's a question of what I predict will be both pedagogically effective and artistically satisfying for the kids.

But part of it is also the same kind of decision-making in which any competent concert promoter has to engage: what will be accessible, yet intriguing in promotion; engaging, but also challenging, in performance for the audience. As a concert programmer, as a radio presenter--hell, even as a blogger--I have a tendency to succumb to the musicologist-within-me; that is, I have a tendency to want to give too much context, too much back-story, just too goddamned much information (Dharmonia will roll her eyes when I start telling a story and first feel that I have to back up two or three or four events or anecdotes or years). As my buddy Coop (goddammit Coop! get that shit out of your lungs! we--especially your stalwart girlfriend--need you too bad! get better!) will say, in the indirect-but-nevertheless very clear manner you learn as a Preacher's Kid in the Church of Christ, "aw, shit, there he goes teaching again!" To an extent, I've learned to suck it up, shut up, and get on with presenting the music. But the impulse is always there. Not, probably, much alleviated by kids in the Ireland seminar field-trip saying, out of my hearing, "I could listen to him talk all day"--which is like musicologist's methamphetamine.

Anyway, it's one of the things I like about running the Celtic Ensemble: I get to teach music that I love, dictate (or, better, "direct") how it gets played, turn kids on to stuff that I think they'll dig, and, oh by the way, talk about it. One of the CE kiddos said, on a long drive back from a teaching weekend when we were talking about the strategies that have gone into shaping the spring "Easy" or "Big" program, "I love how our programs often have a kind of historical component--that seems different." Well, of course, it's fundamentally the musicological meth talking--but I like that factor too.

As I've said to friends and colleagues (and ranted to Dharmonia when I'm particularly fed up with Lubbock), in a place like this, where the musical receptivity is very high--fantastic tradition of blues, rock, and country in this region--but the musical diversity is very low, if you play a relatively esoteric or unfamiliar music, literally every gig you do has to include audience education. Not the old-school NPR "listen to this Great Music because it's Good for You, even if the music, or more accurately the pompous presentation, bores the snot out of you" kind of way.

But, rather, with a vibe/mood/manner that conveys to an audience, "hey, this is great music, and the fact that you're here means that you're somebody who's receptive to great music, and we think you're going to really dig this music because we really love it." Such a vibe/mood/manner can go light-years toward making an unfamiliar music seem interesting, intriguing, rewarding, and mind-expanding to an audience with low familiarity. It's the best kind of "audience education" a musician can engage in, and sets up by far the best kind of performer/audience interaction.

Where I come from--and where I spent some time this past summer--"sea music" is if not ubiquitous then at the very least quite sufficiently available. It seems like every little tourist seacoast town, every little day-long folk festival, every one-night-a-week folk coffeehouse, will exhibit a large percentage of guys (mostly guys), mostly bearded or in the most extreme cases luxuriantly sideburned, usually beer-bellied and/or red-nosed, guys who at the very least provocation will stand up, stick a finger in one ear, and start roaring out sea shanties.

"Sea music" has become something that, like Irish "pub ballads" or Renaissance Fayre "filk songs", can cover a multitude of sins, mostly revolving around bad music-making, egocentric posturing, and/or drunken obnoxiousness. These issues are not lessened by the fact that some "sea music" people also have a tendency to show up at Irish music sessions--guitar, bodhran, or (shudder!) spoons in hand--and busk along semi-competently to the tunes, transparently waiting only for that momentary lull in the music upon which they can pounce with "OoooooooO Santy Anna gained the day..." et cetera.

Now, as a child and adolescent in the early '70s, going to many of these self-same or similar festivals and coffeehouses, I got to see some giants in the world of this music, in rooms where the sound of waves and the smell of the sea breeze came in through the windows, whose oak floors were bent and twisted off-kilter because of the sheer age of the buildings--when I wasn't hearing them on the decks of little coasting wind-jammers and schooners.

And some of those individuals were people whose music AND character I still admire: John Roberts and Tony Barrand, the late Stan Rogers, my brother-in-music Larry, and, most notably and famously, the legendary Stan Hugill, the "last of the shanteymen"--that is, one of the last men to have shipped out on a wind-driven deepwater craft, and to have served as the singer whose various song-types coordinated the work--hauling, pumping, capstan shanties to raise anchor, and so forth. When I met him, that one time, at a coffeehouse on the North Shore of Massachusetts, he was probably already 74 or 75: with a slight stoop, impossibly weather-beaten face, a white goatee and long hair tied back, and palms, at the handshake, that felt like rough-hewn oak boards--and still able to knock back the ale, roar out the songs, and spin impossibly long and impressive tales with the best of them. He set a pretty high standard-

So I got to thinking that, in the tradition of the CE's spring-semester "easy" or "big" programs of more familiar, typically English-language repertoire--so-called because they're intended to provide (a) a respite from the "hard" programs in more challenging styles or languages of the Fall, and (b) an accessible, engaging program for the festivals and guest shots which tend to come our way later in the spring, we might be able to do something with "sea" music. Precisely because what might seem tired to me, or the people I grew up with, or carry too many associations redolent of Aran sweaters or pub ballads or filk songs, might seem wildly exotic and intriguing to people who are now living, and many of whom were born, 600 miles from the sea. And it's *certainly* wildly different than much of anything that the CE kiddos have previously experienced.

Program title: "The Rolling Wave: Maritime Celts"

And, really, how you gonna go wrong with a list like this?

Albion Band
Altramar
Andy Irvine & Paul Brady
Battlefield Band
Brass Monkey
Cabestan
Cliff Halsam and John Millar
Ewan MacColl
Jeff and Gerret Warner
Joe Hickerson
John Roberts and Tony Barrand
June Tabor
Louis Killen
Martin Carthy
Martin Simpson
Michael Cooney
Peter Bellamy
Planxty
Stan Hugill
Stan Rogers
Sweeney's Men
The Watersons

Pretty much any record by any artist on this list is going to be killin'. And a wonderful discovery, for the kiddos and for our audiences.

Sure was for me.

In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:27:23 PST

Let there be peace.

Let suffering end.

Inshallah.

Gary Snyder (b1930)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:24:31 PST

I hope, in the next 29 years ("if we make it"), that I can manifest as much in the way of guts, brains, creativity, and positive energy--about life, death, the Natural World, love, children, and learning--as has my hero, Gary Snyder:

WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

What have I learned but
the proper use for several tools?

The moments
between hard pleasant tasks

To sit silent, drink wine,
and think my own kind
of dry crusty thoughts.

-the first Calochortus flowers
and in all the land,
it’s spring.
I point them out:
the yellow petals, the golden hairs
to Gen.

Seeing in silence:
never the same twice,
but when you get it right,

you pass it on.

We's tryin', Roshi. Lord knows, we's tryin'.

N-A-T-S

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:05:58 PST

Our building has been overrun with swarms of NATS. Run! Hide!

Boggart's Breakfast

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:00:56 PST

A "boggart" is a small moor-land supernatural creature indigenous to the region around Sheffield in North-Central England.

A "dog's dinner" is someone dressed to the nines.

Put 'em together, you get "boggart's breakfast"--a small moor-land supernatural creature dressed to the nines.

Or you get Boggart's Breakfast, my favorite Rag Morris group of all.

These guys are my heroes.

Day 44 (Round IV) "In the trenches": program-notes edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:39:47 PST

OK, this is crunch week. Between the emotional melt-downs and the procedural brain-lock and the fires going off on my desk and exploding every time I open the laptop, there's not really much time to think, much less blog. So, bootlegging from responses to a former student's email interview, here are some thoughts about program notes--and why you might choose to use or not use them:

1) Do you like having program notes in programs when you are an audience member?

It depends on the repertoire. If it is unfamiliar to me, then yes, I appreciate context, history, biography, functional information. I am less interested in those sorts of notes that focus primarily upon musical construction or compositional form: as a historian, I am more interested in the "where did it come from?" questions

2) Do you read them? If so, when (before the concert starts, as it goes, afterwards, etc.)?

Always. Usually before--I have a low tolerance for waiting. During a concert, I would hope that the performer would be sufficiently riveting that I would not wish to look away from the stage.

3) What is the point of program notes? Who are they for?

Seems to me it varies. But what they *should* do, and who they *should* address, is any or all members of the audience whose enjoyment and emotional response to the music might be heightened by a better understanding of the music's original contexts, participants, settings, and/or function.

4) Who should write them? The performer of the concert? The composer? An outside scholar/musicologist?

Depends on the repertoire. If the composer is alive and available, I would certainly be interested to hear her/his thoughts. Absent that, any competent performer should be able to write effective program notes. If a performer does not have the knowledge and the writing skill to articulate content/background/intent, then I believe that performer has some skills still to learn.

5) What kinds of information do you think belong in program notes? What kinds of things should NOT be included?

See above, #1. In addition, I think that texted music, especially if in unfamiliar languages, should have notes which at least synopsize if they do not literally translate those texts. On the other hand, too-extensive a set of translations can cause some audience members to look at the text rather than the stage; to avoid this, I will often use synopses, so that audience members can follow the text/narrative as they watch the performance.

6) Are there any situations where you think a program note is absolutely essential?

See #5 above--and especially if either the languages or repertoires being employed are unfamiliar to the audience. If music is about communication, and there is a language barrier, notes can help bridge that gap.

7) Are there any situations where you think a program note is absolutely inappropriate?

Perhaps not "inappropriate", but less necessary and in fact cumbersome: In any situation in which the performers can simply *address the audience*--and I would include in that *most concert repertoires*--notes become much less important. I would submit that performers should be able to speak extemporaneously, knowledgably, and engagingly about the music they're playing, just as they should be able to write about it in the same fashion. If a performer cannot speak (or write) in this fashion about the music s/he is playing, I believe there are some skills still to be learned.

Day 42 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Samhain edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:06:30 PST

I live in a pretty fuckin' conservative place, and I've blogged about it before: the lunatics who will picket the yoga studio because even studying a body-work tradition associated with Hinduism is "an endorsement of demon-worship." Or some self-satisfied scumbag fundamentalist will decide that the sculpture of the "Windy Man", crafted to represent the perpetual fuckin' wind that defines this place, is another iteration of "demon worship" and so the only "Christian" thing to do is deface it beyond repair--no doubt the fucker bragged about it to his church congregation--and the City Fathers are such gutless punks that they throw up their hands and decide they can't do the sculpture. And let's don't even get started about the mindless fucking prejudice and stupidity they regularly manifest--and preach, G-d save their cancerous souls--toward my brothers and sisters of the shahadah.

But one thing that adversity indubitably teaches you is to hang tough when you're in the minority. And a second thing it teaches you is to find, bond with, and protect your friends, even if--especially if--you need to pursue and maintain your community underground. One of the missions of my life, especially in this stupidly conservative and just-plain-ill-informed community, is to use the (relative) clout and (comparatively impregnable) job security of a tenured post and a supportive boss to enhance the safety and security--in fact, the celebration--with which some of these communities and their own ritual traditions can come out from hiding. I'm not a practitioner of some of these belief-systems or lifestyles, but I will fight to the death to create a safer environment for their adherents--and especially my students--to practice same. I don't jam it into the fundamentalists' faces, but, as I say, I have the (comparative) security, and maybe some skills & tools, that let me be a (comparatively) explicit friend of same. Plus: the generations of my loud-mouthed wrong-sided Presbyterian ancestors are deep enough that I'm prone to taking the opposite side, if only out of contrarian orneriness.

Many, many years ago, when Dharmonia and I were living in Bloomington and I had started teaching as half-time adjunct (on a world music topic, which NASM required but which IU couldn't be bothered to treat as anything other than a resentful obligation), I was producing a radio program for the local NPR station (still get calls and random emails from folks who want to know if the show is on-air, or maybe archived somewhere). Its mandate was very wide (e.g., "One World"; e.g., "all" world music) and I had a huge amount of leeway in terms of format, content, theme, audio profile, etc. So, among many other one-off or atypical topics, I did a series of programs on pagan music. At the time, c1994-95, I didn't have nearly the same grasp of the pre-Christian roots of a lot of the music that I was playing and about which I knew a lot, or would have done much more on pre-Christian Irish, Scandinavian, Native American, etc musics.

But what I did have access to was people who were proponents of the "modern pagan" movement. I wouldn't pretend to have any particular such knowledge about that movement, or where it came from, or the demographics of its adherents, but the picture I got from those shows in '94-95 was pretty interesting. There were the computer programmers with the 5-pointed pentagram on the floor of the garage, who would insist that before they could talk to me, I'd need to sit cross-legged and silent in the center of the star for at least 20 minutes. Which I did: I was already a practicing Buddhist, and didn't see much need to be scared by observing my own mind or by whatever energies the programmer was dreaming up.

There was the small group of dancers, singers, djembe- and recorder-players who had recorded the occasional wobbly-voiced cassette of "neo-pagan" music--which, because like me they didn't much know better about, was the best they could do to try to recover the power and impact that they intuited music had had in the Old Religion.

There were the usual students and office workers and folks of various walks of life whose "neo-pagan" activities overlapped with their Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game or Society for Creative Anachronism medieval-reenactment activities, and which equally seemed to attract them because it represented some kind of more satisfying alternative to the lives they were living.

But what that round of interviews and tape-editing and script-writing and program-voicing really brought home to me was the very real loss that the genocide which had been practiced against the Old Religion in the European 16th & 17th centuries: the quite conscious and quite brutal attempt to stamp out any of the old magical practices that had hung on in the wake of Christianization. And it was intentional, and strategic, and it was, as ever, about power--the power of the early modern Church establishment to consolidate and enrich its own hegemony. That some poor old women, mentally-challenged persons, or foreigners should be interrogated, brutalized, tortured, and murdered was "collateral damage" and a negligible price to pay for the very real value of scaring the crap out of anyone else who might be considering a resistant belief system: really, the same practices, in pursuit of the same motives, in which the monsters and war criminals of the Bush/Cheney regime engaged.

And what it brought home to me, as a musician, historian, and teacher, was the magnitude of the cultural loss. Over and above and beyond--but never forgetting--the human suffering and death the witch trials brought, the loss of human knowledge, the practical psychology, expertise, and nature wisdom that the old religion had carried. That's what the research for the radio shows really brought home to me: the scope of the loss, as well as the suffering, that the witch trials had wrought.

And then there was the Elf-Lore family. Founded in 1991, they were (I think--it's hard to get information about the early days) an outgrowth of the late '60s back-to-the-land hippie/agrarian movement, which worked in some places (Lothlorien outside Bloomington, the Farm in Tennessee, various others) and didn't in others (the collective psychosis of Mel Lyman's Family in Boston comes to mind) . It worked pretty well in Bloomington, and a lot of that early success was due to the charisma, energy, and right intentions of Terry Whitefeather, one of the founders. When I met him, Terry was probably in his late 40s, and kind of fit the profile of a hippie patriarch: long graying hair, beard, wire-rimmed glasses, a very fast and facile riffing style of speaking. Leary was the same, and Ginsberg not far off.

But not all of those hippie patriarchs were either opportunists, charlatans, or incipient suicide cult-leaders. Terry had some perspective on what he was doing and on the energies that he was potentially playing with, and he was a pretty careful and conscious steward. The first time I met him, he had just finished what was actually a pretty impressive night-time fire ceremony involving two broadswords and a lot of hollering. When we were introduced, he stuck out his hand, and said "I'm Terry--I've heard about you." I told him I was impressed with his swordsmanship (I was a student of Northern Shaolin kung-fu, including weapons forms, at the time), and he grinned, and said "Well, you know, I'm just tryin' to get some energy going."

Which, as a teacher, performer, and more than a bit of a charlatan myself, I recognized and appreciated. We talked for a long time, and he was acute, articulate, well-informed, un-full of himself, and, most importantly to me, grounded in a sense of history of the traditions he was working with. It was a pleasure to talk to him, and one thing he said, near our parting, stuck with me--not only into the production of the radio program, but in the years since. Terry said, "You know, I deal all the time with people who want to call themselves 'pagans', and yet they've never planted a garden. How the hell are you going to 'worship Nature' if you don't even know the annual cycles?"

Which, since, has remained something of a litmus test for me with anybody who claims to be a follower of the "Old Ways." It continued to resonate with me as, over the years, I learned more about my chosen musics, and the cultural contexts and history out of which they came. Until I've come to the understanding that, like literacy itself, the contemporary specious belief that Nature can be "controlled" or "subjugated" is a blip on the historical horizon.

Humans have been talking, singing, miming, and worshiping Nature for 40,000 years: that over the past 300 years we've succumbed to the idea that we can "control" her may be enough to doom us (because we're so lazy, mindless, greedy and stupid that we're infinitely faster and more efficient at destroying the Earth than protecting her), but even if we end ourselves, that period of Nature-illiteracy will have been a blip on the historical time-line.

And maybe we won't.

At any rate, meeting Terry Whitefeather, and hearing him riff on things that I also had intuited about the motives--but also some of the limitations--of the "neo-pagan" ethos, opened me up. I was, am, and will continue to be a Buddhist, through many cycles of rebirth, because of the profound sanity I have found in its practices and the profound inspiration of its practitioners (nobody every really learns a true religion except by direct, person-to-person example), but certain individuals certainly helped me find the wisdom in the Old Religion as well.

I was reminded of it again when, one of those first students in the world music class, right in that same era, turned out to be a member of the Elf-Lore family--and asked me to be a participant in his wedding. It was way early in my career as a classroom teacher, and such a request hadn't come my way as often as it later would, but I was touched and gratified that this kid thought enough of my impact on his life to ask me to be part of this wedding (I had played enough tasteless, ill-advised, or dysfunctional weddings by that point to be pretty cynical and pessimistic about "young love"). But I hadn't realized that this was going to be a full-bore pagan wedding--not that I knew, at that time, what such involved.

In the event, it was quite touching: held in a relatively secluded corner of a large wooded public park, it involved passing over water and through fire, an oath upon (and witnessed by) a tree, an exchange of rings, and one of vows in three languages. Though a pessimist about young love and something of a skeptic about "recovered" religion, I was (as I later commented to Dharmonia, who was also present) quite moved by the realization that, for these young people, "neo-paganism" simply represented the best, most apposite, most emotionally-real expression of a very profound, entirely-too-uncommon desire: that is, the desire, and the commitment, to live a sacred life.

A life in which worship is not compartmentalized apart from the "prosaic" world; where the ethics of the spirit do not differ from the ethics of the body; where a set of religious principles propounded are also practiced; where ideals of compassion, awareness, gratitude, and connection find their expression in the relationship of the person to all persons and to all beings, including Gaia. I had not previously grasped that about modern neo-paganism--but those people and the experiences they gave me helped me to understand.

So, to my Brothers and Sisters who have fought to maintain and recover a sense of the sacred in the green world that surrounds us, that gave birth to us and to which we will all return as part of the--we hope--endless cycle of death and rebirth--that is if we can manage to arrest the careening course of greed, violence, and destruction--and on this Night of all nights, when the Horned God rides and the boundary between this world and the Other is especially thin, I'll say,

Thank you: "an it harm no one, do as thou wilt."

Blessed Be.

Hearts!

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:32:22 PDT

For my money, Andy Irvine's Mozaik is an even greater band than Donal Lunny's Moving Hearts, but the Hearts were one of the best live bands Dharmonia and I ever saw, at the old Jonathan Swift's basement club in Harvard Square around 1982, and it's nice to see the old graying (or balding) lions like Donal, piper/low whistler Davey Spillane, and secret weapon Eoghan O'Neill (fretless bass guitar) as just as much bad-asses as they ever were:

Moving Hearts - Live In Dublin - The Lark on MUZU.
The Lark in the Morning

War-criminal

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:50:35 PDT

Alberto "Senator, I do not recall" Gonzalez just strutted past me in the Music School like some pint-sized sub-Napoleon little banty rooster--almost as bad as his boss. It was everything I could do not to pick him up by the throat and tell him to get the fuck out of my building.

Day 41 (Round IV) "In the trenches": landscapes of history edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:31:04 PDT

A couple of weeks ago, watching the remarkable work of New Zealand's WETA studios in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (pretty talented bunch of Kiwi's, even in the first film), I was reminded of the fact that as a kid, one of the professions--along with archaeologist, marine biologist, and soldier--that I thought I might really like was that of museum diorama builder. I loved building models, especially of landscapes, and was pretty damned good at it: for a 7th grade American history project, I built a to-scale topographical diorama of the Gettysburg battlefield, and used it ("flashpoint" gunpowder squibs and all) to describe the course of the day's battle. Watching the incredible worlds the WETA boys built (Isengard, the Dark Tower, Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep), I am reminded of that early yen to be able to spend a life building worlds of imagination.

But I reckon I won't complain.

Because I reckon a life spent building landscapes of the imagination is, actually, pretty near exactly what I've had.

Day 40 (Round IV) "In the trenches": strong women edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:37:25 PDT

I've been blessed to be surrounded with some strong positive people in my life--and some right bastards too, and some who've been both. But most of those strong people, even the bastards, gave me a vision of some ways to be, and so for that I owe them all a debt.

I have enough suspician about manipulative, dysfunctional, and co-dependent family situations--having grown up in one--that I've got a very short fuse for certain kinds of destructive behavior. Dharmonia can vouch for the absolute towering rage certain types of parents will evoke in me: it takes huge reserves of (my limited) self-control to refrain from telling certain moms (especially) 'n' dads just what assholes they've been to their children. And I have a sort of stumped/mystified reaction to the experience of those raised in loving, healthy families--that feeling of "jeeze, I wonder what it must be like to grow up un-fucked-up about music, self-image, success, money, trust, sex, or any others of the whole sad legacy to which I'm heir", because I have absolutely clue what that must feel like (it's no coincidence that 3 of the 4 siblings in my generation went far away from the possibility of having kids). But I have to believe that growing up thus un-fucked-up is both possible and real.

Anyway, there've been a lot of fucked-up experiences in my own life, but there've also been a lot of remarkable, brave, creative, strong, compassionate people too. And I am distinctly grateful for that.

Most particularly, there've been a lot of strong, positive women in my life. Although some of my most significant role models have been male (that's kind of the definition of "role model", isn't it?), and although I suspect that most acquaintances and students would think of me as occupying a spot far on the masculine end of the spectrum (I've not got much of a "soft side"), strong women have been some of the most important influences and most valued collaborators in my life. Guitar teachers, musical collaborators, co-writers, academic colleagues, mentors, you know it: my karma seems to require strong women.

That's continued to play out in my life here. Pretty much from the day I started, I've been surrounded by women who enriched my life: students, colleagues, and, especially, assistants. I've never had the luxury of "selecting" graduate assistants--have always had to take the luck of the draw or whomever we could recruit for our small-but-growing graduate program--but for whatever karmic reasons, the assistants I've gotten have been, pretty much without exception, smart, talented, imaginative, responsive, tough, remarkable women. Maybe that's partly because we try, within our division, to balance the male/female energy in the various partnerships of teachers & assistants. Maybe it's because, somewhere up the food chain, some suit thought maybe they could keep Coyote happy if they gave him smart women.

But for whatever reason, I've been blessed: the ones who've worked for me have just been these strong women, who are now out in the world raising children, holding down professorships, assuming directorships, running arts organizations, creating endless positive energy. As I've said before, there's absolutely nothing more charismatic and attractive than guts and brains.

I've blogged before, intermittently, regarding my own limited sense of how tough it can be to be such a woman in a society as fucked-up as ours, but tonight I'm just grateful that these remarkable women have been and continue to be part of my life, and my learning.

So, Caroline, Setareh, Michelle, Shannon, Lauren, Meredith, Abi:

this one's for you.

Overtook

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:53:06 PDT

Done been overtook by the day in every way. Hoping for more time and blog-energy tomorrow.

To make up for it: here's Al Green taking us to church on the late, great, never-to-be-matched live-TV show Night Music:

Day 38 (Round IV) "In the trenches": Sallie Ann edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:36:07 PDT

Interesting weekend. Got on the return flight from London conference (which same's schedule and selective internet access explains the blog-silence): 9 long hours from London-Heathrow to Houston, but I'll still take that over sprinting through airports to make multiple too-tight connections, made it into Lubbock around 9pm on the Wednesday night. Graded mid-term essay exams 'til around 12:30am, crashed.

Got up Thursday AM: made a committee meeting w/ the Boss 9am-11am; taught 12:30-2pm; by 3:30 was on the road with a student for an Irish music teaching weekend SE of here.

Interesting situations. I've taught at various festivals and summer camps over the years, and been a student at others, but this one is anomalous in a couple of ways--most notably because of the site, and because of the general stance and sociological profile of the organizers and attendees.

Facility incredibly effective: a huge rural retreat center owned, of all things, by the Salvation Army, situated in the rolling hills south of Dallas TX. Barns, corrals, golf-links, multiple chapels, decent dorms, a small music conservatory, a dining commons (with decent food, thank the universe) by an artificial lake. Effective organization, smart scheduling, good promotion and presentation of the music. Top-notch faculty (leaving aside your humble narrator), nice and outgoing folks, attentive students, meticulous yet relaxed staff.

And yet there are a couple of details that feel a little "off"--or at least unfamiliar.

The first is that, because this is a camp owned by (and rented from) the Sallie Anns, there is absolutely no alcohol allowed anywhere on the grounds: this including music session rooms, dining hall--even the dorms and private rooms!

Now, I'm not much of a proponent of the "Irish music and/or musicians automatically require booze in order to function" premise, but the total absence in this case did make me reflect on it. In one way it was nice: generally speaking, at such camps, you're so busy teaching, and then playing tunes, and then going to concerts or playing your own, and then playing tunes, and then playing more tunes, and then sleeping maybe a couple of hours before getting up and doing it all again, that your body is already pretty much pummeled (especially if, like me and I suspect a number of the other teachers who'd come direct from Ireland, your body clock is totally jetlagged); adding the booze to it can ease the pain and fire the crack, but it doesn't do anything good for your metabolism (psyche another question). In this case, it's actually kind of a relief not to have any alcohol in the system: you can concentrate on getting enough H20, and trying to limit the intake the amount of carbs, grease, and salt that are typically present in cafeteria food, and on getting in the walking (and schlepping of instruments) that a campus this size requires. And god knows I've been at some camps where the overgrown nostalgic "here's how much of a party animal I was way back in college" beer consumption--mostly, to be fair, on the part of adult male students overexcited at being off the leash for a couple of weeks--was way out of hand, and actually counterproductive to the learning process that the camp is supposed to be about.

But it's still a little weird. Going without the booze is OK--though I'll admit that, around 6pm after teaching ALL day, or around midnight for a nightcap, it feels like a little bit of a deprivation--but more because of the kind of overarching "we (anonymous all-powerful Sallie Ann "we") are going to dictate a very wide range of conduct while you're here on our grounds" stance it manifests. It feels a little invasive--and DAMNED sure alien to the world of cantankerous individualism that I associate with Irish trad musicians.

A second weird factor, and one definitely related to the first, is that, for the first time, I think I've encountered what's become in the past 10 years or so a sizable portion of the market for avocational Irish music: the home-schoolers, opt-outers, social or religious conservatives who think they're finding in Irish music a haven from a messy, modern, secular, foul-mouthed, booze-drinking, changing world.

Don't get me wrong: they're very nice folks, very appreciative of the teaching, obviously very dedicated to their kids (18 hours a day teaching, feeding, clothing, caring and earning for them: you'd have to be dedicated), and very committed to the idea of a "traditional" music they can share across generations without amplifiers, even after (or if) the Lights Go Out.

I 'magine a few of them are Left-Behinders, or maybe incipient survivalists, or "from my cold dead hands" automatic-weapons freaks who still plan to vote for Palin as Prez in 2012--but my guess is that, rather, they're folks who are concerned about the world in which their kids are going to grow up, who think new technology, the sheer pace of input, is a corrupting influence more than an opportunity, and who think they've found in Irish music a haven of a simpler, purer, cleaner, more moral, safer time. And an all-ages music retreat at a Salvation Army center a good 3 miles from the nearest outside habitation--or booze--must seem like a return to that idealized, safer, earlier age.

Which I don't think was ever there. Yes, I believe the Irish village culture that was the cradle of the music manifested some values that we could damned sure use in the modern world--modesty, restraint, memory, participation, a decent work ethic. I believe that learning, loving, and sharing the music can give us back a hell of a lot that we damned sure have lost.

But I also believe that there was never a Golden Age--there was never a time before the Fall. And, for damned sure, both the contemporary world of the music, and, I believe, the journey of the music through the history of the Irish at home and in the Diaspora, is anything but clean, simple, peaceful, pure, or moral. Irish music--traditional music of all kinds--is and always was about helping people, especially poor people who were materially poor but culturally very rich, get through all of life's hard challenges: birth, marriage, hunger, cold, loss, fear, anger, departure, injustice, war, and the whole messy megillah. For Chrissake, that's why there are so goddamned sad songs! It's about the mourning and the fierce joy that comes from living close to all the hard aspects of life, and a music that helps you cope with all of it.

I don't wanna idealize the music. I don't want to see it as a chance to escape for the weekend to a bubble of a halycon Past before the Fall. I don't need the fictions that I hear being expressed around the music--the actual history is quite sufficiently remarkable. And admirable. And I'm in it for all of it--not just the safer more idealized more sequestered or romanticized bits that seem to live here this weekend.

In fact, between the quiet, manicured grounds, the soberly-dressed moms 'n' dads 'n' home-schooled kids, and the ubiquitous electric golf-carts careening across the grounds to transport instructors schlepping instruments or the large incidence of large people (lot of these folks seem to like their carbs), it's actually a bit reminiscent of the bandbox little village in west Wales where they filmed the McGoohan version of the Prisoner.

But I'm home now. The sequestered, quasi-monastic aspect of the retreat was sort-of refreshing and sort-of peaceful, but I live out here, in the messy, smelly, complicated, contentious, challenging world of Samsara. And prefer to.

To celebrate which, I believe I will go drink a little whiskey.

Mountains are mountains, mountains are not mountains, mountains are mountains.

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:18:35 PDT

I never climbed Cotopaxi, and I never will.

But he has, and because of his guts, strength, and friendship, I've seen the summit through his eyes.

And we're standing there right now Coop, you and me, and we're dancing.

And we will again, goddammit.

If you care about this blog and what this blog cares about, then send up some positive energy for my brother in music Steve.

Thanks.

Day 34 (Round IV) "In the trenches": "Waal, the Stranger jist rode inta town" edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:43:00 PDT

Spent the last week on a UK campus as the guest of an old IU friend's department and lecture series. My buddy T has been after me for the past couple of years to come and give a talk as part of their colloquia on the minstrelsy project, but until this year we've never been able to work out the finances--not the fee (fee?!? ha!), because nobody in academia really has the money to be paying extra for scholars not on the payroll to come in and give extra presentations, but rather the adjacent/ancillary "Music & Migration" conference whose CFP ("call for papers") T was able to tweeze sufficiently to include both historical as well as ethnographic studies on the topic. That got a paper accepted, which in turn let me go to my own boss and Dean and request "international research presentation" travel support, which in turn made it possible for me to get here, and, by crashing with T and his family, spend the week at a cost T's colloquium could afford.

It's been a nice visit: lot of quality time with the family (knew both T and spouse at IU) including hot & cold running kids (ages 2, 4, 6), wander in the New Forest.

Actually pretty nice to spend time in the New Forest--not a terribly dramatic landscape (heath, bog, scattered trees), but with animals (pigs, horses, sheep, etc) running free. Because this is the largest remaining patch of "common land"--unowned by any private holder, but held "in common" by those who work and graze the land--the last vestige of the way that land was, before Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and the Acts of Enclosure that ensued when the rich realized they could lay claim to anything not newly-documented as owned (kind of what Certain Irish Musicians have done with anonymous tunes). I've done a lot of work on concepts of the Commons--the pre-Industrial, pre-copyright, barter-era social compact that says "as long as everyone in a community understands the vernacular rules by which the resources get used, we don't HAVE to nail down every last bit of who 'owns' what". It's ironic that the reason the New Forest has remained a "commons" area is that it was (originally) a private hunting domain established by William I (it's in Domesday Book), and it was a pleasure and a unique and precious experience to spend time in a landscape that has NEVER been "owned".

Also had a nice visit with Taiyo--first her, here, for a day of the Music & Migration conference. Felt a little embarrassed that she'd traveled and was spending money to hear a variant of a paper that she's heard at least twice before, but it was nice to introduce a friend from one Dr Coyote era (Lubbock) to a friend from another (Bloomington). And it was nice to see her coming along as a professional scholar able to hold her own in foreign climes.

Then to Oxford, which I commented upon briefly last night. Though it's a beautiful place, and the sense of history comes up between the cobbles and out of the walls of the buildings, probably the most enjoyable parts of that visit were the chances to meet her own friends and supervisors. I can do without the spotty little Children of Privilege with their posh accents and carbon-copy blazers and scarves and Potter-/Auden-esque spectacles and their general air of tentative privilege: "privilege" because they've always been told by Mum and Dad and their rich relatives and the family's corporate relations that they are Among the Elect, and "tentative" because, even in Oxford, they can bump shoulders with people of every different ethnicity, economic experience, and set of political convictions--including Very Large Americans with earned PhDs and contempt for the English Upper Classes coming off him like waves.

But it was a pleasure to meet the guys she works for. I won't go on at length about them--they're prime material for her OWN blog--but it was felicitous, after the toxic Privilege of the Oxford streets (not unlike what I feel in the streets of Taos, Boulder, or Cambridge MA), to be reminded that the English university system is still capable of turning out diametrically opposite personality types who are both, nevertheless, bright as hell and very approachable: one buttoned-down and understated, the other expansive and hyperbolic, but both of them obviously delighted to be dealing with people who are quick enough, and flexible enough, to alleviate the sheer intellectual boredom that comes from being way smarter than everybody else in the room (not an experience I know, but cf Dr Coyote's Elder Brother here). Nice guys, and it was delightful to see them both pleased with and proud of Taiyo's contributions to their operations.

After that, a late ride back through the darkling countryside of Oxfordshire and Hampshire, and being reminded that, had we in the US ever been able to escape the oligarchies of the Big Oil that demanded a the suicidal construction of superhighways and a dinosaur of an auto industry (thanks, Prescott Bush, damn you), we might have had a light-rail system that was a fifth as effective as the UK's. And, if we hadn't allowed ourselves to be so utterly cowed by the fucking Puritans, it might even be possible, en route on such a quick, clean, quiet train, to enjoy a split of a decent red wine and read about Samuel Beckett.

Now sitting in the cafe of the university (pretty good lattes, actually, as long as, in ordering, you say "one leh-tay and one bah-nah-nah, please", or they won't understand your Yankee accent), tap-tapping on the presentation (give me surplus time before a public lecture, and I will wind up rewriting) and waiting to be met by a posse of T's Master's and PhD students, who are tasked with taking me to lunch.

I sort-of remember such jobs, from my own 12 years as a graduate student. While I wouldn't wish my own graduate-student self on ANY visiting professor (large, ragged, skeptical, accustomed to the worst possible self-indulgent pomposity from professors), I actually enmjoy and value meeting other peoples' grads, and I go way out of my way to be as positive, engaged, and encouraging as I know how to be.

Because being in graduate school is fucking HARD. I have the impression from T, and from some other observations, that it's nowhere near as hard here as it is across the water--here, there are few classes, only the occasional seminar, you pick your own supervisor from the available faculty, you meet with your tutor once a week to discuss whatever has been your recent reading or writing. Master's in 1 year and a PhD in 2. I 'magine this does a very good job of preparing UK grad students (call 'em "post-grad" here) for work in the UK university system doing the same thing for more recent students, the contrast between the criteria of this system, and those of the US (massive coursework, allegations of comprehensivity, batteries of entrance and exit exams, extended dissertation approval and vetting process, many more years in the pipeline) helps me understand why it's so difficult and uncommon for UK PhD's to wind up teaching in American institutions: if the American school isn't of sufficient stature to provide "pure research" or at the most "senior single seminar" status, the UK people are going to have trouble displaying the range of expertise--or at least competence--to provide the service that a Stateside school needs.

Coming up on colloquium Zero Hero in about 4:00 minutes now. Here we go...

...Aftermath: went well. Nice selection of the faculty there, but much more importantly (sorry, T), good representation of the Master's and PhD students. As a mutual friend said, in the pub after the lecture, "It's really around the students that T lights up," to which my response was "that's exactly how it should be." Good kids, good questions, good energy, with all of which I'll be really happy to keep in touch.

On the London/Heathrow coach in less than 9 hours. Indian food on the horizon right now. 30 hours from now I should be Back Home.

You hang tough, goddammit

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:05:44 PDT

You went up Cotopaxi like it was a fuckin' walk in the park, and danced a jig on the summit.

I refuse to believe there's a bacterium on this fuckin' planet that can take you. You hang tough, you hear me?

Oxford (the real old one)

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:51:48 PDT

First visit today, in tandem with Taiyo. Beautiful place, and the history, literature, and learning of the place comes up through the cobblestones.

But I have a little bit of the same reaction, walking past Christchurch Cathedral and Balliol College, that I had the first time I visited the Vatican: yeah, they're wonderful places, stuffed to bursting with erudition and artistic beauty and a sense of tradition--and neither one of them would have existed if they hadn't been funded by feudalism, colonialism, and empire.

I walk the streets of both places, and I can't help but be conscious of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people whose work made them both possible, but who never enjoyed their benefits.

Still an old Chartist/Wobbly/anarchist at heart, I reckon.

Day 34 (Round IV) "In the trenches": "6/8" edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:11:09 PDT

You want a rewarding challenge--a task that is both, simultaneously, rewarding and challenging? Sitting in a hopelessly ill-chosen conference room, as echoey as a bathysphere and with about as much acoustical quality, straining your ears and left-brain/right-brain cortex integration to catch every nuance as Dama, Justin Vali, the great Regis Givazo, and their bandmates conduct a master-class in Malagasay rhythms, lightly interpreted by the young German ethnomusicologist who they've obviously adopted as their musical baby sister but otherwise in their heavily-accented French which you can barely understand, but which you follow without even breathing, because the sophistication and precision with which they speak about their own music makes the patronizing German sociolinguist who told the young ethno person that what she "really should do is 'explain' 'it' to 'us'" seem just as pompous and condescending as it actually is.

The reward? Hearing that conversation, and getting to shake the hand of Regis Givazo, maybe the most brilliant button accordion player, in any idiom, I've ever heard.

Good day.

"It comes in pints?!?"

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:50:38 PDT

"...I'm getting one!"

Day 33 (Round IV) "In the trenches": jiggity-jig edition

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:00:47 PDT

Puddle-jumper flight from Lubbock to Houston, long, long (9-hour) overnight Houston to London Heathrow. Heading on up outta this joint for a conference, at which I'll present yet more stuff from the minstrelsy project, and then follow up Tuesday with a colloquium/guest-lecture shot for an old friend's department.

Right now, sitting in the London-Heathrow coach station, and skyping onto the free wireless, and diggin' it all the way. The wrinkle is that I keep getting kicked off and having to reconnect to a different (free) wireless network, because--get this--I'm getting that wireless signal from the buses waiting to depart, and every few minutes a given bus--and wireless router--will pull out of the station and I'll have to reconnect. Yes, folks: in England--a nation with a really very good bus service, and top-notch rail service--even the buses have free wireless.

I don't have much use for their imperial history, and their heritage of class & privilege makes me want to vomit--but their concept of broadband access as a citizenship right makes us seem like a bunch of fucking Neanderthals.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:56:40 PDT

On the tube right now, and I'm tripping enough on Pseudophed that it's about the level of cognition I can handle.

It's actually a pretty sweet little movie. I can take or leave Michael Cera: I think, to really enjoy the mono-character he plays in pretty much everything, you have to have either been, or had a crush upon, a pseudo-nerd like that character in high school. But there's some good comic writing in the screenplay, and some good comic small turns (Ari Gayner's drunken party girl is particularly good--no surprise, as she's from Baahstin and the role probably isn't too far from folks she knows), and I've thought Kat Dennings was a smart little, atypical actress ever since she play the great Catherine Keener's daughter in 40-Year-Old Virgin.

And I really like the idea of a movie in which a bunch of people, including the male and female ingenue, spend a movie running around New York trying to find a legendary underground band's unannounced show, and that those two ingenues bond because they recognize that a shared sense of which music you like can damned sure save not only a relationship, but even your life.

Sure saved mine.

Well, the blue light was my baby...

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:13:21 PDT

Just sang an unaccompanied "Love in Vain" in the San Antonio hotel ballroom where Robert Johnson recorded in Nov 1936, and damned near burst into tears.

We goddamned well ought to treat our geniuses better: Buddy Bolden, Charlie Christian, Bird, Dolphy, Mingus, Janis, Jimi, Duane, Clifford, on and on and on.

And we never will.

Thank you, Robert.

"Dark aberration"

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:06:33 PDT

The Nobel has frequently not been awarded as a result of completed accomplishments, but rather "to encourage innovators to stay the course". Marshall nails it--and here is the part that the far right-wing "who for 8 years ruled this country like a medieval fiefdom really should be paying attention to:

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world,...became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

Right on. They were all culpable.

Eyes on the Prize

chris@coyotebanjo.com (Chris Smith) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 07:24:12 PDT

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know: they gave the Nobel to war criminals and terrorists (Kissinger and Arafat), heroes and saints (Mandela and HH the Dalai Lama), villains and fools...but they also just gave it to my president. And it's the rest of the fucking world telling American right-wing birthers, 10-per-centers, Teabaggers, Blue Dogs, and hate-radio-mavens that the entire rest of the world knows they're wrong.

I'm glad he won.