Crossing the Line (The Other Side)
Such a week of wonders--from genesis to revelations, global tribal incantations, new skeins for the old ceremonies, stone fresh waters hauled up from an ancient well (drink the long draught down)...
Beginning Thursday up at Yale--me alma mater/nourishing mother--"my old school" (when you put me on the Wolverine/Up to New Haven)--Battell Chapel in point of fact, nestled at the corner of Elm and College Street, where hmmm lessee some 37 years gone by I saw a pre-Mahavishnu John McLaughlin play a transcendent solo acoustic set of devotional music accompanied his lovely ladyfriend's hypno-tamboura drone...a miracle of inspiration then to me inside that holy sacristy, revisited once again stepping cross the threshold of old dreams transfigured into this same chapel again for Yale's Second Annual Conference on Line-Singing--presided over by the warm and wise renowned jazz musician/ethnomusicologist, my former professor/mentor Willie Ruff (another one of the Good Guys)--who as I've mentioned in a previous posting taught one of the best damn courses I took there on Afro-American Music which for our term project requirement sent many of us in ragtag tag-teams into several New Haven inner-city schools to spread the Word to the youngfolk, with astonishing results (I remember us throwing an entire 5th grade classroom into frenzied paroxysms of joy and dithyrambic abandon upon our playing a recording of Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa", which forced the teacher to lay her weary head down on her desk until the tumult subsided)...
Willie had marshalled there three disparate congregations representing/still practicing the ancient a capella call-and-response Protestant church tradition of line-singing--an eerie, beautiful vocal tradition originally intoned in Gaelic, originating out of the Scottish highlands, exported to the New World, and chanted for centuries thereafter by the descendants of African slaves in the Deep South, by white church goers in remote corners of Appalachia, and in a recent finding that was elucidated and amplified on at the conference by my dear friend Prof. Hugh Foley, carried on to this day in rural Oklahoma churches by small groups of Creek Indians who conduct their services in their native language...
And verily beginning at 10am last Wednesday did these choirs demonstrate amazing similarities and disparities in their approach to this ancient sacred ritual of line-singing, the likely forerunner and well-spring for gospel music, blues, and beyond...
After some introductory remarks from Willie, the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Association of Eutaw, Alabama, immaculate and elegant in their Sunday best finery (the Reverend decked out in an amazing iridescent red suit), shone forth with a stirring and splendid hymn, their elder/reverend "repeatin' the line repeatin' the line repeatin' the line" (Van Morrison explaining the origination of his exhortatory, gospel-inflected jazz-improv approach to r&b--remember "you breathe in/you breathe out/you breathe in/you breathe out" in "Beside You" from his "Astral Weeks" album?--check out the excellent television bio-documentary "One Irish Rover", where Van Morrison does a similar kind of line-singing repetition performing with Bob Dylan acting as the respondent, singing the title track)--the right reverend leading his congregation into moaning swells of emotion, mighty clouds of knowing-ful joy reverberating straight up to the organ loft and filling the church, some of the older Sipsey Primitive Baptist women breaking into hoarse shouts and holy-roller type ecstatic testifying: the unknown tongue extending, and retracting...
Next up, under the gentle but commanding guidance of Willie Ruff, the Indian Bottom Old Regular Baptists of Southestern Kentucky, upright and dignified and exhibiting a cool gravitas, did a similar sacred hymn which unlocked once more the floodgates of emotion among transmitters and receivers (I saw one of the male Old Regular Kentucky congregants actually weeping listening to the voices of his black brethren across the aisles during their introductory song)...and I myself was moved to tears by hearing these Kentucky Old Regulars limn the sacred text with the "high lonesome sound"--that nasal twang as first described/identified by New Lost City Rambler/ethnomusicologist John Cohen inherent in the grain of the voice of many Appalachian singers such as his discovery/protege Roscoe Holcomb; indeed, indigenous to much bluegrass music--and that high lonesome sound vibrates that spiritual tuning fork within me, and gets me everytime, much like the deepest blues...
And then the 20 members of the Hutchee Chuppa Indian Baptist Church, ultra-friendly folks none the worse for their 2 day chartered bus journey up from Oklahoma, began to sing, with Hugh and his son Nakose joining in--and to hear their beautiful, mournful, almost dirge-like chanting and wailing, profoundly primordial and pouring forth from the hearts of this Creek Indian nation congregation, hit me where I live, broadside my soul again... a ghostly emanation summoned up from the fathomless depths of this Indian congregation and hanging there in that chapel atmosphere like a revenant, an almost visible spectral aura of suffering and redemption, a transmission from another world and another time that spoke eloquently of spiritual longing and transcendence..."strings in the earth and air", sung in the the Creek language, their beautiful voices made the original prayer words seem mysterious and not of this world, not at all "Christian" in the conventional melodic sense...but it was! (See a sample here.)
Howard Lamar, former president of Yale and an expert on the history of the American West, next gave a fascinating talk about the Indian presence and tradition at the university...
and after lunch, Hugh Foley delivered one of the best and most informative lectures I've ever attended, a fluent and discursive narrative about the historical foundations of Creek line-singing basically coming about due to the Removal--a shameful episode in the history of this country, the forced migration in the 19th century of the Creek Indians living in the Southeastern US to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma--a/k/a the Trail of Tears...and accompanying the Creeks on that Trail were Baptist missionaries of Scottish descent...
Hugh also made a forceful case for Creek Indian Line-Singing, which dates back to the 1830's, as being--possibly--the earliest truly "American" music, partaking as it does of both African, European and Native American traditions (he might also have included the Middle Eastern Jewish cantorial tradition of migratory chanting, which flourished during the Diaspora). Creek Indian Line-Singing as the original American fusion music, forged in the white hot crucible of the Melting Pot.
I couldn't stay the full two days of the conference, unfortunately, and thus did not get to visit the Beinecke Rare Book Library where some of these original Creek hymnals dating back to the 1830's reside (along with the Gutenberg Bible--and the 1640 Massachusetts Bay Colony Songbook, the fist ever book published in America--the forerunner of all American hymnals)--but I was so knocked-out privileged to hear this music live--and hearing these three choirs all sing different versions of "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" in their different styles and melodies, is an experience that will linger in my heart forever--resonating as it did with my own affinities for blues and the poetic spirit (check this profile on my own work, from the latest issue of DownBeat here).
It was definitely some of the bluesiest music I've ever heard. For more info check this account from the Washington Post.
Had some good times up there with Hugh and his son (took 'em to Pepe's Pizza on Wooster Street for the best pizza in the known universe--Nakose brought the box home as a souvenir)...and also hung with Joey Hendel, ace Gods and Monsters trombonipulator/soon to be graduating Yale senior, we chowed down at the famous Louis' Lunch neo-log cabin, where they claim to have invented the hamburger (and where they won't allow you to put any condiments on their precious patties either--they don't need any, in truth, they're so succulent), not far from the little house since disappeared where Jeff Bewkes, Bill Moseley, and Jimmy Angell once ruled the roost...also very near the pad where Bob Rubin and Tim O'Brian once lurked ("The Buzz-On Boys")...
Meanwhile late at night on a stroll through the Old Campus where the annual tapping of Yalies for various secret societies was in full fine feckless sway out on the surrounding streets (blind leading the blindfolded, literally--a little too close to real-life geopolitical events these days, for my taste), I poked my head into Linsley Chittenden 101, mock English Tudor classroom by day/sanctum sanctorum of filmic phantamagoria back in the day from dusk till dawn, wherein I used to operate my weekly horror film society "Things That Go Bump in the Night" in the early 70's with Bill Moseley...and as I surveyed the scene of our past crimes and glories, cell-phone affixed to ear with Bill actually on the line all the way from the coast, I gave him an eye-witness you-are-there description on the current state of our old joint... revenants' reverence pour la recherche de la temps perdu ("In the marble halls of the charm school/How flair is banished!")...
Back to NYC via Metro-North...
and the following night I taxi'ed all the way up to the Bohemian National Hall again for a most exquisite dramatic japerie in the form of a production of Carlo Goldoni's spirited Commedia dell Arte masterpiece "Servant of Two Masters" ( guess whom they might be), as performed by the National Theatre of Prague--and featuring the most amazing actor, Miroslav Donutil, as Truffaldino, a peerless, rubberfaced tummler and clown prince on a par with Zero Mostel at his best, reminscent too of Salvo Randone's Eumolpo character in "Fellini Satyricon"...taxi'ed up there with my old friend Kenny Hurwitz, formerly of Human Rights First and now a lawyer with the George Soros Foundation...good on-the-fly translation into headphones helped us both immeasurably, especially enjoyable was the reception afterwards where I met the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg, who along with Ambassador Martin Palous, his lovely wife Pavla, Czech Cultural Center supremo Monika Koblerova, Czech surrealist painter/madman Franta, and our friends the artists John Bowman and Ann Shostrom made it a perfect spring night to remember...
Monday night I caught the rising young British act The Noisettes at the Mercury Lounge, my Side Salad Records labelmates in the UK, signed to Motown her--and--they were awesome, no lie!!--an ultra-high energy exploding nebula of a psych-pop power trio fronted by Shingai Shoniwa, a compelling and charismatic skinny black female ball of fire who played bass and guitar and possesses an impressive vocal range and great sexy moves...their drummer and lead guitarist Dan and Jamie respectively play like men possessed, like clockwork marionettes on ritalin (the drummer locked himself in the house for a year and a half woodshedding--and he sounds like it, he was all over his kit, pummelling it like a fiendish prize-fighter)--their music had flashes of the good old Brit-wave, with glimpses of some PJ-ish pajamarama, some Poly Styrene-ish X-Ray vision, some Pauline Murray penetration, and a little Lene Love-itch--the crowd was the usual New York too-cool-for-emotional display bunch at first, but the cheers kept building, getting louder and louder during their set as the band went from strength to strength, finishing with their great new single "Scratch Your Name (Into the Fabric of This World)"--go see them, asap--they are really something else (and really really nice, sweet folks)...
And last night--what can I say, but that the incomparable, legendary Patti Smith once again took NYC by storm, effortlessly, in a multiple set night at the Bowery Ballroom debuting her new album of covers, "Twelve"--her band was loose and basically unplugged, and all the better for it, as Patti, the poet as valkyrie, possessor of one of the most authentic, resonant, and indelible voices in rock 'n roll history, beguiled and seduced with irresistible new twists on The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" (a slow-burner that got everyone hot and sweaty), a spontaneous romp through Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (not on the album unfortunately), and finished with a definitive revisiting of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--Patti was in her element, totally relaxed, in full command and in great spirits, rapping away and goofing on the crowd and warming to the mass love and good cheer coming back at her in copious waves from the full house, content to subsume her poetic genius for the moment in other folks' words and music...
but under pressure from the crowd she finally busted out a raging "Free Money", with Lenny, J.D., Jackson and co. galloping along right beside her, right there with Patti the shaman, the high priestess/ heirophant, in a breathtaking performance that galvanized the crowd, shook the rafters, and transfixed me--as in New Haven--my ears stand up when I hear that sound--the sound of human struggle redeemed (redemption songs)...she got the way to move me--the way the best music always moves me...connecting the power of the word made flesh with music as trance-formative ritual...the way sacred (and let's face it, occasionally profane) rituals can manifest epiphanies...infinite ripples on the surface of the water, drawn from an ancient well (anna livia plurabelle)...
repeatin' the line repeatin' the line repeatin' the line...
xxLove
Gary
Beginning Thursday up at Yale--me alma mater/nourishing mother--"my old school" (when you put me on the Wolverine/Up to New Haven)--Battell Chapel in point of fact, nestled at the corner of Elm and College Street, where hmmm lessee some 37 years gone by I saw a pre-Mahavishnu John McLaughlin play a transcendent solo acoustic set of devotional music accompanied his lovely ladyfriend's hypno-tamboura drone...a miracle of inspiration then to me inside that holy sacristy, revisited once again stepping cross the threshold of old dreams transfigured into this same chapel again for Yale's Second Annual Conference on Line-Singing--presided over by the warm and wise renowned jazz musician/ethnomusicologist, my former professor/mentor Willie Ruff (another one of the Good Guys)--who as I've mentioned in a previous posting taught one of the best damn courses I took there on Afro-American Music which for our term project requirement sent many of us in ragtag tag-teams into several New Haven inner-city schools to spread the Word to the youngfolk, with astonishing results (I remember us throwing an entire 5th grade classroom into frenzied paroxysms of joy and dithyrambic abandon upon our playing a recording of Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa", which forced the teacher to lay her weary head down on her desk until the tumult subsided)...
Willie had marshalled there three disparate congregations representing/still practicing the ancient a capella call-and-response Protestant church tradition of line-singing--an eerie, beautiful vocal tradition originally intoned in Gaelic, originating out of the Scottish highlands, exported to the New World, and chanted for centuries thereafter by the descendants of African slaves in the Deep South, by white church goers in remote corners of Appalachia, and in a recent finding that was elucidated and amplified on at the conference by my dear friend Prof. Hugh Foley, carried on to this day in rural Oklahoma churches by small groups of Creek Indians who conduct their services in their native language...
And verily beginning at 10am last Wednesday did these choirs demonstrate amazing similarities and disparities in their approach to this ancient sacred ritual of line-singing, the likely forerunner and well-spring for gospel music, blues, and beyond...
After some introductory remarks from Willie, the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Association of Eutaw, Alabama, immaculate and elegant in their Sunday best finery (the Reverend decked out in an amazing iridescent red suit), shone forth with a stirring and splendid hymn, their elder/reverend "repeatin' the line repeatin' the line repeatin' the line" (Van Morrison explaining the origination of his exhortatory, gospel-inflected jazz-improv approach to r&b--remember "you breathe in/you breathe out/you breathe in/you breathe out" in "Beside You" from his "Astral Weeks" album?--check out the excellent television bio-documentary "One Irish Rover", where Van Morrison does a similar kind of line-singing repetition performing with Bob Dylan acting as the respondent, singing the title track)--the right reverend leading his congregation into moaning swells of emotion, mighty clouds of knowing-ful joy reverberating straight up to the organ loft and filling the church, some of the older Sipsey Primitive Baptist women breaking into hoarse shouts and holy-roller type ecstatic testifying: the unknown tongue extending, and retracting...
Next up, under the gentle but commanding guidance of Willie Ruff, the Indian Bottom Old Regular Baptists of Southestern Kentucky, upright and dignified and exhibiting a cool gravitas, did a similar sacred hymn which unlocked once more the floodgates of emotion among transmitters and receivers (I saw one of the male Old Regular Kentucky congregants actually weeping listening to the voices of his black brethren across the aisles during their introductory song)...and I myself was moved to tears by hearing these Kentucky Old Regulars limn the sacred text with the "high lonesome sound"--that nasal twang as first described/identified by New Lost City Rambler/ethnomusicologist John Cohen inherent in the grain of the voice of many Appalachian singers such as his discovery/protege Roscoe Holcomb; indeed, indigenous to much bluegrass music--and that high lonesome sound vibrates that spiritual tuning fork within me, and gets me everytime, much like the deepest blues...
And then the 20 members of the Hutchee Chuppa Indian Baptist Church, ultra-friendly folks none the worse for their 2 day chartered bus journey up from Oklahoma, began to sing, with Hugh and his son Nakose joining in--and to hear their beautiful, mournful, almost dirge-like chanting and wailing, profoundly primordial and pouring forth from the hearts of this Creek Indian nation congregation, hit me where I live, broadside my soul again... a ghostly emanation summoned up from the fathomless depths of this Indian congregation and hanging there in that chapel atmosphere like a revenant, an almost visible spectral aura of suffering and redemption, a transmission from another world and another time that spoke eloquently of spiritual longing and transcendence..."strings in the earth and air", sung in the the Creek language, their beautiful voices made the original prayer words seem mysterious and not of this world, not at all "Christian" in the conventional melodic sense...but it was! (See a sample here.)
Howard Lamar, former president of Yale and an expert on the history of the American West, next gave a fascinating talk about the Indian presence and tradition at the university...
and after lunch, Hugh Foley delivered one of the best and most informative lectures I've ever attended, a fluent and discursive narrative about the historical foundations of Creek line-singing basically coming about due to the Removal--a shameful episode in the history of this country, the forced migration in the 19th century of the Creek Indians living in the Southeastern US to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma--a/k/a the Trail of Tears...and accompanying the Creeks on that Trail were Baptist missionaries of Scottish descent...
Hugh also made a forceful case for Creek Indian Line-Singing, which dates back to the 1830's, as being--possibly--the earliest truly "American" music, partaking as it does of both African, European and Native American traditions (he might also have included the Middle Eastern Jewish cantorial tradition of migratory chanting, which flourished during the Diaspora). Creek Indian Line-Singing as the original American fusion music, forged in the white hot crucible of the Melting Pot.
I couldn't stay the full two days of the conference, unfortunately, and thus did not get to visit the Beinecke Rare Book Library where some of these original Creek hymnals dating back to the 1830's reside (along with the Gutenberg Bible--and the 1640 Massachusetts Bay Colony Songbook, the fist ever book published in America--the forerunner of all American hymnals)--but I was so knocked-out privileged to hear this music live--and hearing these three choirs all sing different versions of "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" in their different styles and melodies, is an experience that will linger in my heart forever--resonating as it did with my own affinities for blues and the poetic spirit (check this profile on my own work, from the latest issue of DownBeat here).
It was definitely some of the bluesiest music I've ever heard. For more info check this account from the Washington Post.
Had some good times up there with Hugh and his son (took 'em to Pepe's Pizza on Wooster Street for the best pizza in the known universe--Nakose brought the box home as a souvenir)...and also hung with Joey Hendel, ace Gods and Monsters trombonipulator/soon to be graduating Yale senior, we chowed down at the famous Louis' Lunch neo-log cabin, where they claim to have invented the hamburger (and where they won't allow you to put any condiments on their precious patties either--they don't need any, in truth, they're so succulent), not far from the little house since disappeared where Jeff Bewkes, Bill Moseley, and Jimmy Angell once ruled the roost...also very near the pad where Bob Rubin and Tim O'Brian once lurked ("The Buzz-On Boys")...
Meanwhile late at night on a stroll through the Old Campus where the annual tapping of Yalies for various secret societies was in full fine feckless sway out on the surrounding streets (blind leading the blindfolded, literally--a little too close to real-life geopolitical events these days, for my taste), I poked my head into Linsley Chittenden 101, mock English Tudor classroom by day/sanctum sanctorum of filmic phantamagoria back in the day from dusk till dawn, wherein I used to operate my weekly horror film society "Things That Go Bump in the Night" in the early 70's with Bill Moseley...and as I surveyed the scene of our past crimes and glories, cell-phone affixed to ear with Bill actually on the line all the way from the coast, I gave him an eye-witness you-are-there description on the current state of our old joint... revenants' reverence pour la recherche de la temps perdu ("In the marble halls of the charm school/How flair is banished!")...
Back to NYC via Metro-North...
and the following night I taxi'ed all the way up to the Bohemian National Hall again for a most exquisite dramatic japerie in the form of a production of Carlo Goldoni's spirited Commedia dell Arte masterpiece "Servant of Two Masters" ( guess whom they might be), as performed by the National Theatre of Prague--and featuring the most amazing actor, Miroslav Donutil, as Truffaldino, a peerless, rubberfaced tummler and clown prince on a par with Zero Mostel at his best, reminscent too of Salvo Randone's Eumolpo character in "Fellini Satyricon"...taxi'ed up there with my old friend Kenny Hurwitz, formerly of Human Rights First and now a lawyer with the George Soros Foundation...good on-the-fly translation into headphones helped us both immeasurably, especially enjoyable was the reception afterwards where I met the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg, who along with Ambassador Martin Palous, his lovely wife Pavla, Czech Cultural Center supremo Monika Koblerova, Czech surrealist painter/madman Franta, and our friends the artists John Bowman and Ann Shostrom made it a perfect spring night to remember...
Monday night I caught the rising young British act The Noisettes at the Mercury Lounge, my Side Salad Records labelmates in the UK, signed to Motown her--and--they were awesome, no lie!!--an ultra-high energy exploding nebula of a psych-pop power trio fronted by Shingai Shoniwa, a compelling and charismatic skinny black female ball of fire who played bass and guitar and possesses an impressive vocal range and great sexy moves...their drummer and lead guitarist Dan and Jamie respectively play like men possessed, like clockwork marionettes on ritalin (the drummer locked himself in the house for a year and a half woodshedding--and he sounds like it, he was all over his kit, pummelling it like a fiendish prize-fighter)--their music had flashes of the good old Brit-wave, with glimpses of some PJ-ish pajamarama, some Poly Styrene-ish X-Ray vision, some Pauline Murray penetration, and a little Lene Love-itch--the crowd was the usual New York too-cool-for-emotional display bunch at first, but the cheers kept building, getting louder and louder during their set as the band went from strength to strength, finishing with their great new single "Scratch Your Name (Into the Fabric of This World)"--go see them, asap--they are really something else (and really really nice, sweet folks)...
And last night--what can I say, but that the incomparable, legendary Patti Smith once again took NYC by storm, effortlessly, in a multiple set night at the Bowery Ballroom debuting her new album of covers, "Twelve"--her band was loose and basically unplugged, and all the better for it, as Patti, the poet as valkyrie, possessor of one of the most authentic, resonant, and indelible voices in rock 'n roll history, beguiled and seduced with irresistible new twists on The Doors' "Soul Kitchen" (a slow-burner that got everyone hot and sweaty), a spontaneous romp through Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (not on the album unfortunately), and finished with a definitive revisiting of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--Patti was in her element, totally relaxed, in full command and in great spirits, rapping away and goofing on the crowd and warming to the mass love and good cheer coming back at her in copious waves from the full house, content to subsume her poetic genius for the moment in other folks' words and music...
but under pressure from the crowd she finally busted out a raging "Free Money", with Lenny, J.D., Jackson and co. galloping along right beside her, right there with Patti the shaman, the high priestess/ heirophant, in a breathtaking performance that galvanized the crowd, shook the rafters, and transfixed me--as in New Haven--my ears stand up when I hear that sound--the sound of human struggle redeemed (redemption songs)...she got the way to move me--the way the best music always moves me...connecting the power of the word made flesh with music as trance-formative ritual...the way sacred (and let's face it, occasionally profane) rituals can manifest epiphanies...infinite ripples on the surface of the water, drawn from an ancient well (anna livia plurabelle)...
repeatin' the line repeatin' the line repeatin' the line...
xxLove
Gary
posted by Gary Lucas at 10:46 AM
1 comments
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1 Comments:
I enjoyed the article very much on the "line singing" i wish i could have been there. I hope the discovery of another group inspires another conference so I can have an oppurtunity to attend. It would be nice for another CD with a sample from all the groups. Scottish Highlanders, Creek Natives, Black Primitives, and Old Regulars and only if they could get a couple lined out songs from the Amish. Now that would be a historical lined-out line-up I would love to have in my collection.
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