Category: Music

Oh Lord, kum ba ya

It was only last year on seeing an episode of Padma Lakshmi’s Taste the Nation, that I connected the Gullah Geeshee and their cultural heritage with the Sea Islands and their significance to the history of slavery, the Civil War and Emancipation, that I had concurrently been studying. A travelogue piece in the NYT from the previous year interested me further, with its depiction of the region and how it is being endangered by tourism and environmental changes – and ignorance.

Then, on reading this, I was surprised to realise the Gullah Geeshee had touched me, and unbeknownst to me, as a young school girl – a lifetime away and thousands upon thousands of kilometres as birds fly and fish swim. I see before me an orange songbook and there it is: Kumbayah! Do I also remember a “negro spiritual” citation? I think so, but not much more – certainly nothing of its specific origins nor even that it meant “come by here”. What I do remember, is that my class sang it as a round at a regional eisteddfod – I do declare if we didn’t win!

H. Wylie, a Gullah Geechee man, singing “Come By Here” in 1926. It is the first known recording of “Kumbaya.” [ Gordon, Robert Winslow, and H Wylie. Come by Here. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197143/>.]

My imagination may stretch as far as the Georgia, South Carolina shores, but the reality of my life is elsewhere so here is another version. I can’t even tell you how famous The Seekers were in my childhood, and may well explain the song’s popularity in Australia.

The Seekers 25th Anniversary Reunion Concert Melbourne 1993

Wherever and for whomever – a song of invitation, and an opening of home and heart. Belatedly, but I am glad to have learnt – and by chance – the roots of Kumbaya and little bit about the Gullah Geeshee.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave …

…when first we practice to deceive!” (Sir Walter Scott, 1808)

From Carol King to “Emerson, Lake & Palmer” is not as far as one would think. In the same year as Tapestry, “Emerson, Lake & Palmer” released their second studio album, Tarkus, from which the following track titled “Mass” is pulled. And, it too, lends itself to an extended metaphor of the power of the weave.

The song’s relevance on this, the day after Trump got a second (and expected) reprieve in the Senate in the wake of his second impeachment is obvious. To emphasise my point, I have transcribed the lyrics.

“Mass”, Keith Emerson & Greg Lake
Mass - Emerson Lake & Palmer (Tarkus,1971)

The preacher said a prayer
Save every single hair on his head
He's dead

The minister of hate had just arrived too late to be spared
Who cared?
The weaver in the web that he made

The pilgrim wandered in
Commiting every sin that he could
So good

The cardinal of grief was set in his belief he'd be saved
From the grave
The weaver in the web that he made

The high priest took a blade
To bless the ones that prayed
And all obeyed

The messenger of fear is slowly growing, nearer to the time
A sign
The weaver in the web that he made

A bishops rings a bell
A cloak of darkness fell across the ground
Without a sound

The silent choir sing and in their silence
Bring jaded sound, harmonic ground
The weaver in the web that he made


- "Mass" - music and lyrics by Keith Emerson & Greg Lake

A stitch in time

Elsewhere I have waxed lyrical about the working of thread into fine material as a most appropriate metaphor for the creative process. A finely crafted tapestry may be the outcome. Fifty years ago another tapestry was stitched, one of word and music; fine threads with names like “Will you love me tomorrow”, “It’s too late”, “I feel the earth move”, “You’ve got a friend”; all brought together to produce a work of beauty – Carol King’s “Tapestry”. Reluctantly I give away my years, when I say how much this album meant to me as a young thing. May I say very young! And to mitigate more, perhaps my recollections are from a time just a little after its first release.

In the above linked tribute in The Guardian, beyond the artistry of the music and lyrics, Rickie Lee Jones mentions the cover (here’s a Wiki link, as the copyright on the artwork seems unclear), and I too have it etched upon my brain – barefooted, jeans clad, long locks, the direct gaze that seems to say politely but firmly “I have to get back to my work!”. A window seat seemed to me one of the higher forms of luxury. Looking at it again, the vinyl of days gone by replaced with a CD picked up along the way, I see my memory deceived just a little because for some reason I remember a guitar and not a cat. King’s cat was named Telemachus. Penelope it was who weaved and weaved as she awaited Odysseus’ return, defending with her wits and industry the honour of her son and family.

Carole King – It’s Too Late (BBC In Concert, February 10, 1971)

Carole King’s work is on Spotify and most every other platform, and here is her official website with, amongst other things, announcements around and about the anniversary – which includes the release on YouTube of videos (see above) from the BBC studio concert given shortly after “Tapestry” came out.

Segregation by Genre

For a couple of reasons Alex Abramovich’s piece entitled “Even When It’s a Big Fat Lie” (limited access so the link is a bit dicey) in the London Review of Books particularly interested me. Firstly, it is a review of Ken Burns’s eight part PBS documentary “Country Music”, and I had read a flattering piece in The New York Times a couple of months ago, and that Abramovich’s is not; secondly, I saw a grainy rerun of Burns’s lauded by some, and lambasted by others, 1990 series, The Civil War, not so long ago – and thought it a very mediocre work – whereby, I mean in terms of the structure and film-making aesthetic (though to be fair it is thirty years old); the historical shortcomings and omissions, as Abramovich mentions, were debated at the time by those qualified to do so, and the criticism has not abated over the years. (I should say just about everything I know about the Civil War comes from Eric Foner, and he was one of the fiercest critics at the time.)

And it is in terms of Ken Burns’s prior work, that Abramovich launches into his criticism of “Country Music”, because, whether one agreed with their perspective or not, a range of historians did contribute to “The Civil War”, whereas in Burns’s succeeding documentaries the input from historians has dramatically declined over the years, to the point whereby “Country Music” has only one, Bill Malone, and it his interpretation alone that frames Burns’s work. And, one should say, even there it seems Malone had more to offer but could only give that which fulfilled Burns’s vision.

What Alex Abramovich bemoans the most, are the half-stories and half-truths that will never add to a whole. Instead, one is left with a blurred vision of a music genre that has never reconciled its shared roots in the poor white and Black South, and instead rejoices in an (often false) nostalgia. Following is an accompanying conversation with Abramovich, that explores, beyond his written LRB piece and the specifics relating to Burns’s documentary, the wider history of segregation in vernacular music and the defining role played by the recording industry.

Alex Abramovich on the history of segregation in music in the US

Finally, this is not the same thing, but related, I think, in that it is illustrative of how music and recordings track the extreme social shifts of an era, particularly in respect to the African American experience, through the twentieth century and into the present. Recently, I read an extraordinarily interesting article, again in the NYT, that examines music – American folk music this time – beyond a matter of categorisation that tends to segregation and exposes instead blatant racism and hate, and considers the ensuing dilemma of how to deal with historical works, once popular and now despicable.

continue reading…

We’re all in the same club…

the lonely hearts club…
Cover of the Beatle’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Wikepedia, By Source, Fair use

Covid-19 knows not social status, not race nor creed, nor national borders. We are in this together -or so we are told. (Do I alone wonder at the limits of our proclaimed solidarity?) And amidst these strangest of days in which we have been hurtled, many of us may wonder at the times ahead – how long? what to do? – we ponder philosophical and political questions on freedoms and responsibilites – individual and collective, reappraised is the role of the oft maligned State, and we even look beyond: at the “who we are” that comes out when it’s all said and done. More than anything we contemplate what this will be like, this “staying at home”, this “minimising social interaction”. Olivia Lange writing on ‘How to Be Lonely’ at The New York Times, offers her thoughts, and some from Virginia Woolf:

But loneliness isn’t just a negative state, to be vanquished or suppressed. There’s a magical aspect to it too, an intensifying of perception that led Virginia Woolf to write in her diary of 1929: “If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.” Woolf was no stranger to quarantine. Confined to a sickbed for long periods, she saw something thrilling in loneliness, a state of lack and longing that can be intensely creative.

The New York Times, Opinion, March 19 2020

To put this a little more in context, the Woolf quote is part of a lengthy and fragmented diary entry on Friday 11 October 1929; finding herself “surrounded with silence”, not in a physical sense but what she refers to as a pervasive “inner loneliness”. Reflecting on all her personal and professional good fortunes, the triumphs of family and friends, she wonders at the disquiet that haunts her, and which she can not quite grasp; but this time at least she will “Fight, fight. If I could catch the feeling…”

And as Virginia Woolf fought (for most of her life & until she could no more) the demon lurking in her head, guised as an empty void, so then should we all give it a go – be creative; find new ways of occupying ourselves, of communicating, of sharing not only our anxieties but also little kindnesses, and be patient and alert not only to our own needs but those of others. And, as Laing says at the end of her piece:

Love is not just conveyed by touch. It moves between strangers; it travels through objects and words in books. There are so many things available to sustain us now, and though it sounds counterintuitive to say it, loneliness is one of them. The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. Other people have been afraid, waited, listened for news. Other people have survived. The whole world is in the same boat. However frightened we may feel, we have never been less alone.

The New York Times, Opinion, March 19 2020

And I would add – a good dose of well placed humour. Returning to Virginia Woolf – often overlooked in any short telling focusing on the scathingly brilliant and problematic personality legend would have us believe, is that Woolf often displayed, and especially in her diaries and private correspondence, an abundance of humour and warmth, an appreciation of human frailty and no mean measure of self-deprecation. Some laughter and an awareness of the very smallness of ourselves and greater humanity in the continuum of history may help placate our fears. And a recognition that more likely than not there are many who are a whole lot worse off than ourselves.

And music – personal comfort music for when times are tough, and that for me always includes the Beatles.