What music would you wish played at your funeral? That sobering question revisited me yesterday when I learned of the passing my grandmother Helena Lawson, aged 86, in Tucson, from pneumonia. I last visited her this past Christmas and realized then that we probably would not have much time left with her. While not a shock, the news still left me with a shroud of sadness and emptiness that will likely linger for some time. This collection of elemental African American fife and drum music has worked as an aural paregoric in the hours since. Many of the 28 tracks are mere fragments culled from field recordings made in and around Waverly, Georgia and Como, Mississippi in 1942 and 1970, respectively. The patriarchs of the rural argot are all in represented: Otha Turner, Sid Hemphill and Napoleon Strickland among them. Hemphill was laid to rest in 1998. Strickland passed on in 2001. Neither released a full-length record during his lifetime. Turner, widely regarded as the last living griot of the tradition, died in 2003. But not before putting out a pair of discs and passing on the practice to his grandchildren. The music here is raw and unpolished, particularly in the case of the few selections from the ’42 session, but MS dates boast well-balanced sound. Carved out on drums, washtubs and even waste baskets, martial beats that echo New Orleans second-line and Hill Country blues rhythms underlie whistling cane fife melodic leads. The music’s history is another example of African American reclamation of European musical implements that were originally African in origin. The songs suggest a sampling of secular folk staples like “John Henry” and “Shout, Lula with the Red Dress” and sacred fare like “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Crowns of the collection include rough and tumble renderings of “My Babe” and “Granny, Will Your Dog Bite” with Strickland handling fife and Turner weaving an cardiac beat on kettle drum in tandem with R.L. Boyd’s bass variant. Obvious funereal aspects arise in this music, but the performances are also the celebratory soundtrack to community barbecues and picnics. It’s my educated guess that my grandma never heard these sounds, but I can’t help envisioning her smiling and dancing along if she had. They’ll be piping through the chapel speakers at my own send off if I have any say.
Posted by derek on April 2, 2006 9:01 AMI'm SO glad to see this available. I've long cherished the Napoleon Strickland cuts on the cassette dub I have of the (totally amazing) OOP Atlantic "The Blues Roll On..." It's some of the spookiest, rousingest stuff I've ever heard. Right up there with Korean folk kagaeum + drum music and Indonesian Christian brass-band funeral music. And Albert Ayler and Joe Meek...
Posted by: djll at April 3, 2006 11:10 AMSeems to be out of print... released in '95... Amazon USA has three used. Or, had three used. I snapped one up.
Posted by: djll at April 3, 2006 12:29 PMSorry to hear of your loss, Derek.
I regret that I never got a chance to lay my eyes on Napolian Strickland until I saw him in his casket at his funeral. (Everything at the service had his name spelled "Napolian," so that's what I use) I thought he had died years earlier, so I never bothered to look him up whenever I was down that way. What an amazing artist he was. Sometimes I think he's my favorite singer.
Also, I don't know for sure, but I gotta think "RL Boyd" is in fact RL Boyce. I could be wrong though, as there's lots of RLs in that corner of the world.
I've missed the last couple picnics down at the Turner place, but word on the street is that a number of young women are picking up the fife these days. Heartening news, especially since as far as I've been able to learn, the fife-and-drum tradition disappeared from Georgia when the older musicians passed on.
Posted by: Lore at April 3, 2006 1:01 PMAlso, the great short film "Gravel Springs Fife and Drum" can be viewed here:
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,59
Thanks, Adam. Grief is a funny thing, comes & goes.
Thanks also for the film link & the news about Turner’s progeny picking up the fife. That’s a tradition that should never die. Not sure on Boyd vs. Boyce question: the Jungle tapes were made in ‘70 and I think Boyce is in his mid-to-late 40s (at least judging from pics I’ve seen) so it’s possible they’re one in the same. Also, I read somewhere that Sid Hemphill recorded enough material with Lomax for an album (22 sides & an interview)- I keep waiting for it to appear in Rounder’s Portrait series (now defunct?), but so far no dice.
Bill Steber’s Stones in My Pathway site (accessible through the active link in the Points of Interest section below) has some great pics & reportage on the MS scene.
Posted by: derek at April 3, 2006 4:07 PMYeah, RL Boyce started playing with the fife and drum bands when he was a young man. As a matter of fact, he's the youth who plays the bass drum in "Gravel Springs Fife and Drum".
For those who are interested in this music, I strongly recommend going down to MS for a visit sometime, if you haven't already. I've now got five picnics under my belt --- 3 at the Turner's place, 2 elsewhere --- and it's always been a blast.
Barring that, a friend of mine tells me that he's finalizing plans to bring the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band to Detroit roundabout July 1 or so. A very different experience to see them in a concert setting, of course, but still fun. Sharde can work a crowd!
Glad to hear you're enjoying the folkstreams site, Derek. One of these days I need to buy me a real computer so I can view that stuff myself.
Posted by: Lore at April 4, 2006 5:49 AMFor those who are interested in this music, I strongly recommend going down to MS for a visit sometime, if you haven't already.
Man, that sounds like an apposite occasion for a 1st annual Bags Road-Trip... who's in?
Posted by: derek at April 4, 2006 7:23 AMSpeaking from experience, if you're waiting on others to join you on a late August roadtrip to Mississippi, you may have a long wait ahead of you. I've done the trip solo a few times and have no regrets.
By the by, I've now learned that the Rising Stars gig in Detroit will be on June 24. Nathaniel Mayer is also on the bill. Hot damn will that be a party.
Posted by: Lore at April 4, 2006 11:27 AMDamn, Adam, what say I meet you there?
The heat's no doubt a killer, but I've survived several record Tucson summers so I feel up to the challenge, humidity be damned.
Posted by: derek at April 4, 2006 12:34 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................