Speaker 1: Pushkin. Brandon Giddins is a brilliant fiddle and banjo player
Speaker 1: who's one of the few musicians alive today trained in
Speaker 1: the centuries old black string band tradition. Giddins won a
Speaker 1: Grammy as a co founder and lead singer of the
Speaker 1: Carolina Chocolate Drops in twenty eleven, and after venturing off
Speaker 1: on her own, she was awarded at MacArthur Genius Green
Speaker 1: for exploring the complexities of the African American influence on
Speaker 1: folk and country music. Ah Sha Shallna Aha Shallna. De
Speaker 1: Mond B. Goods get Ins is a North Carolina native,
Speaker 1: but now lives in Ireland, not far from her partner
Speaker 1: of Francesco Teresi. During Lockdown, the duo recorded their latest album,
Speaker 1: They're Calling Me Home, which was in part influenced by
Speaker 1: Joe Thompson, who taught Gettons his family's traditional fiddle style
Speaker 1: that can be traced back to the eighteen hundreds. On
Speaker 1: today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks to Gettons about her decision
Speaker 1: to write from a cultural point of view rather than
Speaker 1: her own. Gettens also talks about how she's been able
Speaker 1: to maintain a living connection to the near extinct black
Speaker 1: square dance players and we'll hear a play a banjo
Speaker 1: style that originated in West Africa. This is broken record
Speaker 1: liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's
Speaker 1: Bruce Headlam with Rhiannon Giddins. Thank you all so much
Speaker 1: for doing this. We're talking about your new album and
Speaker 1: your last album and anything else. You want to talk
Speaker 1: about your ballet. You wrote a ballet too, didn't you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wrote a ballet an opera. I didn't know about
Speaker 1: the opera. What was that, Well, it was supposed to
Speaker 1: debut last year, and then it was going to debut
Speaker 1: this year, and that's going to debut next year. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called Omar. It's for this Plato festival, and it's
Speaker 1: about Omara Ben Said, who was a Koranic scholar thirty
Speaker 1: seven years old, captured, sold from Senegal, brought over on
Speaker 1: the Middle Passage and ended up enslaved for fifty years
Speaker 1: until his death in North Carolina. He wrote his autobiography
Speaker 1: in Arabic. Wow, that sounds incredible. Yeah, it's just the
Speaker 1: there's a lot of a lot of stories within that
Speaker 1: one story. So yeah, you know, this new record is
Speaker 1: almost all you know, old material, traditional, traditional songs or
Speaker 1: songs that were written you know, in that style or
Speaker 1: recent and all of my original material has been gone
Speaker 1: into an opera last a couple of years. So I
Speaker 1: was like, well, hopefully people will be okay, there's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not a it's not an original writer. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, it's never been my bag anyway
Speaker 1: writing stuff. Well, it's not. It's not my It's never
Speaker 1: been my focus. Like if if the story is told
Speaker 1: best through an original song, I'll do it. But I
Speaker 1: was an interpreter for years before I ever thought about
Speaker 1: writing songs, So I'm never sitting down going Okay, I
Speaker 1: need to write a new album. It's like if there's
Speaker 1: no inspiration to write the song, and there often isn't
Speaker 1: because it's just there's so many great songs out there already.
Speaker 1: There's so much great music, so it has to be something. Really,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can tell in a way that's
Speaker 1: you know, specific to me. That means, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to write for the sick of writing.
Speaker 1: Was it hard for you to start writing having been
Speaker 1: an interpreter for so long? No, because I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't really write about myself off I've only written
Speaker 1: a couple of songs from my points of view, and
Speaker 1: they're not on any of my records. You know, I
Speaker 1: write from a cultural point of view, from other people's
Speaker 1: point of view, and those are the songs that, you know,
Speaker 1: when they started to come out, it was those kind
Speaker 1: of songs like Julie, like at the Purchaser's Option, like
Speaker 1: you know, these very specific trying to highlight black and
Speaker 1: mostly female voices. You know that I feel like I
Speaker 1: need to be highlighted, and a lot of times they
Speaker 1: come through as as real spiritual kind of events, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have written songs like I wrote usually
Speaker 1: with partners, like with people like I wrote all of
Speaker 1: my most of my Nashville songs with my songwriting partner
Speaker 1: from Louisiana, Dirk Powell. You know that that I could do.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, like I can co write songs
Speaker 1: that I'm not connected to, like in a cultural way,
Speaker 1: you know, but just coming from me, I did want MPR.
Speaker 1: It was like songs you know, coming out of the
Speaker 1: experiences of lockdown, and it was I found it very torturous,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I was just like, who cares about what
Speaker 1: I'm feeling? Like it's my feelings and really, my life's
Speaker 1: not that bad. What's what do I need to say here?
Speaker 1: It was very it was a very interesting thing, and
Speaker 1: it just solidified what I do and what I don't do.
Speaker 1: That's a very funny thing for an artist to say, though,
Speaker 1: who cares what I'm feeling? Well, I feel like everybody
Speaker 1: makes their art in the way that makes sense to them,
Speaker 1: and for me, I am the least important and interesting thing.
Speaker 1: And what I do? You know, and it's not I
Speaker 1: know that there's amazing songs out there that have come
Speaker 1: out of people's experiences that have made a great difference
Speaker 1: to people. And you know, I've enjoyed some of those songs,
Speaker 1: and it's a totally valid way to go. It's just
Speaker 1: not my way. Your new album is great, it's coming
Speaker 1: out in a little while, so tell me about making
Speaker 1: this album. You know, everybody has had to adjust to
Speaker 1: this pandemic, like and I say, like, there's just such
Speaker 1: huge differences between how how you know, people who are
Speaker 1: comfortably off well off and people who aren't have had
Speaker 1: a pandemic. You know, there's been people who've never had
Speaker 1: to stop working interacting with people because they're on front
Speaker 1: lines or their service industry or anything. You know, they
Speaker 1: needed the paycheck and people who could just kind of
Speaker 1: hold up in their houses for a year. And there's
Speaker 1: detrimental things to all of it. But I just say
Speaker 1: all of it with an acknowledgement of privilege. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's very important to to do that, but
Speaker 1: to say that in general, you know, artists, musicians, there's
Speaker 1: an additional difficulty, you know, in that are very work.
Speaker 1: It's like where like the restaurant industry, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: our very work involves people. You know, we can't just
Speaker 1: not work in an office and work at home and
Speaker 1: do emails like it's so that's been really hard. And
Speaker 1: then I just got the idea. We've been playing these
Speaker 1: old folk songs that were you know, JA were just
Speaker 1: kind of cropping up. You know, I was just finding myself,
Speaker 1: you know, sit down, we sit down with our instruments,
Speaker 1: and I would just start singing. And I just said,
Speaker 1: let's just start singing these. Let's just start doing these
Speaker 1: in the stream. You know, this is my partner, Francesco.
Speaker 1: And it was like night and day. It was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, these songs have never been on stage
Speaker 1: and we're doing them because we're connecting to them right now.
Speaker 1: And I said, let's just run into the studio and
Speaker 1: record these. I'm just feeling them right now. How did
Speaker 1: your situation isolation, how did they inform the choice of songs? Well,
Speaker 1: these songs, the songs of kit were coming up. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're ones I hadn't done in a long time. You know,
Speaker 1: a couple of them predate. The Carolina Chocolate Drop stays
Speaker 1: like it was just when I was just getting into
Speaker 1: all the time music and I think, you know, and
Speaker 1: the Italian ones were you know, they're ones that Francesco
Speaker 1: is known for a very long time. The two main
Speaker 1: themes of the record are like home and death. So
Speaker 1: we're like surrounded by death every day. It's how many
Speaker 1: people have died, like literally the news every day. And
Speaker 1: then we're like, how many people have died in Italy?
Speaker 1: How many people have died in the US? How many
Speaker 1: people have died in North Carolina? Are my parents going
Speaker 1: to die? Are we even going to be able to
Speaker 1: go home? You know, it's just like all the stuff
Speaker 1: that everybody's been dealing with, but like that's in the
Speaker 1: air all the time. So these you know, stuff like, oh,
Speaker 1: death just comes up and the idea of not being
Speaker 1: able to go home. And so these songs are not
Speaker 1: just any songs, but there's songs when I was really
Speaker 1: coming into my own as as as identifying as a
Speaker 1: North Carolinian, you know, like for me as a mixed person, multiracial,
Speaker 1: but like, there's no there was no space for that.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, it was like black, white,
Speaker 1: and other, and you had to check a box. And
Speaker 1: I just I had this existential dilemma every time I
Speaker 1: filled out a form. Did you fill it out differently?
Speaker 1: At different times I did. Sometimes I filled all the
Speaker 1: boxes in it depended on how much in trouble I
Speaker 1: would get if I you know, so it was like
Speaker 1: the sat or something. I like, you know, I've put
Speaker 1: it black because I was. I talked to my mom
Speaker 1: about it, and she's just like, look, you know, for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes in this country, you're considered black.
Speaker 1: So that's what you put down, you know. But you know,
Speaker 1: I circle that in. I think of my dad, who's white,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm just like and back then, I
Speaker 1: didn't understand the nuance of the one drop rule and
Speaker 1: the history and all that stuff. All I knew is
Speaker 1: just doesn't feel right to me, you know, neither one
Speaker 1: feels right. So when I started finding the music of
Speaker 1: the root music of North Carolina in my early twenties,
Speaker 1: that's when I started going, oh, I know, I know
Speaker 1: what I am like, forget the color, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: there's Carolinian. And it really tied me to a a
Speaker 1: sense of belonging and a sense even though that's like
Speaker 1: I've been living in North Carolina my whole life, other
Speaker 1: than college, and but all of a sudden, I felt like, oh, o, candle,
Speaker 1: what that means? And I found that through the music.
Speaker 1: So when I sing these songs, it takes me back
Speaker 1: to that feeling of belonging, you know, at home. It's
Speaker 1: an interest, it's interesting. It's just like stuff I would
Speaker 1: have never thought about recording ever, and they're coming up
Speaker 1: and just like sing me like, Okay, what's an example
Speaker 1: of one of the first songs that occurred to you
Speaker 1: that you should you should put in this album for
Speaker 1: that reason? Well, like, you know, Blackish Crow came up
Speaker 1: and that that's what That was one of the first
Speaker 1: old time tunes I've ever learned. I still remember learning
Speaker 1: it from Steve Terrell wrote it. I wrote the words
Speaker 1: down like he's a kind of a Stalhart in the
Speaker 1: old time community in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking it was so beautiful. And then in and of itself,
Speaker 1: it's dealing with being separated from your loved one, and
Speaker 1: you know, I wish that I was going with you
Speaker 1: or you were staying here, you know, and especially in
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic. You know, Francesco and I
Speaker 1: we don't live together because we have children who go
Speaker 1: to school in different cities, so we live where they live,
Speaker 1: and it's two and a half hours apart. So there
Speaker 1: were times when we were locked down, like it was
Speaker 1: serious lockdown, and like we didn't even couldn't even go
Speaker 1: see each other. So it's just like all of those
Speaker 1: thoughts in thinking about people who were separated, you know, continents,
Speaker 1: separated from their loved ones and not able to go
Speaker 1: see them, and you know, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: songs about that because we haven't always been able to
Speaker 1: travel as easily as as we do now. That just
Speaker 1: came up. And then it's like the combination of taking
Speaker 1: this really old song and feeling like so it's an
Speaker 1: old song on its own, so it just has this connection,
Speaker 1: this kind of deep connection right to humanity. And then
Speaker 1: it's got this additional connection that I have, you know,
Speaker 1: as in North Carolinian and feeling like in North Carolinian
Speaker 1: missing North Carolina. And then we're doing it in a
Speaker 1: way that would never be done back home, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that Francesco plays the the cello banjo, which
Speaker 1: was originally owned by Mike Seeger. Yeah, because I knew
Speaker 1: him and his widow when he died, Alexeia made sure
Speaker 1: that his vast music collection, she let people that he
Speaker 1: knew and who knew him first come pick instruments to
Speaker 1: buy to be passed on too. And so I picked
Speaker 1: that in in a beautiful little banjo, and that cello
Speaker 1: banjo had been sitting in my house like I had
Speaker 1: never played it. I didn't know why I bought it,
Speaker 1: you know, but I just loved the sound of it,
Speaker 1: beautiful shape. He put these strings on it that just
Speaker 1: made it sound like a loot. And then Francesco came
Speaker 1: to my house and picked it up and started playing it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well that's why I bought it.
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, And so that's all over the record,
Speaker 1: that banjo sound what we found that banjo and in
Speaker 1: my viola. So it's just like there's a lot wrapped
Speaker 1: up in that. And then Eymur is bringing in Ireland
Speaker 1: with the flute, the Irish flute, and so it was
Speaker 1: just a really I felt so fortunate to be able
Speaker 1: to have been able to have that time. You're in
Speaker 1: Ireland now right, been in Ireland since last March. We
Speaker 1: came from Australia. What's it like now to observe because
Speaker 1: you are in North Carolinian you're an American. What's it
Speaker 1: like to be out of the United States for now
Speaker 1: a year? Which is probably what you didn't expect. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. It has been hard, it's been weird. It's
Speaker 1: part of it a little easier, you know. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of people like Baldwin who who found life abroad. It
Speaker 1: relieved them of something well in normal days. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was kind of a breath of fresh air to come
Speaker 1: to Ireland, you know, because this is my work. Like
Speaker 1: when all the stuff went down, the weight it went
Speaker 1: down last year, you know, people were calling me up
Speaker 1: and ask my opinions stuff. I was like, my opinion
Speaker 1: has not changed. I've been talking about this fifteen years
Speaker 1: go away. It's just like, I'm not surprised by any
Speaker 1: of this, you know, But in the in the before times,
Speaker 1: you know, I would be on the road talking about
Speaker 1: minstrel shows, coon songs, slavery every night in my you know, interviews,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, doing this, doing that, and then I'd
Speaker 1: come back to Ireland and just kind of take a
Speaker 1: deep breath and it's not you know that the specter
Speaker 1: of that. I mean, they have other issues here, but
Speaker 1: the specter of that is not here. And I do
Speaker 1: I definitely understand that of just being away from it
Speaker 1: when it is your work, but that again, is different
Speaker 1: all together than being completely unable to go back to
Speaker 1: the well and then when all the stuff is going
Speaker 1: on and people are protesting, and I'm just like I
Speaker 1: have nothing to do and I can't do anything there,
Speaker 1: you know, like all my gigs have been canceled, but
Speaker 1: I can't even help. We'll be right back with more
Speaker 1: from Rhiannon get Ins and Bruce Head Them. After a
Speaker 1: quick break, We're back with more from Rhiannon Giddins. You
Speaker 1: know the sense of missing someone in folk music from
Speaker 1: Africa from Scotland I assume from Ireland is often about
Speaker 1: missing people across the whole ocean. That's sort of embedded
Speaker 1: in the music. So you must have felt that quite
Speaker 1: strongly when you were playing some of these tunes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean them and see my family in over a year, Francesco,
Speaker 1: like especially in the beginning, like Italy was hit really hard,
Speaker 1: like people were dying left and right, and like he
Speaker 1: had relatives who got sick, and you know, just the
Speaker 1: stress of like if something happens, I can't even get there.
Speaker 1: It comes out in funny ways in the album because
Speaker 1: your version of I Shall not be Moved, which is
Speaker 1: an old spiritual which has been adopted by the labor movement,
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, and maybe the words there are movements,
Speaker 1: because suddenly it's a song about not being moved, not
Speaker 1: being able to move. Almost were you thinking when you
Speaker 1: were recording it? I recorded that because for me, that
Speaker 1: was my connection to Joe Thompson, who was the black
Speaker 1: fiddler from Men, North Carolina, the elder that I like
Speaker 1: learned his family's tradition. Can you explain a little bit
Speaker 1: of when you met him and who he was? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Yeah, Joe Thompson was even more important than
Speaker 1: we knew when we started going down to see him.
Speaker 1: He was a massively important person. He was the last
Speaker 1: of a family of black string band traditions. It had
Speaker 1: been passed on as a family tradition. He was part
Speaker 1: of the Thompson family band. They played for the white
Speaker 1: and the Black square dances in his area because everybody
Speaker 1: used to do. This is what people don't understand, because
Speaker 1: that's a whole other reason. There's a whole other story
Speaker 1: why people don't know that. And he was the last
Speaker 1: of his family to be playing this music, and nobody
Speaker 1: else had picked it up. And the people he used
Speaker 1: to play with or were dead his you know, his
Speaker 1: cousin and his brother, and so he was playing with
Speaker 1: white musicians, you know, wonderful people in the area. And
Speaker 1: then me and the other two original Carolina Chocolate Drops,
Speaker 1: Dom Flemans and Justin Robinson started going down to Meban
Speaker 1: to play with him because Meban was like forty five
Speaker 1: minutes away from where we all lived. And he passed
Speaker 1: on his family's tradition to us. You know. So he
Speaker 1: lived to be ninety two, and we're incredibly lucky to
Speaker 1: have had him because I found out later through the
Speaker 1: work of John Jeremiah Sullivan, that he is the musical
Speaker 1: descendant of Frank Johnson, who was a very famous black
Speaker 1: string band musician from the eighteen hundreds and bought himself
Speaker 1: out of slavery with his fiddle. And there's been an
Speaker 1: oral tradition that's been passed down from Frank Johnson to Joe,
Speaker 1: not to us. So it's just to have that connection
Speaker 1: to the once vast, incredibly influential, super important black string
Speaker 1: band tradition that's not almost completely gone, is you know,
Speaker 1: I sometimes like hyperventilate a little bit to myself when
Speaker 1: I think about, like how closely word of missing, you know,
Speaker 1: having a living connection to that. So I feel the
Speaker 1: responsibility and the importance of that quite a lot. And
Speaker 1: so anytime there's an opportunity to include one of his
Speaker 1: songs or to be able to talk about him and
Speaker 1: that when in particular, I had quoted when I when
Speaker 1: I wrote a song earlier this what was last year.
Speaker 1: I wrote it around juneteenth and I performed it with
Speaker 1: Yo Yoman. I did a performance of a little video
Speaker 1: of it. It's called build a House, and it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of lamenting about the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: African Americans were like brought to the United States, built
Speaker 1: so much of the United States, and then continuously are
Speaker 1: just seems the thing that people just want us gone,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's just like, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: It's just I was just really um despairing of everything.
Speaker 1: And I wrote this song and at the very and
Speaker 1: it says, you know, I will not be moved. You know,
Speaker 1: you brought me here to build your house. I built
Speaker 1: the house. I wrote my own house. You burned it down.
Speaker 1: I wrote my song, you took the song. But you
Speaker 1: know what my will, my will will never run dry,
Speaker 1: and I will not be moved. You know. It's a
Speaker 1: direct quote from not just I Shall not be moved,
Speaker 1: but from Joe. Was there something idiosyncratic or very particular
Speaker 1: about the way he and his family played this music,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, not all fiddlers are the same.
Speaker 1: Things can be very local. Are there things you learned
Speaker 1: from him that you just wouldn't have learned technically from
Speaker 1: other fiddlers? Yeah, when you know, all three of us
Speaker 1: were just learning all time music when we started playing
Speaker 1: with Joe. So everything that I learn, everything that I
Speaker 1: play now is inflected by playing with Joe and with
Speaker 1: kind of absorbing that, and it's very rhythmic, it's very
Speaker 1: I learned a Joe could do more with like six notes.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people get do with twenty five.
Speaker 1: I mean, he just kind of an effortless being in
Speaker 1: the groove with the groove. You know, there's something about
Speaker 1: being a dance musician that you just cannot fake, you know,
Speaker 1: and we have you know, I played for dances, and
Speaker 1: so it does it does affect everything that I do,
Speaker 1: and the and also the way he sang. So when
Speaker 1: I'm singing, he had a beautiful voice and it just
Speaker 1: kind of came out of him in this way, and
Speaker 1: so that affects how I sing these kind of songs too.
Speaker 1: And then in this particular song, the way he I
Speaker 1: did it the way he does it, which you know,
Speaker 1: he he didn't put a space in between the end
Speaker 1: of one verse in the beginning of the next. So
Speaker 1: it's not like it's a shanaa shaa be moved ashaa
Speaker 1: shanna be moved like a true played. But I just
Speaker 1: do that m shall not be moved climbing Jacob right,
Speaker 1: So there's no space. It's not shall not be moved
Speaker 1: climbing Jacob. That's what you know, that's what we usually do, right,
Speaker 1: you have the ending and then the beginning of the
Speaker 1: next thing. But there's something about that, you know, I
Speaker 1: shall not be moved climbing Jacobs. Let us shall you know,
Speaker 1: there's something about that. You know. It's very simple. But
Speaker 1: the thing that you got from Joe was that it
Speaker 1: never ended. You know. It was just like this rolling
Speaker 1: river of sound and he would just kind of dip
Speaker 1: his foot in it and then take his foot out.
Speaker 1: Does that come out of playing for dances? That that
Speaker 1: idea that you just keep going it comes out of
Speaker 1: playing for dances? I think it comes out of just
Speaker 1: being saturated in that music. Him and other old timers,
Speaker 1: you know who they're they're gone, that life is over.
Speaker 1: He was born into a community and he died in
Speaker 1: that community, and he had a function in that community.
Speaker 1: There was no thought to it. It was just like
Speaker 1: my you know, daddy played fiddle, and then I played fiddle,
Speaker 1: and you know, I played with my brother and as
Speaker 1: soon as we rolled enough, we took over the dances.
Speaker 1: You know. He became a performer, but he was a
Speaker 1: function musician. He was a community musician, and it was
Speaker 1: music that he grew up doing. And that's a that's
Speaker 1: a special thing, and I would never pretend like that's
Speaker 1: what I do. Do you think that kind of world
Speaker 1: can exist, can coexist in the world as it is now?
Speaker 1: Not everybody's waiting for the dance on Friday night. It's
Speaker 1: not a necessary tradition the way it probably was for
Speaker 1: many people. Oh sure, I mean that was the entertainment.
Speaker 1: I mean the reason why it died. TV came. I mean,
Speaker 1: as unfortunately TV is a great culture killer. It's just
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. I mean, it's not to say
Speaker 1: that stuff didn't survive. That it did. Obviously Joe could
Speaker 1: still play and sing, but it wasn't it changed function
Speaker 1: that music changed. It was then it became performance music
Speaker 1: for a ticket price and mostly white people in the
Speaker 1: audience and all this kind of stuff. And that's just
Speaker 1: it just changes it. And it doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: not as good or doesn't need to be done. It's
Speaker 1: just different. Tell me why, particularly the black history of
Speaker 1: string bands and country music hasn't survived or isn't widely known,
Speaker 1: because that's you know, many people, you know, they look
Speaker 1: at you as someone who who has really highlighted a
Speaker 1: tradition that very few people know about, you know, the
Speaker 1: exceptions that that you know, Johnny Cash was taught guitar
Speaker 1: by black guitarists, so I think was Hank Williams. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of mentors who are African American, but they
Speaker 1: weren't well known, their students were well known. Why isn't
Speaker 1: the African American string band tradition as well known as
Speaker 1: the Carter family or other Mountain music? What happened in
Speaker 1: the Carter family? Another example, you know Leslie Riddle going
Speaker 1: along with him, and a lot of that music would
Speaker 1: have come from how he wrote it down, how he
Speaker 1: discovered it, and he's given no credit at all. No, definitely,
Speaker 1: it's certainly no royalties. Isn't that funny? And I think
Speaker 1: he had a lot to do with teaching Mabel how
Speaker 1: to play the guitar, and she's that is the guitar
Speaker 1: method for so much country music. Yep, it's it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: We're everywhere except for you know, in the consciousness of
Speaker 1: the majority of the people. I mean, I realized, ask,
Speaker 1: I'm asking a long question that has a very simple answer.
Speaker 1: It doesn't well, it has an answer, which is racism.
Speaker 1: But no, no, it's not that. It's it's Look, I'll
Speaker 1: give you my my perception of it. Like as I've
Speaker 1: been researching it and giving lectures on this. I'm not
Speaker 1: a I have a music degree, that's my disclaimer in
Speaker 1: Western art music. So all of this has been self researched,
Speaker 1: just as I'm trying to find the answers. So as
Speaker 1: I've been doing the research, I find three reasons and
Speaker 1: they're interconnected. Racism is one of them, absolutely, and actually
Speaker 1: racism is under all of it. So in a short answer,
Speaker 1: you are correct. But that's not enough for people because
Speaker 1: it's it's too big. It's it's all timing and crossroads.
Speaker 1: So that the great migration is happening. Millions of people
Speaker 1: are leaving the south. Of course, why are they leaving
Speaker 1: the south Racism, So that's the heart of that. But
Speaker 1: there is this mass movement of people, people moving to
Speaker 1: the cities in the north and in the west away
Speaker 1: from the South, and they're bringing their ways with them
Speaker 1: to a point. But the banjo in particular is a
Speaker 1: very specific cultural instrument as it was in eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and and you know, you get to the north and
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this other stuffs starting to happen up here,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to play old Grandpa's corn pone music,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? I want to play the
Speaker 1: new stuff. Right. That's just a natural thing when people move.
Speaker 1: And then you have the recording industry coming in to play.
Speaker 1: So the recording industry is coming in in the twenties
Speaker 1: and you have people like Ralph Pierre inventing hillbilly and
Speaker 1: race records, like basically segregating American music at its source,
Speaker 1: right because they I mean, there was the whole idea
Speaker 1: of recording regular people in order to sell their music
Speaker 1: to themselves was a new thing, you know, because what
Speaker 1: was being recorded was like classical music or dance music
Speaker 1: or this kind of stuff. So that even the idea
Speaker 1: at the music saved a lot of music, which is great,
Speaker 1: but it saved a lot of music through a particular lens.
Speaker 1: And this is also what happened with Cecil Sharpe when
Speaker 1: he came over valid collecting saying the Appalachian Mountains. And
Speaker 1: that goes into the third reason, which is blatant white
Speaker 1: superman and a creation of a mythical white ethnicity and
Speaker 1: character as a direct pushback against what Henry Ford, for example,
Speaker 1: saw as the jungle music of jazz and blues and
Speaker 1: this collusion with Jews. You know, he thought Jews were
Speaker 1: trying to take over the I mean, it's just all
Speaker 1: sorts of nasty crap. Then you have going on within
Speaker 1: this sort of stew of white nationalism and supremacy, the
Speaker 1: beginnings of the folk festivals in sort of the folk
Speaker 1: movement as it was called at that point, and so
Speaker 1: like built on social Sharp's discoveries of Barbari Allen or whatever,
Speaker 1: these these direct links as they saw back to the
Speaker 1: old country. Meanwhile, he ignored any black people he saw,
Speaker 1: hated them, called them the in word, and never recorded
Speaker 1: any of them, even though up to twenty percent of
Speaker 1: the people in the Appalachian Mountains were black up until
Speaker 1: the Great Migration. So there's like in his diaries, like
Speaker 1: he talks about like we lug the machine. We heard
Speaker 1: about a likely family up the hill, and we lugged
Speaker 1: the machine all the way up there, and darned if
Speaker 1: it wasn't in a houseful of in words, you know,
Speaker 1: and we had go all the way back down the hill,
Speaker 1: didn't record them. So this is happening, and then they're
Speaker 1: coming up with these folk fiddle competitions. Black people aren't allowed, right,
Speaker 1: just straight up aren't allowed, even though in a lot
Speaker 1: of places they were the best fiddlers because the black fiddler,
Speaker 1: even more than the black banjo player, was like ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: They were everywhere. They were the jukeboxes of the country.
Speaker 1: The black string band is just you know, at every
Speaker 1: function there's black string bands there. I mean, they are
Speaker 1: the jukeboxes, you know, in the radios before. You know,
Speaker 1: that's when square dance goes into starts getting put into
Speaker 1: schools as like the American pastime. But what they mean
Speaker 1: is the white American pastime, even though you know square
Speaker 1: dance calling was most likely invented by African Americans and
Speaker 1: that they would have been playing a lot of these dances.
Speaker 1: It's just on and on and on and on and on.
Speaker 1: All the first players of bluegrass not just influence, but
Speaker 1: like we're taught by or learned from or we're coming
Speaker 1: straight out of that. You know, what is recorded is remembered,
Speaker 1: you know. So all of this is happening at a
Speaker 1: time where things are being put down on wax, and
Speaker 1: that's what lasts you know, and the imagery and what
Speaker 1: they were doing in this creation of the hill building character,
Speaker 1: which is it looks one way, it wasn't even real anyway.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you wouldn't have any kind of fiddle
Speaker 1: and banjo players worth their salt who would go into
Speaker 1: a studio or go into a gig dressed like they
Speaker 1: just wandered off the farm. You know, they made them
Speaker 1: do that for marketing purposes, because they were creating. They
Speaker 1: were also myth making in the mountains as well. So
Speaker 1: everybody's being made up. But what happens is that the
Speaker 1: black not influence, but co creation of the root of
Speaker 1: all American music is forgotten and we're sort of shunts
Speaker 1: into the you know, Okay, it's okay for us to
Speaker 1: be in blues and jazz and stuff in spirituals because
Speaker 1: that's coming out of our pain. Well that was the
Speaker 1: other reason. And I'm thinking of the book Escaping the Delta,
Speaker 1: which is about Robert Johnson, but it's about a lot
Speaker 1: of things. And you know, the writer points out that
Speaker 1: all of those musicians played in many many styles. Oh god,
Speaker 1: they played it all. They could do it all, but
Speaker 1: when it was marketed, when it was marketed, as authentic
Speaker 1: black music. It was the blues, and that's what they
Speaker 1: thought people wanted to hear it. Bloes was an incredibly
Speaker 1: important art form to black people because it did express
Speaker 1: part of a lot of people's lives. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: the only way that they expressed themselves, you know. It
Speaker 1: was just the popular thing and that moment and so
Speaker 1: income these people and go, well, you listen to that,
Speaker 1: and you listen to that, and it's like, well, we
Speaker 1: listen to everything, actually, but it's all about capitalism. It's
Speaker 1: all about luck. We just need to sell this stuff
Speaker 1: the easiest way in marketing. Marketing goes in there, and
Speaker 1: then it's like who you're seeing doing this? And then
Speaker 1: that's the great divide begins there. You know. I think
Speaker 1: the portion of history and musical American musical history, for me,
Speaker 1: that is most fascinating where I think all of the
Speaker 1: seeds of all of the stuff were planted and start
Speaker 1: to bloom is between emancipation and the nineteen twenties. And
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that's not that's not recorded. You know.
Speaker 1: All we have is stuff that's been written about it
Speaker 1: and people talking about it and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: things we can glean from that time, but it just
Speaker 1: takes time and smarter people than me writing books that
Speaker 1: I can then read and come up with my my theories,
Speaker 1: you know, to help people understand this, you know. But
Speaker 1: it's also a time when a lot of music was
Speaker 1: passed along through minstrel shows, which are a kind of,
Speaker 1: for good reason, radioactive form of entertainment that it's hard
Speaker 1: to come to terms with. Now. Well, what I'm finding
Speaker 1: is that we have to we have to separate the
Speaker 1: minstrel show and the music that went into the minstrel
Speaker 1: show in a lot of ways. It's not to say
Speaker 1: that the music that went into minstrel show is not problematic,
Speaker 1: because it is. But there's musicians and then there's the spectacle,
Speaker 1: and they are related. But I think what happens is
Speaker 1: that the music gets conflated into the show and then
Speaker 1: it's like we can't look at any of it. And
Speaker 1: it's like I can't do that because in that music
Speaker 1: is like our my ancestors are in that music. So
Speaker 1: like when I pick up a book from eighteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: the Briggs Banjo Instructor, and this is the very first
Speaker 1: banjo instructor in the United States. Now, banjo's invented in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean by Africans in the African descended peoples, and
Speaker 1: then comes up to the US and only makes the
Speaker 1: transition to white culture in the eighteen twenties, right, so
Speaker 1: thirty years after that is the first book written. So
Speaker 1: these all of these first generation of white banjo players,
Speaker 1: where they getting their banjo licks, you know, from black players.
Speaker 1: So in this book, I've learned a lot of these
Speaker 1: tunes on a you know, a replica of banjo from
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty eight, so it feels very different to a
Speaker 1: modern banjo. And I feel so much like, okay, here
Speaker 1: is these black banjo players are in these tunes. There's
Speaker 1: like all this three against two you know, all of
Speaker 1: the all of the things that go into American music
Speaker 1: are all represented in miniature in these tunes. And three
Speaker 1: against two is it's very that's very West African sound,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah? And and like as I mess with
Speaker 1: these tunes, you know because the fifth string, that's it
Speaker 1: right there, Like what that does to a tune, what
Speaker 1: that does to music? Like that's why I used to
Speaker 1: get so upset. You know that myth of the of
Speaker 1: m of a white guy inventing the fifth string. It's
Speaker 1: just like I didn't know that. And the fifth string
Speaker 1: is it always? Uh, I'm sorry, I don't know. The
Speaker 1: banjo is it? Is it like a drone. It's a drone.
Speaker 1: It's a short drone string and what that means for
Speaker 1: playing and it's very unique the clawhammer style which is
Speaker 1: called strokes style during this time. It's like go around
Speaker 1: the world and see if you can find that. I mean,
Speaker 1: they do it in West Africa, you know, with the
Speaker 1: accounting and the betune doing some other things. But it's
Speaker 1: a very unique style. You play the back back of
Speaker 1: the first finger, the nail and the thumb and if
Speaker 1: that's it, it's just those two things. So there's all
Speaker 1: the syncopation that's built into the instrument. It's like deep, deep,
Speaker 1: deep cultural meaning in that. And so if you throw
Speaker 1: that away, you know, you throw away all of those
Speaker 1: nameless you know, black banjo players. Do you have a
Speaker 1: banjo there? Can you just show demonstrate a little bit
Speaker 1: of the drone sound? And I don't know, if there's
Speaker 1: a song on the album, you just want to show
Speaker 1: us how you how you did it. So this is
Speaker 1: my gord banjo, so it's not as not as a
Speaker 1: steady as my minstrel banjo, but it's the same tuning.
Speaker 1: And that's a piece from eighteen fifty five Brea expansion
Speaker 1: instructor called hard Times, and there it is like what
Speaker 1: else do you want? That's just the one piece from that.
Speaker 1: But can't you hear it all in there? It was beautiful, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you make it look very easy, and it clearly
Speaker 1: is not. Well. I mean, the tune is actually quite simple,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot rhythmically that can be brought out
Speaker 1: of it. And that's where I feel like I have
Speaker 1: a I have an interesting perspective into these tunes because
Speaker 1: I've had the time with Joe Thompson. So you know,
Speaker 1: like on the surface, this isn't it's a jig, you know, six,
Speaker 1: but there's so much une du du duh in that
Speaker 1: and it's and it's just like even when you just
Speaker 1: take this the little short string, this fistring here, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like the off accents that can be pulled out
Speaker 1: with this instrument that you can't really do with the
Speaker 1: regular banjo because this these strings have a lot of
Speaker 1: give and when I think about like I studied pre
Speaker 1: banjo instruments, like the accounting and how that give gives
Speaker 1: you a bounce that then show is just the natural
Speaker 1: syncopation in the instrument just sort of abuse everything, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, I'm not crazy, Like you hear that,
Speaker 1: You're not crazy. I mean, it's just like there's all
Speaker 1: of these tunes or have worlds in them. I hear
Speaker 1: so many different aspects of like American culture in these tunes.
Speaker 1: So that's really been a code It was kind of
Speaker 1: like a I feel like it was a code breaker
Speaker 1: for me. It was like, oh, here it is. You
Speaker 1: know well, it's like it's like you started to hear
Speaker 1: a different sound after you've played it a couple of bars.
Speaker 1: It just it has its own kind of momentum or something.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of the playing of your guitarist on
Speaker 1: this record, Kneewel Tumbu. But he and there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: video of you playing I think will water Bound maybe
Speaker 1: where at some point you just you take your fiddle
Speaker 1: bow and you kind of point at him and he's
Speaker 1: playing these figures that they just sound like they should
Speaker 1: go on forever. That it has their water cascading or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got this whole other feeling. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about working with him because I loved that sound
Speaker 1: of his guitar. It was amazing um And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite moments is in the one called
Speaker 1: Kneewell Goes to Town. It didn't have an I had
Speaker 1: written the tune like in a sound check at some point,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have a title, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about how to arrange it, and I said, well, at
Speaker 1: this point, you know, Niewell just used to go to Town,
Speaker 1: you know, because I knew he would just crush it.
Speaker 1: And then we're like, that's what we should call it
Speaker 1: Niwell because he does go to to But at the
Speaker 1: beginning of that tune, there's this exchange between guitar and
Speaker 1: banjo and it just sounds so there's it's just so
Speaker 1: much stuff going on in that because it's like, here
Speaker 1: is knew Well playing like a Western instrument that has
Speaker 1: been adopted into Africa, you know, and there's a whole different,
Speaker 1: you know, ways of playing the guitar in different parts
Speaker 1: of Africa. You know, that comes straight out of that
Speaker 1: lute tradition of like engoni or a kora or you know,
Speaker 1: all of the stuff. Then all of these things sort
Speaker 1: of being put onto the guitar, and there I am
Speaker 1: playing the banjo, which is a descendant of those same
Speaker 1: instruments that would have been the inspiration for where some
Speaker 1: of the guitar work is coming from. I would assume,
Speaker 1: like I don't know Knewell's story, but I'm just my
Speaker 1: general knowledge of people that I've heard play the guitar
Speaker 1: who come from you know, that area, and it's just
Speaker 1: for me. That's what I love so much is when
Speaker 1: that happens, because like it's just different people are synthesizing
Speaker 1: stuff and then you when you meet you kind of realize, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this whole, this huge circle that just happened, and
Speaker 1: we just completely at the circle. Is amazing. You know.
Speaker 1: This is like me kind of going as far back
Speaker 1: as I can as a musician to my black ancestors
Speaker 1: who played the banjo, the closest I can get to
Speaker 1: touching them other than through Joe, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: other way. So I'm going through the white man's book,
Speaker 1: you know, and then through the oral, the black oral
Speaker 1: tradition through Joe. And so between those two approaches, I've
Speaker 1: kind of found something that's my own, but that feels
Speaker 1: that it's connected in some way. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: with Rannon Giddins and Bruce had them after this break.
Speaker 1: We're back with Rannon Giddins performing the Appellation Banjo song.
Speaker 1: Georgia buck George Buckers Dead. That's what he said. Don't
Speaker 1: put no shuttling in my bread. George Buckers Dead. That's
Speaker 1: what he said. Don't you put no shuttling in my bread?
Speaker 1: George Bucks Dead. That's what he said. Don't you leave.
Speaker 1: Let your woman have her way. If she has her way,
Speaker 1: she will go stay all day. Don't let your woman
Speaker 1: have her way. George bus stay. That's what he say.
Speaker 1: Don't you put no shanting in my bread? Don't you
Speaker 1: put no shaning in my bread? Now? Na, now, don't
Speaker 1: you put no shutting in my brain? That was fantastic. Well,
Speaker 1: Joe Thompson, there you have drawn a lot of attention
Speaker 1: to this tradition that people didn't generally know. I mean,
Speaker 1: academics probably knew about it, but a lot of people didn't.
Speaker 1: And you know, and it informs so much of your playing,
Speaker 1: you know. So you've got tradition and then you've got
Speaker 1: the individual talent that's you, and you want to do
Speaker 1: different things with it. Sometimes when people, you know, particularly
Speaker 1: something you know as as as political as rediscovering this
Speaker 1: surveying of African American culture, they want it curated and
Speaker 1: they kind of they don't want it messed with. That
Speaker 1: goes for that echoes for all kinds of traditions, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as you know, in sort of standard country music,
Speaker 1: they want since yeah, yes, since since it started, it's
Speaker 1: been well, that's not real country music. Do you feel
Speaker 1: sometimes that being such a strong part of that tradition
Speaker 1: almost feels not like a burden, but it feels that
Speaker 1: it could be confining for what you want to do
Speaker 1: with it. You know, justin one of the original Chocolate
Speaker 1: Drops Along, you know, one of the co founders along
Speaker 1: with myself and Tom Fleman's, you know, he used to say,
Speaker 1: tradition is a guide, not a jailer. And I think
Speaker 1: that's an important statement. Tradition has never been static. And
Speaker 1: this is what people conveniently forget is that until recorded,
Speaker 1: until we had had the opportunity, you know, the ability
Speaker 1: to put music on a record, it was only through
Speaker 1: human memory and paper, and we all know that both
Speaker 1: of those things, despite what people say about music notation
Speaker 1: and and you know, with some music are notoriously unreliable.
Speaker 1: Human memory is what it is. And so even in
Speaker 1: the days of long recall, which still happened. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's jellies and you know, um coort musicians or whatever
Speaker 1: who can still remember vast lineages and stuff. But there
Speaker 1: is going to be slippage, there's going to be changed,
Speaker 1: there's going to be disruption, there's going to be individual talent.
Speaker 1: So there's all of that going on. So it's just
Speaker 1: like I think that it's always a moving target. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times the people who are gatekeeping. Not
Speaker 1: to say that there aren't people from within the tradition
Speaker 1: who do that. There are, but it always feels to
Speaker 1: me the people there's always more people from coming from without.
Speaker 1: You know, this especially happened in the Old Time Community.
Speaker 1: A lot of people came to the Old Time Community
Speaker 1: from the north or from other places looking for something
Speaker 1: and they found it, whatever that is. And in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases that meant that some music was saved
Speaker 1: and they took care of people, and that's wonderful, But
Speaker 1: in a lot of instances it also came along with, well,
Speaker 1: we know what it is, and you know it's this way.
Speaker 1: You play the tune this way because that's how Tommy
Speaker 1: played it, you know, and it's or that's what it's
Speaker 1: on the recording. And it's just like, man, he may
Speaker 1: have been eighty years old when that recording was made.
Speaker 1: He could have been drunk that day. He could have
Speaker 1: forgotten the tune that day. He could have been ordinary
Speaker 1: that day. Like that's only the moment of that performance
Speaker 1: of the tune, you know. It's just like, none of
Speaker 1: this is in stone, even though people think it is
Speaker 1: because it's been recorded down. It's just like just that
Speaker 1: moment of that day was recorded down. And I just think,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you have people who want a
Speaker 1: gatekeep and who want to keep people out, even though
Speaker 1: they themselves were welcome in by those very old timers
Speaker 1: that they're protecting from other people. Right. We had people
Speaker 1: tell us, don't teach Joe new tunes because he wanted
Speaker 1: to learn Soywood Mountain and we were teaching him. Sol it,
Speaker 1: don't teach Joe new tunes. I'm like, the man is
Speaker 1: a musician. He's not a relic. He's not a museum piece.
Speaker 1: It's not going to ruin him. He already plays different
Speaker 1: than he did ten years ago. He had a stroke,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, like he is who he is right now.
Speaker 1: And that's what we got, and it's amazing. We have it.
Speaker 1: Your version of O Death, which is fabulous. You it
Speaker 1: starts with death Death in the morning. And I had
Speaker 1: never heard that line and in fact, the only place
Speaker 1: because that's not how Stanley does it, Ralph Stanley or
Speaker 1: a lot of other people, is that a standard way
Speaker 1: of doing it? What was the origin of you choosing
Speaker 1: to put in the morning line. I got it from
Speaker 1: Bessie Jones, you know, because I had heard the Ralph
Speaker 1: Stanley version like everybody else and oh brother, years and
Speaker 1: years ago, and of course knew that version, but I
Speaker 1: stumbled across her version somewhere and I was like, oh god,
Speaker 1: it's the black O Death. Yes, I love this so much.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this is what I wanted. It's
Speaker 1: just like I started singing and I was like, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you know. It was just really kind of I was
Speaker 1: possessed when we recorded that, like absolutely, because all the
Speaker 1: voice all the voiceovers, they're just passes. He does not
Speaker 1: he's not constructing any of that. It's literally like I'm
Speaker 1: singing with myself three times through and that's it, and
Speaker 1: he just included everything. It's just it's insane. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Bessie Jones's version of that, and I just I connected
Speaker 1: to it in a way that I never really connected
Speaker 1: to the Roph Stanley version, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is it? Okay? That was just amazing.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thanks to Ann and
Speaker 1: Giddins for keeping the black string tradition alive and for
Speaker 1: sharing some of her incredible banjo playing technique. To hear
Speaker 1: a new album, They're calling me home, head to Broken
Speaker 1: Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast.
Speaker 1: We can find all of our episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 1: of help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate, interview us on your podcast that Our
Speaker 1: theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond bass