044: Paul Robeson, ‘Go Down, Moses’

Paul Robeson, ‘Go Down, Moses’

Slaves in Mea Shearim

Well, Passover is just around the corner, and She Who Must Be Obeyed is busy polishing the wine cups and sterilizing the corkscrew. She’s given me a few minutes off from helping for good behavior (actually, for gross incompetence), so I’ll try to squeeze in a few appropriate words on the music of the season.

Pharoah

I can’t complain about the spring cleaning tasks. Well, I can, but I shouldn’t. Not when I think back to my forefathers, and the travails they underwent at the hands of Ol’ Pharoah. I know just how bad they had it, thanks to the moving description of those hardships by our soul brethren, the African-Americans who created the spirituals. Slaves were forced to go to church and sit on benches, to quell any ecstatic impulses they might still have from their native African worship. Shackled spiritually as well as physically, they were resourceful enough to create a lasting body of music which jumbled up their old religion and music with the new ones their European masters were imposing on them, resulting in songs of faith which expressed all the suffering and indignity they were living, albeit couched in thinly veiled Bible stories.

Paul Robeson’s (1898-1976) is a remarkable story by any standards. His mother died when he was six, so he was raised by his father, an escaped slave who graduated college and served as minister of a Presbytarian church in Princeton, NJ until his politics got him fired. Robeson was the only black at Rutgers University, class valedictorian, and All-American football player. He put himself through Columbia law school by playing professional football and basketball. In his spare time, he starred in a play which played in New York and London.

Slaves in America

He married Eslanda Cardozo Goode, a descendent of slaves and Sephardic Jews, a graduate of Columbia in chemistry. She passed on medical school to manage her husband’s business affairs. His other affairs she also learned to manage to live with, as they practiced an ‘open marriage’ until her death in 1965.

After Robeson quit his NY law firm (because a secretary refused to take dictation from a black man), his interests turned to the stage. He was the first to bring spirituals to the concert stage, and starred in plays by Eugene O’Neil and the original version of Porgy and Bess.

In 1930 he went to London to play Othello (because no American stage company would employ him–although later, from 1943-45, his Othello became the longest running Shakespeare production on Broadway to this day).

He also sang ‘Ol’ Man River‘ in the immensely popular Broadway musical and movie “Showboat”. It was written for him by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein (neither of whom were particularly black, but both of whom had slavery hard-wired in their cultural heritage). The song has become one of the definitive expressions of black suffering. Robeson later changed the lyrics to transform the song from a lament to an expression of defiance.

Paul Robeson

In the 1930s and 1940s he was a star, performing spirituals in concerts throughout the world. But he also became radicalized politically, actively supported causes as wide-ranging as labor unions, the fight of the Republicans against Franco, the plight of Jewish refugees from Hitler, Welsh coal miners, the independence of African countries from colonial rule, the civil rights of blacks in the US, the integration of blacks into professional sports, (gee, just typing the list is getting me tired), and most notably empathy with the Soviet Union. Testifying before HUAC regarding his pro-Stalinist proclamations, he said: “You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about [Stalin], please.” His passport was revoked for a number of years, and when it was restored in 1958 he traveled to Moscow to accept the Stalin Peace Prize. His later years included self-imposed exile to the Soviet Union, mental and physical health problems caused at least in part by constant surveillance. He attempted suicide, was probably slipped LSD by the KGB, underwent shock treatment in East Germany, was hounded by the FBI (he reportedly owns the largest file in their archives), and finally retired to his sister’s house in Philadelphia. Whew. And that’s leaving out a lot.

L to R: Desdemona, Othello

But we stray. The Wife is calling me back into the kitchen. So let’s put on the soundtrack of our festival of freedom, and get back to work. I’m not quite clear how Yoshke slipped into the last line of the song. If you sing it at the table Monday night, I suggest you improvise some other lyrics.

When Israel was in Egypt’s land (let my people go)
Oppressed so hard they could not stand.

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land;
Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.

The Lord told Moses what to do,
To lead the children of Israel through.

They journeyed on at his command,
And came at length to Canaan’s land.

Oh, let us all from bondage flee,
And let us all in Christ be free.

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Tags: Eslanda Cardozo Goode, History, Jerome Kern, Ol' Man River, Oscar Hammerstein, Othello, Other, Passover, Paul Robeson, Pesach, Vocal

167: James Blake, ‘Lindisfarne’

James Blake – Lindisfarne II

James Blake

I saw “Django Unchained” this week. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll cop to the misdemeanor with head held high. I find his aesthetic offensive. Deep down he’s a snide adolescent mocking any and every thing constructed by man. How cool. I outgrew that at 17.  Art is making things. You go out on a limb, you construct, you make an honest creative gesture. You believe in something that wasn’t there before. Tarantino mocks. Go to your room, Quentin.

James Blake

I don’t understand these young whippersnappers. I don’t even understand some of the older ones. There’s so much new music going on that a person can’t keep up. I remember the good old days when there were only 40 songs you needed to know, two or three new ones a week. That’s a doable task. I just got the weekly AMG New Release Newsletter with 59 new albums (including brand-new releases by Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Boz Scaggs – wait, isn’t Boz still alive?). There’s one other artist I know (Madeleine Peyroux), and one I wish I did (They Might Be Giants). But there are more than 50 I’ve never heard of, including Chelsea Light Moving, Son Volt, Rhye, and How to Destroy Angels. And those are headliners! Hell, there are a whole passle of genres I’ve never heard of. What is Alternative Dance? Is it sitting wallflowered on a chair in the corner drinking punch? What is Experimental Techno? Is that as opposed to Traditional Techno? Neo-Psychedelia. I’m so old I’ve lived to see a neo-??

But as R. Tarfon and The Sages (that’s a Trad-Ethical Rap band) said, ‘You don’t gotta finish the job, bro’, but you do gotta keep on keepin’ on.’

Wise words, Tarf. But did you waste three hours on “Django Unchained”?

Self-portrait by paternal Uncle William

I don’t know how, but a few weeks ago I tripped over a young London singer-songwriter named James Blake (b. 1988; that makes him, what, eleven?) I don’t know how it happened. I might have been looking for some ballads by his wacko uncle William. But it was a copacetic if serendipitous fluke of fortuitousness.

Because he’s been on my turntable ever since. Haunting ain’t the word. He possesses you.

He began releasing electronic music recorded and produced in his bedroom during his last year of university, 2009. Since then, he’s put out one eponymous album and five EPs (“The Bells Sketch”, “CMYK”, “Klavierwerke”, “Enough Thunder” and “Love What Happened Here”).  He also does a lot of remixes under the name Harmonimix. I have no idea what that means.

James’ maternal Uncle Bela

But that album! The only thing vaguely similar I’ve ever heard is Antony Hegarty of Antony & the Johnsons – minimalist, restrained, intense, unsettling. Antony’s flagrant ‘questionable sexuality’ is more of a distraction than an attraction for me. He’s so Other that you can put him in a drawer and close it. Not so James. He is in fact the boy from the haunted house next door –expressionless, innocent, as bland in appearance as his name, as harmless as Bela Lugosi’s nephew visiting from Nebraska.

But watch out, boys and girls. We’re talking about a whole different can of earworms.

In interviews, he’s serious and modest. In live recordings, you can hear the kiddies in the audience shouting and screaming and singing along with his Martian music. I was at a Mothers of Invention concert in 1967, and it was nowhere near that strange.

Sweet baby-faced James at the keyboard

He’s very proud of the fact that he creates the music on his computer, from start to finish, in his bedroom. The music features a toolbox of trademark elements: gentle piano, talking guitar, baffling harmonies, hypnotic percussion, a mix of distorted human and luminous alien sounds, caesurae (sudden breaks in the music), less-is-more vocals, mystifying lyrics.

You know, that doesn’t sound very appealing on paper. So why have I been listening to it non-stop for three weeks? Don’t listen to me, listen to James.

Try ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ (I don’t know about my dreams/All that I know is I’m fallin’)

Lindisfarne

Try ‘I Never Learnt to Share’ (My brother and my sister don’t speak to me/But I don’t blame them)

Try ‘Limit to Your Love’ (There’s a limit to your love/Like a waterfall in slow motion/Like a map with no ocean/There’s a limit to your love). The song is a cover. The original is by a Canadian singer-songwriter lass, Feist. That’s her real surname, but it means ‘a nervous belligerent little mongrel dog’.

And if James hasn’t confounded you enough yet, here’s a shocker: another cover of a female Canadian singer-songwriter, one Joni Mitchell, ‘A Case of You’, which he does very commendably. The kid can’t be all bad. And he says he cut his chops growing up on ‘Dock of a Bay’.

Kestrels in flagrante delicto

While you’re listening, let me tell you a little story about the Talking Guitar that James employs. It was more or less invented by Pete Drake, the Nashville pedal steel guitarist (‘Lay, Lady, Lay’, ‘Stand By Your Man’, and George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass”, where Peter Framptom learned the technique from him). Pete had a hit with it in the 1964 gem ‘Forever’. Now, that was music.

But the coup de grace for my money is the second of two versions of ‘Lindisfarne’ on the album. Here’s the song. I recommend that you not watch the video. It’s not suitable for the workplace. It’s not suitable for anywhere.

Beacon don’t fly too high

I’ve been looking at the lyrics of ‘Lindisfarne’ a lot, and have utterly failed to make any sense of them. Well, we come to praise James, not to demystify him. So I’ll just give you some bits of information, and please let me know what you make of it all:

• Lindisfarne is a wee tidal island (usually accessible at low-tide by traversing sand and mud flats) near the border between England and Scotland, with a population of 162. In the 7^th century it was a center for Christian evangelists, but then the Vikings invaded in 793, and things haven’t been the same since.
• There are kestrels on Lindisfarne.
• Saver’s Pass is a type of bus ticket.
• It’s kids like this James Blake that deny me the luxury of ignoring music by people younger than Frank Sinatra. Thank you, James, and best of luck to you.

Kestrels breed,
Looking further than I can see
Without tact to read,
She’d take a shine to me.
Beacon don’t fly too high,
Beacon don’t fly too high.

For all your time,
Playful crime in rain
Worth it being cold,
Roofing for the lanes.
A lesson lost again,
A lesson lost again.

Cute but I’ll take the bus,
With fees and favours gone
Cracks in Saver’s Pass,
And a white that sometimes shone
Wanton borrowed gun,
Wanton borrowed gun.

Kestrels breed,
Looking further than I can see
Without tact to read,
She’d take a shine to me.
Beacon don’t fly too high,
Beacon don’t fly too high.

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166: John Martyn, ‘Bless the Weather’

John Martyn – Bless The Weather

John Martyn – Solid Air

John Martyn – May You Never

Young John Martyn

At the age of 22, I found my life but lost my music. For the love of a woman, the love of a country, and the yoke of a mortgage, I embraced self-imposed exile to a musical Siberia. If the Beatles hadn’t recently broken up and Dylan hadn’t released “Self-Portrait”, I don’t know if I could have done it.

I spent the twenty years from 1970 till the advent of the internet in musical exile, where the local AM radio’s idea of a hip foreign playlist was Johnny Hallyday followed by ‘Greenfields’ followed by Rex Allen’s ‘Son, Don’t Go Near the Indians’. Somehow, on Friday afternoons, when the Kommisars of Kitsch were taking their pre-weekend nap, an hour-long program snuck on the air called ‘Here, There and Everywhere’. It still may be running, for all I know. I stopped listening to other peoples’ playlists the moment the airwaves were liberated.

The theme song of the program was a Jose Feliciano instrumental, a harbinger of good things to come. They played new, interesting, refined music, stuff that was unavailable in the local stores. I was playing a lot of mediocre guitar in those days, and was thirsty for new sounds and materials and directions. I’d sit by the radio with the microphone of my little cassette recorder pointed at the speaker. When a promising intro started up, I’d flick on the tape. And it was thus, boys and girls, that I compiled twenty or thirty compilation cassettes that I loved dearly, tapes now closeted in the back of some drawer but dusted regularly in the nether corners of my musical memory.

One song that struck and stuck with me was a charming, disarming, more-than-ditty called ‘May You Never’ by a John Martin. I enjoyed it for years, and when All Music Guide and YouTube and Amazon Records hit town (iTunes still won’t sell here), I checked him out.

Bar Room Fight

May you never lose your temper if you get in a bar room fight
May you never lose your woman overnight
May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold
May you never make your bed out in the cold.

It turns out his name is John Martyn, a Scottish dissolute who died of booze and pneumonia and diabetes and excessive indulgence with one leg and many scars in 2009 at the age of 60. He began at 17 as a young adherent of the burgeoning British folk scene which included Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne and others. They started with traditional British/Celtic folk materials, amplified their acoustic guitars, and melded into them American blues and American jazz. Richard Thompson took Fairport Convention towards a new brand of rock. Paul Simon took the tweed jackets and turtleneck sweaters (and Graham’s ‘Angie’ via Jansch’s rendition) back to America. Jansch and Renbourne recorded alone, as a duo, and then together in The Pentangle, creating a riveting but regrettably short-lived acoustic folk-jazz amalgam.

John Martyn at the beginning

John Martyn took his guitar to the pub. After four albums where he honed his craft and many drinks in which he learned to slur his voice, he broke through the constraints of the folk tradition into a remarkable outburst of brilliant, genre-defying folk-jazz in his next two albums, “Bless the Weather” (1971) and “Solid Air” (1973).

Martyn’s music of this period is spare in format – a sliding drunken mush of a voice, more an instrument than a singing voice as such; an expressive, fingerpicked electrically amplified acoustic guitar with a lot of percussive backslapping; backed by double-bassist Danny Thompson (formerly of The Pentangle); and the occasional bongo or ornamental piano. But it’s all Martyn and his guitar and voice backed by Thompson. The subject matter is slippery and elusive, ranging from the whimsical to the passionate to the cosmic. But it’s all a distinctive, unique voice. And hence difficult to describe, lacking all reference. He’s like no one, no one is like him.

John Martyn at the end

The only thing that comes to mind is that other unique Celtic jazz-rock masterpiece, Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” (1968). Way back in SoTW 38 I wrote:

What is unique about “Astral Weeks” is how unique it is. It comes from no tradition and left no legacy. Stylistically, it stands absolutely alone. Spiritual blue-eyed Celtic soul acid acoustic jazz-rock. It’s gorgeous and sumptuous and moving and transcendent. No one else even tried to go there. It is literally inimitable. Probably the closest album to it in its musical frame of reference is The Pentangle, their first, an album I quite admire. Listen to this, and you’ll hear how many light years beyond its contemporary surroundings “Astral Weeks” was. Its impact, if not its influence, has been indelible.

I wrote that a few years ago, and I’ve learned since then that John Martyn did some fine work in that very vein. Van Morrison drafted jazz masters Richard Davis (bass) and Connie Kaye (drums) for “Astral Weeks”. Thompson was a significant partner for Martyn. Folk-jazz, the genre that almost never was.

John Martyn

Van never repeated the experiment, but he went on to a long, restless and energetic career. John Martyn spent the rest of his life degenerating personally and musically. John Martyn was a singular talent, tragically wasted. Many friends collaborated with him over the years, attempting unsuccessfully to resuscitate his career: Clapton, Phil Collins, David Gilmour, and Levon Helm. Back when I was discovering him, I dutifully plowed through his dozens of albums and innumerable live performances. Trust me, he flamed brilliantly for a short time, and you’ll do better avoiding the stench of his decline.

I made myself a Favorites compilation, 33 songs, 1970-1980. Not a single song from the subsequent 30 years of sloppy, self-indulgent recordings. And to tell you the truth, 30 of the songs are really fine, admirable, enjoyable. But there are three that outshine the others. Heck, they outshine just about everything. There’s the aforementioned ‘May You Never’, a charmer, witty and wise and loving. Listen to Clapton mistreat it. Gives you some respect for Mr Martyn, doesn’t it? Here’s Martyn singing it live in 1973, when he was still holding himself together.

Solid Air

And then there are these two transcendent, breathtaking cuts. One is a paean to pain, soul bared, nerves exposed to the ‘Solid Air’. Martyn wrote it as a tribute to his buddy Nick Drake, who had the tragic good taste to end his misery in one fell swoop rather than dragging it out.

You’ve been taking your time

And you’ve been living on solid air
You’ve been walking the line
And you’ve been living on solid air
Don’t know what’s going wrong inside
And I can tell you that it’s hard to hide when you’re living on
Solid air.

Here’s the studio version from 1973. And here’s a live version from 1978, in which his dissolution is palpable. It’s not just his string that’s broken.

And then there’s our Song of The Week, ‘Bless the Weather’. It’s a love song by definition, but how often does a popular artist invoke the elements as the impediment to love’s fulfillment? Oh, those Scots. It’s just John, his voice and his guitar and his bassist. And the elements, and his love, and the pain of her absence.

The Weather

Time after time, I held it
Just to watch it die
Line after line, I loved it
Just to watch it cry.

Pain after pain I stood in
Just to see how it would feel
Rain after rain I stood in
Just to make it real.

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149: Antony & the Johnsons: ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’

Antony & the Johnsons — ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’

Within each of us is both the bully and the victim.

You see someone, on hir knees, crying from pain. You walk past. Or you snicker. Or you throw something. Or you tie hir to a fence and beat hir to death. Or you stop and open your heart and and through hir pain embrace your own pain. And perhaps you feel just a bit more in harmony with your own personal universe.

It’s too easy to guffaw at Antony Hegarty (b. 1971) – his ‘questionable sexuality’, his naked candor, his queerness – a British>Californian transsexual who creates  minimalist art vignettes of pain and death and spirit and the universe as Antony & the Johnsons.

Art isn’t created by adhering to conventions, and Hegarty is an artist to be reckoned with. Since 2001 he has composed a heavenly host of ephemeral miniatures, which he plays on piano accompanied by a small string section, singing in the tremulous voice of a tortured angel. Each song is a prayer.

He can wrench you in a straightforward love song, such as ‘Hope There’s Someone’, or in a cover of a hackneyed contemporary standard, such as ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ or even ‘Imagine’.

But more frequently he moves in liminal, harrowing climes, such as in ‘Cut the World’.

For so long I’ve obeyed that feminine decree/I’ve always contained your desire to hurt me/But when will I turn and cut the world?//My eyes are coral, absorbing your dreams/My skin is a surface to push to extremes/My heart is a record of dangerous scenes/But when will I turn and cut the world?

From the video ‘Cut the World’, directed by Nabil, starring Willem Dafoeand Carice van Houten. The person at the end of the video is performance artist Marina Abramović.

‘Cut the World’ is the one new song on his brand-new CD of the same name, a collection of his ‘greatest hits’ (‘I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy’, ‘Cripple and the Starfish’), lushly accompanied by the Danish National Chamber Orchestra (oh, those great Danes!). This video is a horrifying harbinger of his vision of matriarchal systems of government overthrowing the world.

Be forewarned: this video is seriously disconcerting. It’s not for everyone, watch it only if you’re feeling very strong. Or very weak. I’m not going to comment on it — you don’t need me to explain the obvious, and I can’t explain the mysterious.

From his monologue ‘Future Feminism’: “I’ve been thinking all day about the moon. Is it an accident that women menstruate once a month and that the moon comes once a month? We’re made of 70% water. The whole ocean reacts to the full moon. I must be having a homeopathic relationship with the changing cycles of the moon. I’m made out of this place…The world menstruates.”

One of his most indelible creations is the perplexing ‘The Spirit Was Gone’. The video portrays a dance in the style of Butoh, an avant garde post-WWII Japanese performance aesthetic, often danced ultra-slowly in a sparse, grotesque setting in white makeup. One of the founders was Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010!!!), a captain in Hirohito’s army, a Baptist, and a gym teacher at a girls’ high school till the age of 86. In his 90s, unable to walk, he continued performing – moving only his hands. His picture is on the cover of Antony’s finest CD, “The Crying Light”. The dancer in this video is Kazuo Ohno’s son, Yoshito.

The spirit was gone from her body/Forever had always been inside/That shell had always been intertwined/And now were disentwined/It’s hard to understand.

If you’ve gotten this far, I assume you’re not laughing.

Antony and the Johnsons is a wonderful example of just how effective minimalism can be in genres as ranging far as contemporary classical music, trance, architecture, design, art. I discussed minimalism as an aesthetic in SoTW 086, Steve Reich’s ‘Different Trains’.

In Hegarty’s work, less is so clearly more. The power of his songs and videos derives from the strength of the visuals, the directness of the passion, and the restraint in presenting them devoid of any distractions. He stares unflinchingly into the eye of his own soul; and, if you allow it, into yours.

For our Song of The Week then, let’s unflinchingly choose one of his more challenging pieces, ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’, a subjective portrayal of an epileptic seizure. Neurologist Oliver Sacks, one of my favorite authors, describes some epileptic seizures as inducing “the flow of involuntary ‘reminiscence,’ the sense of revelation, and the strange, half-mystical ‘dreamy state’ that could be characteristic of these.” “Epilepsy is often associated with religious or mystical feeling.”

Epilepsy is dancing/She’s the Christ now departing/And I’m finding my rhythm/As I twist in the snow//Cut me in quadrants/Leave me in the corner/Ooh now, it’s passing/Ooh now, I’m dancing

Here’s the video of ‘Epilepsy is Dancing’. If I were going to have a religious epiphany, I hope it wouldn’t include cavorting gay satyrs and nymphs, but who knows what subconscious party favors he/she harbors within? Antony says he’s been thinking in terms of ‘molecular crystal formations’. I have no idea what that means. He gave a concert in Manchester in which the concert hall was transformed into a crystal cave filled with laser effects, and I’m truly sorry I missed that one.

But when he sings “Cut me in quadrants, leave me in the corner”, that I do get. It’s not a comfortable place, but it’s a very real one. I don’t listen to Antony and the Johnsons every day. But when I do, I sure don’t laugh.

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Tags: Antony and The Johnsons, Antony Hegarty, Butoh, Cut the World, Epilepsy is Dancing, Kazuo Ohno, Marina Abramović, minimalism, Nabil, The Spirit Was Gone, Yoshito Ohno