In my life between the cracks as a roots/art musician, I've always dealt with the metaphor of traditional music as a river connecting the present with the world of our parents, grandparents, and on back. It's a good metaphor because you can just about tease it to death. In that spirit, I've been moved to try bringing some old songs a ways downriver. You're probably familiar with most of them. They are so strong as purely musical entities that they can take just about any kind of setting and not lose their identity.They are timeless and almost completely independent of style. Each of the songs have, after intense musical reflection, suggested to me a setting which seems to preserve its beauty and reveals other facets of its character. And when other artists of the caliber exampled here bring their talents to bear on them, we realize why they've never gone away.
Our working metaphor for this recording has become the tune "Oh Shenandoah". The narrator is, in the North American tradition, moving on, moving West. S/he leaves a home made sacred by a river loved beyond all constraint of reason: the Shenandoah. Now, if you know your geography, you know that the Shenandoah is a small river. Human-size, unassuming. It runs, not even to the sea, but through the Shenandoah Valley north into the Potomac, near, in fact, where George Washington threw that famous silver dollar. The Shenandoah valley is indeed one of the most beautiful in the world, a sweet southern valley with forests and small farms. A quiet, settled place. But our narrator is bound to leave this friendly lover, travelling west and seeking fortune good or ill out across the wide and no doubt dangerous and unpredictable Missouri River, the Gateway to The West. And we all know about the things that happen out West.
From distilled reportage to pure musical flight, these songs speak directly to matters of deep immediacy and relevance: Love, poverty, despair, joy, death, after-death. Nobody wrote them; Everybody wrote them. Singing them is experiencing cultural geology. They've been alternately experiensmooth and built up again and again, polished worn to mirrors, so we see ourselves in them. They are truly emissariesfrom upriver, reminding us of who we are and where we come from. Pointing us in a direction.
Are you going upriver or down?
