The Hammock Papers: Traditions.

27 June 2012

Traditions.

Seeing a Carolina Chocolate Drops concert is a transformative experience — and not just because of the old-time string band’s immense talents and diverse instrumentation. In keeping with their desire to educate audiences about how African Americans influenced popular music in the 1920s and ’30s, the band members explain the origins and lineage of nearly every tune they play. This information adds rich context and historical breadth to their music, whose banjos, fiddles, and chattering percussion are akin to a spiritual celebration. “What we do — especially seven years ago — was very new in terms of people associating it with black people,” says co-founder/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Rhiannon Giddens. “It was a big deal for a lot of people: ‘Why are you guys playing banjos and fiddles?’ We’re working a little more of the general history as well. And the other thing is, we’re playing stuff people haven’t heard in a long time, and it’s coming from traditions people just don’t know a lot about anymore.”

Read the rest here.

"Old Corn Likker"

I've should probably go see if that paper has written itself ...

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL