My week focused on the Thriving Roots conference, the online substitute for the annual AmericanaFest celebration of the music scene we’ve been loving and nurturing for decades. The Americana Music Association did a fine job, amid uncertainty, to unwind the massive event that was on its books and budgets and curate quality programming for a trans-national community. Between Wednesday morning and Friday night there was a lot of substance and good energy. Experiencing it from my office chair and seeing the other attendees only as little avatars making comments in the margin of the screen was rough on me though. It was a painful reminder of all we’re missing.
Besides, Americana, September plays host every year to the World of Bluegrass, held for most of the last decade in Raleigh, NC. This year it too will be online, Starting Sept. 28. And again, I’ll be there with pajama pants and coffee and a curious mind, but also a heart yearning to hear the music being made in acoustic spaces with enthusiastic bodies.
In both Americana and bluegrass, the most important theme and effort of recent years has been a reckoning with cultural appropriation and structural racism. That’s not to say that these genres are infested with racists or that all cultural appropriation is bad. It’s more subtle than that of course, requiring study and candor, which the institutions behind these genres are facilitating. American music’s greatness stems from its blending of peoples and influences, and our listening and learning and playing together has been one of America’s more effective anti-racist forces. At the same time, it defies logic and humanity that country, folk and bluegrass - all grounded in African American blues music - could have entered the 21st century with commercial and cultural momentum, claiming to be grassroots expressions, with artist and audience pools that were around 99% white. Nobody called a secret committee meeting to exclude African Americans from the fields, but the profile of what roots music looked and sounded like demanded our attention well before Black Lives Matter even formed.
World of Bluegrass will hold a Diversity Town Hall and a panel about outreach and inclusion for the next generation of enthusiasts, along with the privately organized Shout & Shine diversity showcase that’s had such an impact over five years. Americana hosted several racial equity events, which were profound and not easily summarized. But on Friday, one couldn’t help but be rocked by the presence and words of activist/writer Angela Davis in conversation with Rosanne Cash and writer Alice Randall. Davis spoke of the blues as “an archive that can teach us so much more than we can imagine.” And yet what does the average bluegrass musician truly know about the blues? There’s work to be done, and for Davis that can be restorative to the culture and our national project at the same time. “Something very fundamental is happening now,” she said. “We’re imagining the music in a different way, as the music has helped us imagine a different society, a liberated society...The music helps those of us who want to stretch our imaginations – who are willing to try to imagine a different future. Because the music allows us to feel together, communally, what might be possible. And in that sense it’s a beacon of light. It illuminates that which we do not yet know.”
Craig H 9.20.20
The art is “Three Folk Musicians,” a painted collage from 1967 by Romare Bearden (1911-1988). Bearden was an instigator of the Harlem Renaissance and an artist who depicted musicians frequently. I had one of his posters in my room as a teenager. Read more about this work here.
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The Week’s Top Posts:
Safeguarding Our Attention In The Age Of Algorithms
The new Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma doesn’t really dwell on the dilemma part. It makes only passing acknowledgement that the internet and social media have been and can be rich with human connection, pro-democratic action and vast seas of information. Mostly it’s pretty dire, even overreaching, prompting one critic to liken it to Reefer Madness. Between very effective interviews with dissident and repentant tech engineers and executives, the film builds a weaker scripted drama of a family being poisoned by algorithms, which we see as devious personas manipulating our protagonists’ psychological vulnerabilities in real time. It’s kind of cringey at times, but I do see the filmmakers trying hard to make the issue accessible and get beyond just talking heads and tedious tech b-roll. So I’d say watch it, and if you have kids, definitely watch it with them. It might introduce you/them to the concepts of “attention extraction” and algorithm-fueled radicalization. In its clunky way, it hits hard on two key social harms of the AI world - the mental health of young people and political disinformation and polarization. But don’t stop there. Please watch PBS’s Frontline special Generation Like and its more recent episode on Artificial Intelligence. And please dig into extensive prophetic literature on the subject including books by Tim Wu, Roger McNamee, Jaron Lanier , Jonathan Taplin, Astra Taylor and Cathy O’Neil, some of whom speak in The Social Dilemma. MORE…
When Bill Met Frank: The Hot Rats Book by Bill Gubbins
Click the image to read the post.
What Is Real Music TV and why am I involved?
In my side life, I’m interviewing artists for a cool new digital music platform dedicated to producing vivid original performance content. MORE.
Kelsey Waldon performing on Real Music TV.
Discovery: Isata Kanneh-Mason and Clara Schumann
On The String: Nashville Master Cat Matt Rollings
Tweets And Shares
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