North Carolina-based bluesman John Dee Holeman gained well-deserved exposure earlier this year when he sat in with Kenny Wayne Shepherd for his on-the-road CD/DVD. One of the foremost exponents of the Piedmont style of blues, Holeman learned from the musical descendants of Blind Boy Fuller.
We live in horribly cynical times that make you second-guess everybody’s intentions. What are they getting out of it, has become the typical response to altruistic behaviour, as if nobody ever does anything any more because it makes them feel good to help others. Unfortunately it’s an attitude that’s understandable, and one I freely admit to sharing, due to the barrage of press releases we are subject too, outlining just how wonderful some star is because of their gift to some cause or other.
Source: Blogs.Epicindia.com
Some musical traditions are lucky enough to stay strong and healthy over the years, carried on by generation after generation of singers and instrumentalists while being comprehensively recorded by folklorists and fans. Others, sadly, quietly disappear as the elders pass on and no one takes their place. Then there are those that largely slip from the public consciousness but persist in the cultural background through the playing of a few dedicated musicians until the moment is right for a rebirth. African-American string-band music falls in the latter category, and something of a revival is currently being launched by a hot young trio from the Piedmont region of North Carolina called the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
On September 20, 2007, the Carolina Chocolate Drops will take the stage at the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship award ceremony with the band’s mentor and fellowship recipient Joe Thompson. The NEA Heritage Fellowship is the nation’s highest honor in folk and traditional arts.
Modern Jug-Band Music. Carolina Chocolate Drops are three young black musicians revisiting, with a joyful vengeance, black strong-band and jug-band music of the Twenties and Thirties - the dirt-floor dance electricity of Mississippi Sheiks and Cannon’s Jug Stompers.
Slaves. Fields. Cotton. Work songs. The American South. The blues are part of this history, fruit of this context. Just like Adolphus Bell. Black, from a poor cotton picking family, “with the soul of blues” as he says, he is the band-he dominates the guitar, drums, and harmonica. At his side, Pura Fe. Shy, she is a guitarist, composer, poet, artist, and descendent of the Tuscanora tribe. Further on, Miguel Botafogo. His beard is as long as his path that began 17 years ago with Pappo’s Blues. The three of them, while they count the hours for the shows on Friday the 15th and Saturday the 16th in the N/D Ateneo, are in a back room of Channel 7 waiting for the order to jump onstage on “Manana Vemos”, the program conducted by Mex Urtirizberea and Carla Czudnowsky.
When America’s most popular songwriter penned “Hard Times Come Again No More,” little did he know how hard his own times would become. When he died a decade later from a fever-induced fall, Stephen Foster had only 38 cents in his pocket.
My mission was to accompany as scribe Guy Fay, talent scout and newly christened cinematographer for DixieFrog records of France, in his quest to record on video for a future documentary American roots music; particularly that type which establishes a link between Native American music with that of our African-American forebears.
Music Makers is an elegant hardback with a 22-track CD and it was printed as a benefit project for the Music Maker Relief Foundation (MMRF) with its headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Editor Timothy Duffy is a co-founder of MMRF. Bear with me a moment while I gave a little background on the MMRF.
The roots of modern American music lie in the blues. The music has rich history, but sadly some of its most eminent practitioners have been forgotten and are struggling just to get by. The Music Maker Relief Foundation was formed to help provide grants to struggling musicians.
Deers R Us
Deer Clan Singers
