Subject: RE: Springsteen - The Seeger Sessions
From:
Richard Brandenburg
Date: 28 Apr 06 - 05:18 PM
I have a feeling that some kid will soon show up at a jam somewhere, and sing "My Oklahoma Home" learned obviously from this new Bruce version. And that's where some of the ideas being discussed here will play themselves out. After the "O Brother Where Art Thou" wave, there were singers showing up places who had either learned the song from the the soundtrack recording or from the "source" recording, and it was clear that the commercial popularity of the soundtrack had created a new interest in the songs themselves. If Bruce can help direct more singers to traditional and folk material as a meaningful social event, that's great.
My point being that what we think about the process is one thing, and the activity of the process is something else - and where the music really lives.
There are a few of Pete's Rainbow Quest videos on YouTube, (www.youtube.com) and on one of the shows, just before someone's performance, he turns to the camera and says something like, "You people at home can sing right along with us! We're here on TV, but these songs are for everybody to sing, and if we can do it, why, you can do it too!" By breaking the fourth wall in addressing the camera and talking to the audience, Pete subtracted even the glamourizing event of the television show from the music-making process.
Apart from his overt organizing work around particular causes, Pete's relentless democratization of the singing process is where I think his "political" message has had the most traction, and where he was most effectively "subversive". His concerts have always been sing-alongs, and one of his great gifts, I would say, is not his banjo or guitar playing; it's that he applied his earnest vision of folk music in such a way that a hall full of us were throwing back our heads, with smiles on our faces, singing, "Bye bye, Rosieanna" - helping us to feel for a moment unashamed and un-selfconscious. Anybody that can do that with a room full of us white people has subverted something somewhere...
Bruce can be a similar sort of galvanizer, in his own way, and I'm glad that this is what he's doing with his current work. Look forward to hearing it.
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sj
