Freedom Highway!

On a cool, September evening, not a hot August night, Rhiannon Giddens, not Neil Diamond, in The O'Shaughnessy, not a ragged tent, the Better Half [BH] and I attended a real, live, and very lively, performance of a contemporary version of Brother Sister Love's Traveling Salvation Show. [Henceforth in today's posting, comments and observations are strictly attributable to “Yr obt svt." The BH in no way should be presumed to be included in any use of an editorial "we."]

That editorial "we" hasn't been so moved, so engaged and seen such presence and looseness combined on stage since about 50 years ago when we were in the audience at Janis Joplin's concert on a hot August night in Harvard Stadium. [The first link in this posting takes you to an NPR review of Giddens' Freedom Highway album, including samplings of her singing.] If you haven't yet heard her and you enjoy folk, blues, country, or Americana, you really owe it to yourself to at least explore her singing. We still can't figure out where, in her relatively tall, thin body, she hides such an awesome voice, but it's there somewhere and we're glad and grateful.

Many of the concert's songs evoked youthful nostalgia and provoked rethinking of today's political-social-cultural environment. We haven't, quite yet, returned to days such as the one in mid-September 1963, when white supremacist members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed a Southern Baptist church, killing four young black girls. For now we have spared ourselves horrors such as those captured in Richard Farina's song Birmingham Sunday, which Giddens performed hauntingly last night. Almost as a counterpoint, she achingly sings a rendition of the song, She's Got You, first recorded and made popular by Patsy Cline back in the early 60's. We can't decide if we should be surprised that the range of Giddens' material almost matches her phenomenal vocal range.

We came of age, so to speak, during the 1960's civil rights and subsequent Viet Nam War protests. Songs like Freedom Highway (a 1965 civil rights protest song written by Roebuck Staples and the title track of The Staple Singers' album of the same name) and Birmingham Sunday are deeply embedded in the seed banks of our memories. After last night's performances, we find ourselves wondering if we've become so out of touch that we don't recognize any topical songs enjoyed by younger activists in today's struggles, or if such music is missing and its addition could contribute to more successful, progressive outcomes for contemporary efforts to create a saner, more just and caring world. Does the Occupy movement or 350.org have "theme" songs? Not yet, maybe not ever, according to this story on HuffPost, but maybe sometime, "we" hope?

                     Song

By Muriel Rukeyser

Make and be eaten, the poet says,

Lie in the arms of nightlong fire,

To celebrate the waking, wake.

Burn in the daylong light; and praise

Even the mother unappeased,

Even the fathers of desire.

Blind go the days, but joy will see

Agreements of music; they will wind

The shaking of your dance; no more

Will the ambiguous arm-waves spell

Confusion of the blessing given.

Only and finally declare

Among the purest shapes of grace

The waking of the face of fire,

The body of waking and the skill

To make your body such a shape

That all the eyes of hope shall stare.

That all the cries of fear shall know,

Staring in their bird-pierced song;

Lines of such penetration make

That shall bind our loves at last.

Then from the mountains of the lost,

All the fantasies shall wake,

Strong and real and speaking turn

Wherever flickers your unreal.

And my strong ghosts shall fade and pass

My love start fiery as grass

Wherever burn my fantasies,

Wherever burn my fantasies.

April 1955

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