So You Can Live In A Better World: The New One from Sarah Langan

 

The title of Sarah Langan’s A Better World appropriately comes from one of the many difficult conversations that take place between protagonist Linda Farmer and her husband, son, and daughter. She’s a thoughtful parent with a difficult past, and she reaches at the absolute limits of her understanding to communicate with the others in her family. In her daughter Josie’s uncharacteristically clean bedroom, Linda struggles to find out what’s going on with her child, and Josie says, “You don’t see me.”

This conversation ends with some ugly “Fuck yous!”

But it leads to the truth. Linda later admits, “When you’re living a thing sometimes you’re too close to know.”

And mother and daughter—eventually as well as son/brother and husband/father— all get to the truth. The truth doesn’t set them free, but it brings them closer together, and in that position, they are able to work their way to hope.

Yes, A Better World is a first-rate dystopian thriller. The speculative world feels right. Rather than the jack-booted thuggery of 20^th Century fascism, we have decadent capitalism surviving far past its viability. A world where democracy exists as a series of ragtag fiefdoms that, at their best, pale in comparison to the company towns created by individual corporate autocrats.

In fact, the world of A Better World feels almost exactly like the world we live in now, its satire rooted in our own excesses. The ActHollow organizing committee that stands apart from the town and boldly runs town society as well as crucial infrastructure would make familiar television—The Real Housewives of Plymouth Valley. The absurdity of the town mascot is, in the best magic realist sense, believably ironic—a genetically engineered low-carbon-footprint, no-hormone-fattening bird called the Caladrius, after the mythical Roman beast that eats sickness and restores health to humanity.

Except think instead of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” the story of a diseased, disappointing creature that no one can believe is an angel. Langan’s Caladrius is a fat, dirty, and uncoordinated chicken, a little like a blind, arthritic, and infertile transgenic pig. Langan’s world has trillionaires while most live in poverty; our world anticipates the first trillionaire in a decade while 5 billion people have become poorer since Langan’s last book.

In that book, Good Neighbors, Langan distinguished herself by not only writing riveting speculative fiction, but by focusing on carefully nuanced families in the foreground, getting at class bias in a society that pretends it doesn’t exist. In Langan’s latest argument, the family dynamics make a globally urgent and necessary case. It’s no stretch to say A Better World suggests the fate of the planet depends on the hard work we do in our most intimate and crucial relationships. The level of truth we hope to find in those places holds the key to saving the world.

And if we’re honest, we know this is the key we’re looking for in even the most casual conversations in America 2024.

Linda Farmer admits it’s hard to see the truth of the big picture when you are living through it, but her story shows us why we must try. For that reason, and many more (including the pleasure I had tearing through this book despite a very rough chapter in my own personal history), A Better World makes a case for the value of speculative fiction by answering the pain of the real world we live in today with uncommon heart and soul. Sometime soon, we need to start talking about what’s happening around us with the same kind of unbridled honesty Josie Farmer demands from her mother. A Better World can help. At the least, it only helps.

Sarah Langan reads at Village Well books, courtesy Chris L. Terry

Reviews of Langan's previous books: 

Good Neighbors

Audrey's Door

The Missing

The Keeper

Kansas City Fights for Home: From Rural Grit to RecordBar to City Hall and Back to the Brick

The Living Breathing Folk Song Last Monday

 

"If I had to start my business over, I wouldn't do it. There's a big difference between building a business and making a home”—Peregrine Honig, owner of Birdie’s, at the recordBar “Know Show”

Honig at RecordBar Know Show

In a March 4^th social media post, Kansas City’s great guitarist/vocalist/support player and all-around instigator Cody Wyoming, wrote these words:

 "Here’s the big downer.

 “I am astonished at how little value is placed on what is essentially my life’s work. Being a local musician, I am not unaccustomed to being undervalued. I’m no stranger to dismissal and disrespect. But even in this day and age, when Live, local music, is already an endangered species; I find myself aghast at how lowly and dismissively that the majority of the population views my 'life’s work' not mine specifically. All of it. Everybody who does what I do. People have no regard for what we do. We are not 'essential.' We are not important. And we are not worthy of consideration."

Kadesh Flow at Know Show

 In the entire post, but particularly in these words, Cody has captured where we are at this point--in our world, in our country, in our everyday life. What matters about life is not valued. It doesn't matter against the need to make the next big buck, particularly as the capitalist system falls apart.

 You know, there was a time (1776) when “Father of Capitalism” Adam Smith saw the potential of the system to liberate organized workers. Smith before Marx made it clear the workers had to collectivize because the owners (Masters, as he called them) would always push wages down. Of course, the first country based on this system immediately employed slavery for 80 years until the industrial economy won out. Then, it fought unions the whole way. Now that our technology has reached a point where the value of labor itself is trending toward zero, the owners are organizing in new ways, with speculations like that so well documented by John Sherman’s ‘Royal Request." 

The Filmmakers, Wednesday

I have included that video and seven others documenting the activity this week here: "John Sherman's 'Royal' Request"

This is why Rural Grit, the Record Bar, and a host of musicians--too numerous and from such diverse genres I cannot begin to try to sum it all up--are joining forces with KC Tenants, the Missouri Workers Center, Standup KC, and other groups fighting for basic rights and opposing the ridiculous lies currently being spewed by the billionaire class to turn downtown KC into nothing more than a series of interconnected amusement parks.

 

What's been happening at the The Brick the past few weeks has been even more amazing than what happens at the Brick all the time anyway. People are coming together to maintain that scrap of humanity that exists between the 1400 block of Grand and McGee and 20th Street, a place we have been proud of as the Crossroads Arts District, even the ground where Hemingway once pledged he learned most of what he needed to learn writing for the Kansas City Star. 

Nora Bell with her own, great "Vote No" song

The world is trying to move on to a place where billionaires can make their last cash grab before the system entirely collapses and the average person has no say in the future. From Artificial Intelligence to the richest of the rich planning their escape to Mars, we do realize this is the juncture in front of us, don't we? We've seen this coming a long time.

 Are we ready to fight for our quality of life?

 People may think this is simply a stadium question, but I would argue it's much more than that.

 It's about whether we believe people matter. As Cody says, "our life's work" is at stake.

 

That’s all of us who don’t have the money to push others around. That’s most of us in a world where a January Oxfam report stated, since 2020, “The world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes…while the wealth of the poorest 60 per cent - almost five billion people - has fallen.”

 It’s not hard to see where our real interests lie—with each other, with our artists, our fellow tenants, and our fellow workers who can be outspent but who have numbers on our side.

 And we have our art. The Rural Grit Happy Hour moved its party to Kansas City’s premier music venue recordBar on Wednesday night and packed the house with four hours of short sets of everything from Indian instrumental music to hip hop to folk to rock to hardcore punk.  

Steddy P Rocks the "Hell No" Show

Everyone got off on each other’s music and perspective. I’ve never seen this city come together the way it did that night.

 And something even bigger is happening tomorrow, April 1^st.

 In the words of the organizers:

 RALLY TO SAVE EAST CROSSROADS!!

 EVERYONE BRING YOUR VOICES AND YOUR SIGNS!!

 MUSICIANS OF ALL SKILL LEVELS AND AGES: BRING YOUR INSTRUMENTS!!

 ALL SUPPORTERS, ADVOCATES, GROUPS, ALLIES, AND FRIENDS!!

 Rural Grit announces a community rally for all Jackson County residents and friends of East Crossroads to tell voters to VOTE NO! ON APRIL 2!!

 Assemble by 4:00 PM on Apr. 1st at Ilus Davis Park in front of City Hall. Musicians will be singing and playing and encouraging our entire community to sing with us.

 At 4:55 P.M. our Rural Grit All-Stars will lead us in singing and chanting our fight song: "Keep Singing In The Crossroads"

Royals go home!!

Keep singing in the Crossroads!

Royals go home!!

 Following the rally we will march to The Brick, 1727 McGee, for the final Rural Grit Happy Hour VOTE NO! SHOW.

 VOTE NO! ON APRIL 2ND!

This is no small thing. In some ways, it's everything. That's what I know when I see the best of us fighting together. I hope to see you tomorrow. DA

 

 

 

What Really Matters: Folk Alliance 2024, Day 4

 

Crys Matthews Sings Lead Belly

I first attended Folk Alliance International in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1998. Back then, I worked with the monthly newsletter, Rock & Rap Confidential, and we published stories dealing with some aspect of each Folk Alliance (at least two of these made it into the recent Dave Marsh anthology, Kick Out the Jams, Simon & Shuster 2023). Since 2014, I’ve decided to blog about each Folk Alliance in my current home, Kansas City.

This was that first post: https://takeemastheycome.blogspot.com/2014_02_23_archive.html

This is a link to the Marsh book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Kick-Out-the-Jams/Dave-Marsh/9781982197162

As this year’s conference moved toward its wondrous Saturday night finish, I found myself thinking about why Folk Alliance International motivates my music writing. Though I sometimes write about the artists through other media, the desire and freedom to do this reporting the way I want to do it has kept my blog alive much longer than it would have lasted otherwise.

To risk the pretense of a poetic term, it’s such a wonderful exercise in synecdoche, what I try to do with this conference. I’m not at all trying to “cover” it. I’m parsing the often blinding light of an iceberg’s tip to suggest the much greater complexities under the surface. For me, that’s one piece of what writing about music is all about. It's not so much "dancing about architecture" as exploring how to respond to one of the most powerful ways human beings express themselves while building new communities. 

And that mission is both deeply personal and political. I don’t necessarily mean that "political" the way people in America are likely to hear it. Central to the power of Folk Alliance itself is the notion that the spiritual energy of the people—the soul power if that makes sense—is an inherently political force. It erupts out of oppression (and its close kin, repression) and finds ways to give voice to the multitudes of experiences that complicate our understanding of reality. For all of its no doubt hard fought history, one of the signs of the Folk Alliance’s success is the way it has nurtured what a group of friends of mine once tried to define as the “pop impulse,” ways to open the doors wider on a culture and, in the process, create possibilities for changing the world.

You can take any piece of a day like this past Saturday and illustrate the point. 

Alvin Singh and Anna Canoni Invite Discussion

Saturday afternoon, the movie made by director Curt Hahn and co-producer Alvin Singh, Lead Belly: The Man Who Invented Rock & Roll, showed the complexities of Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter’s story and career. While celebrating Ledbetter’s music, the documentary also detailed the artist’s exploitation by folk preservationist promoters and even the fans who developed the English skiffle music that would lead to The Beatles and a broader audience for Lead Belly’s songs and sensibility. The film showing brought together the peers and descendants of Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie with young artists and activists pondering how to reckon with this history as we move forward. Everything that happened over the 16 years it took to make that film, and everything that comes out of that packed banquet room Saturday is key to the meaning of Folk Alliance.

Crys Matthews, pictured above from the tribute, can be found here: https://www.crysmatthews.com/

And you’ll want to see this movie, available here: http://houseofleadbelly.com

Saturday evening, “Kansas City’s own,” Kelly Hunt played her public showcase at the Washington Park Place room near the Westin Crown Center entrance. This was one of half a dozen showcases Hunt played. Thursday night, she was introduced in the Women of Note room by Aoife Scott, who told her a friend from Lawrence called Hunt “our own.” That’s part of what Hunt has accomplished over the last several years, first playing open mics in Kansas City and building a circuit that takes her across the country (she is currently on her “Snowbird Tour”) and back to her new home in New Orleans. She played half a dozen songs (only one yet recorded) in the Women of Note Room, introducing herself to the organizers of Dublin’s TradFest and others from all over the world who come to share songs and stories in that space.

Day, Heaney, Hunt, and Morris

Hunt’s Saturday night showcase featured four hit-single-size cuts from her new album Ozark Symphony as well as yet more unrecorded material, including a Cajun reel I will call “Brown-Eyed Betty” and a duet with her musical co-conspirator Stas` Heaney on the Celtic-flavored stunner I’ll call “Homecoming.” Hunt and Heaney were joined by Kansas City’s Andrew Morris on mandolin and Brandon Day on bass. It was a terrific ensemble, allowing Hunt to go quiet with a lonesome “out here on my own” one moment then erupt with assured grandeur on songs like “Ozark Symphony” and a rocking tribute to her true hometown, “Take Me Back to Memphis.”

All the artists on that stage who helped Hunt hone her craft, all those songs she writes, and that great swath of America Hunt's calling home--from this prairie setting to her Delta roots to the Gulf, all that we can learn from such work, lies at the surface and extends to the depths of what Folk Alliance is about.

I wrote more about this new album here: https://bridge909.org/news/kelly-hunt-ozark-symphony

Hunt’s website: https://www.kellyhuntmusic.com/

Spicer, Don Teschner, Tom Felicetta, Mike Younger

Though I only caught two songs of an Amilia K Spicer set, the eerie power of one song’s night driving rock followed by another raucous enough to answer its own question— “What’s the skinny in this shimmy”—told me I need to check out her new album Wow and Flutter. https://www.amiliakspicer.com/music

The camaraderie in that room kept us around for Arielle Silver’s stately set, culminating in some questions and some conclusions about “What Really Matters.” This song and this moment inspired my whole approach to thinking about this last night of the conference. Silver’s music is here: https://www.ariellesilver.com/

Arielle Silver

What really matters about Folk Alliance takes place in some room every minute of every moment the conference takes place, The dialogue between Aoife Scott, Lady Nade, Laytha, and Alana Wilkinson in the Women of Note Room constantly suggested different aspects of what really matters—the search for justice in Scott’s “The Growing Years,” the importance of belonging in Nade’s “Willingly,” the common ground between generations in Laytha’s “Daughter,” and the importance of “Being Me” in Australian Alana Wilkinson’s song of that title.

https://aoifescott.com/home--2

https://ladynade.co.uk/

https://www.laytha.com/

https://alanawilkinson.com/

Scott, Nade, Laytha, Wilkinson

Next up, songs about the vagaries of relationships, heartbreaks, celebrations, and causes for protest mattered deeply in Barbra Lica’s hilarious and heartfelt set. Just as important was the cinematic scope of Lica’s small band—Lica's sharp vocals and keys, Will Fisher's understated but effective drums, and Tom Fleming's funk licks and blues guitar solos all coming from his unassuming little, brown acoustic.

More from Lica here: https://barbralicamusic.com/

Barbra Lica

And what mattered as we moved into the wee hours of the morning was celebration of the kaleidoscope of interlocking talent that had joined forces over the course of the past four days. The power of Canadian Innu artist Shauit and his hard rocking band that leapt naturally from reggae to hip hop had room 534 jumping at 2:00 in the morning. An eight-piece crew called Moneka Arabic Jazz followed, and a party that didn’t seem like it could be further cranked sprung to yet another plane of giddy joy. Such magic and celebration, too, is what really matters at Folk Alliance.  

https://shauit.com/

https://ahmedmoneka.com/music/

Shauit

Moneka Afro Jazz

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Pitch’s Nick Spacek hit many different shows and told many different stories, all important to get a sense of the whole. These can be found here: https://www.thepitchkc.com/author/nick-spacek/

 

 

I’d Love to Tell Somebody About This Dream: Folk Alliance Day 3

 

Nimki and the Niniis

My favorite little piece of technology—a wristwatch that monitors my vital signs and tells me how I slept last night—has either betrayed me or unlocked a secret of the universe. It tells me that I fell asleep about the time I sat down in the Bimiwizh (Ojibwe for “listen or carry”) International Indigenous Music Summit in the Pershing Place ballroom.

That makes some sense because there are never late night showcases in the ballrooms, and it also makes sense because, before I left that room, my friend Mike Warren and I were dancing in a great circle with magnificent Turtle Island traditional dancers and virtually everyone else in the ballroom. Those dancers provided kaleidoscopic percussion with their moves, but the driving sound came from the song and drum group, Nimki and the Niniis from Wiikwemkoong, Ontario.

Mikhail Laxton

I think the night’s dream actually started a bit earlier, with a bit of a white rabbit experience. Mike and I learned that this summit was happening because two singers, Ila Barker and Hera Nalam, handed us fliers in the otherwise almost empty lobby, telling us this gathering was about to start. They weren’t exactly checking a great pocket watch, but there was some sense of urgency.

We got there just in time to see a poignant, acoustic set by Mikhail Laxton. His country-soul songs cut close with thoughts on family relationships, love lost, and love cherished, sometimes all at the same time. https://mikhaillaxton.com/  

Barker and backing vocalist Nalam went someplace even more akin to straight soul music, Barker probing with her electric guitar and vocals, extending the heartaches to fundamental questions of self-worth. Nalam backed Barker’s vocals in her own unique way, occasionally offering trills that worked like bubbling punctuation. Barker mentioned newer musicians coming to her about their insecurities and uncertainty whether they should continue. She exclaimed, “Congratulations, you’re an artist,” before launching into “Intuition,” a song about trusting your gut. https://www.ilabarker.com/

Hera Nalam and Ila Barker

Nimki and the Niniis brought that part of the evening to an out-of-body crescendo, sometimes standing and singing with their drums and other times sitting in a drum circle to accompany the dancing. Nimki explained that the center drum in the circle was called the heart drum, drawing parallels between that sound and the heartbeat of our mothers—before we are born, our first teacher. He also acknowledged the full moon, which couldn’t have been more appropriate considering the energy in every room of the house last night. https://nimkiiandtheniniis.bandcamp.com/album/nimkii-the-niniis

We soon found ourselves upstairs in the British Underground acoustic room, catching the end of a set by Lady Nade. Her silky soprano warmed the room and demanded we catch a full set before this is all over. https://ladynade.co.uk/  

Lady Nade

The following set by instrumental duo, Hildaland (Scottish fiddler Louise Bichan and Indiana mandolinist Ethan Setiawan) brought a tapestry of wild, reeling rhythms and songs dedicated to silver wedding anniversaries, the sound of sleet, and the pleasures of sleeping in (which will be something to look forward to sometime near the end of these four days). https://www.hildaland.com/

Hildaland

Mike and I caught only three songs in what we decided would be the final set for the evening, Shakura S’Aida accompanied by Brooke Blackburn (of 2023 Juno award-winning The Blackburn Brothers). Blackburn generally sat and played the guitar, although sometimes his enthusiasm brought him out of his seat. He provided hard-driving rhythms to serve S’Aida’s commanding vocals.

And I mean commanding quite literally because, late to the room, we learned what it meant to take the front row. S’Aida wasted no time directing us to face off and illustrate that first song’s pledge to have each other’s backs. It was the ultimate ice breaker. S’Aida handled that room like a gracious host, greeting another late comer with all the information she needed to get settled, find a beverage and feel at home. 

Shakura S'Aida

The last song S’Aida did was “Clap Yo Hands and Moan.” She credited her old songwriting partner Keb Mo with part of the inspiration. She quoted him saying, “The devil can’t hear you when you moan,” and launched into a song with the powerful refrain, “If you need to call up heaven, and you’ve got the devil on the phone, stomp your feet…, clap your hands…, and moan.” Starting soft, the song built to one blues-shout and moan crescendo after another, the crowd clapping on point. https://www.shakurasaida.com/

 

 

 

 

 

Bimiwizh: Listen, Carry, Dance with Nimki and the Niniis

 

Love Comes Down: Finding Unity at Folk Alliance 2024, Day 2

 

Mireya Ramos & the Poor Choices

“I break your soul!” Mireya Ramos shouted and smiled as she delivered the translation of the Cuco Sanchez cover she sang with her current Kansas City-based band, The Poor Choices—Beau Bledsoe (acoustic guitar), Trevor Turla (trombone) Jeff Freling (electric guitar), Marco Pascolini (steel guitar), Ezgi Karakus (cello) and John Currey (drums). Ramos and the band delivered a sterling, rousing set rich with both the rancheras she loves and their cousins among rock and country classics such as Roy Orbison’s (always ranchera influenced) “Blue Bayou” and Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” The brilliant set ended with a cumbia as exciting and joyous as Ramos’ soaring vocals. The night before, Puerto Rican Ramos sang Chilean Victor Jara’s movement defining “Manifesto,” and on this night, Ramos only further underscored the easy unity forged by musical forms that truly have more roots in common than the markets and national divisions that strive to keep them separate. https://mireyaramos.com/sin-fronteras/

Connie Kaldor

One beauty of Folk Alliance is the way it thrives on crossing such lines. Before Ramos’ set, Canadian songwriter Connie Kaldor explained that she’d always loved the kinds of sea shanties artists like Stan Rogers specialized in, but her home in Saskatchewan (“just about straight north [of Kansas City] and a little west”) was about as landlocked as she could get. So, she wrote a rousing “she shanty,” “Come All You Women,” directly inspired by an encounter with a friend at a previous Folk Alliance. It’s not only tempting but useful to connect the prairie origins of that song to the common ground between Kansas City’s Poor Choices and Ramos’s rancheras. https://www.conniekaldor.com/

Rayna Gellert and Joachim Cooder

And it’s not a big stretch to connect Tennessean Uncle Dave Macon’s influence on Ry Cooder’s son Joachim who covered and transformed Macon’s songs in the next set playing his electric mbira, a derivative of thumb pianos played in Zimbabwe. Joachim Cooder has played with musicians from all over, famously including the Cuban Buena Vista Social Club, but you couldn’t miss the excitement in his voice that he was sitting next to the great fiddler Rayna Gellert, who may be known for her work in Ashville and Nashville, but who notably also grew up in landlocked northern Indiana. 

https://www.joachimcooder.com/

And the songwriter’s circle in Aoife Scott’s Women of Note room pulled even more of the world together to collaborate. The circle featured Dusky Waters (Jennifer Jeffers), a banjo player from Little Rock, Arkansas who has also migrated to New Orleans; Thea Hopkins, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe of Martha’s Vineyard; and Grainne Hunt of Kilcock, Ireland. Waters opened the set singing “Pass It On,” the title track of her new album, a powerful song of communal responsibility that soon led to Hunt’s contemplation of intergenerational trauma, “So I Can Leave.” Scott and partner Andy Meany led a sing along including all the vocalists dedicated to a friend who lives half the world away from his old home in Pimlico Dublin, but Hopkins sing along just before served as a sort of spiritual crescendo to the evening. “Love Come Down.” The whole room sang those three words like a prayer, and something holy gathered all around us.

Thea Hopkins

https://www.theahopkins.com/

https://www.duskywaters.com/band

https://grainnehunt.com/

https://www.aoifescott.com/

Dusky Waters

Grainne Hunt

Andy Meaney and Aoife Scott

Moments of Silence and Risk: The Alchemy of Folk Alliance 2024 Day 1

 

Shabankareh Honoring Lopez-Galvan

The evening before the 36^th Annual Folk Alliance International Conference, Kansas City’s KKFI DJ Tommy Andrade hosted a special tribute episode of A Taste of Tejano dedicated to his co-host Lisa Lopez-Galvan (Lisa G). Lopez-Galvan’s death by gunfire—amidst twenty-two other victims of the mass shooting that took place during the Chiefs’ Superbowl celebration—stunned the world, but the loss could be palpably felt among the international community built by the music Lopez-Galvan and Andrade celebrated every Tuesday night on our community radio station. The tribute show was an outpouring of grief, yes, but also joy and love. Listen here: https://kkfi.org/program-episodes/tribute-to-lisa-lopez-galvan/

A shrine honoring the place where Lopez-Galvan lost her life formed just catty-cornered from the Westin Crown-Center Hotel, the place Folk Alliance International has held most of its annual conferences over the past decade. The event has always been a celebration of the community that surrounds music—fans, musicians, and DJs and community organizers like Lopez-Galvan. So, it was more than appropriate and extraordinarily important that FAI board president Ashley Shabankareh opened the first all-conference convocation, the awards show, by speaking of Lopez-Galvan, calling for a moment of silence, and then urging everyone in attendance to reach out, look after, and take care of each other over the next four days. 

Joy Clark Honors Tracy Chapman

The theme of the conference is “Alchemy: A Transformative Force,” and the night’s award recipients built their careers upon and underscored their commitment to the idea that music can change the world. First up was a lifetime achievement award for Tracy Chapman, whose appearance with Luke Combs last week at the Grammys said volumes about music’s desire to tear down the walls that separate us. Last night, New Orleans’ great songwriter and guitarist Joy Clark rocked the awards hall tearing into “Give Me One Reason” with the house band Steel Wheels.  

The other winners were a diverse list of world changers—Huddie (Leadbelly) Ledbetter’s great great niece Terika Dean for her work in part as chair of the Blues Foundation, the LEAF Global Arts Festival for its efforts at environmental sustainability, and Victor Jara’s estate, for the great Chilean songwriter’s revolutionary career transforming his country’s music into a vital force that led to revolutionary change (and, as has too often been the cost) his martyrdom. Contemporary artists who won were as vital and diverse as popular music at its best—Guatamala’s great “rising tide” winner Sara Curruchich, as well as FAI favorites Iris DeMent, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, and Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra. Segarra used the moment to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

With the loss of Lopez-Galvan in mind, particularly poignant were the tributes to the DJs:  Folk Alley’s Linda Fahey, Just Us Folk’s Jan Vanderhorst, Mountain Stage’s Larry Groce, A Celtic Sojourn’s Brian O’Donovan, and Woody’s Children’s Bob Sherman.

Northern Resonance

After the awards ceremony, the event moved upstairs to the private showcases in the hotel rooms where guests had sheltered in place the week before during the events surrounding the shooting. It was in these rooms six years ago that an artist from my hometown, Chris Lee Becker, organized a performance in response to the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. I wrote about that here: https://takeemastheycome.blogspot.com/2018/02/once-was-blind-but-now-chris-lee-becker.html

In one room, the Scandinavian musical trio Northern Resonance built infectious reels out of instruments like the Swedish Nyckelharpa (a string instrument with 37 keys on its neck), the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, and the seven-stringed viola d’amore. In another, I heard such a jaw-dropping solo performance by Trinidad-born UK singer Michele Stodart that I hesitate to try to say more here. Stodart wields a voice and guitar as tough and ambitious as blues and pop get. https://www.northernresonance.se/

Michele Stodart 

https://www.michelestodart.com/home-1

But I find myself thinking about the smaller moments—the ones in which we did, indeed, seem to be taking care of one another. During his often-hilarious set which featured sing-a-longs to squirrel cookouts and bumper sticker wit, Kansan Sky Smeed decided to try out a new song to see if he could get any help figuring out “what’s wrong with it.” Before playing the song, he said, “This could be where it all goes south, and I’m okay with that.” What he played was heartbreaking and beautiful. https://www.skysmeed.com/

Similarly, Canadian singer Ken Presse stopped at one point and asked the small group gathered to hear him if he should play “a cover, the song I was going to play, or a French song.” We gave him carte blanche. His cover of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” managed to evoke a moving whisper of a sing-along, appropriate to the size of the room and the fact that he went acapella for the refrain. The audience happily encouraged the French song as a follow up.

Ken Presse

But it was an earlier moment that most stood out. Presse mentioned that he was about to have a child, and that he regretted how much of his life he’d spent working. He said the song, about another way of living, was called “Someday.” And he added, “Maybe I can learn from it.”

Of course, the unstated truth was we all could. On this night, perhaps more than ever before, Folk Alliance felt like a place where the music was there to teach, and we were there to learn.

https://www.kenpresse.com/

 https://www.rainbowgirlsmusic.com/

https://blues.org/about/terika-dean/

The Rainbow Girls Honor Terika Dean (and Leadbelly)

Cause of Joy and Light: Emma Langford at the Irish Center of Kansas City

From the auditorium stage of The Irish Center of Kansas City last Thursday, Emma Langford and crew served up a dizzying array of characters in story and song—a dear uncle who demanded a song days before his death (thereby inspiring both song and coda), a twelve-year-old Langford with vocal nodules maintaining silence so her older self could sing, climbing trees as characters born from the memories roaring through insomnia, and a suite of songs revolving around St. Abigail, a healer and a fighter who measures souls without judgment. Throughout, openess and compassion fueled the show.

Early in the set, the Limerick, Ireland native dedicated “Sailor’s Wife” to her mother, whom she’d promised (and forgotten) to tell when she landed in the U.S., a tour that took her on nightly dates from New York to St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee the week of the KC stop. Langford cast herself as the title character at sea, and she would carry this tension forward with “All You Want,” a song from her 2017 debut about a family trying to understand the risky and seemingly directionless life of a professional musician.

The opening line of that song voices the wide gulf between the artist’s sense of self and that of the audience, speaking the inconceivable: “There is nothing stunning about me.” Of course any listener can personally relate to that perspective. But stunning is just the word when she dismisses her “voice like velvet” as it floats “to the floor.”

What Langford means by that, I don’t quite know, but I damn well know she means it. As achingly beautiful as her voice is, such perfection can be problematic. Her technical strength must be matched by all the warmth and conviction it can carry. Otherwise, the technique might ring cold, float right past us rather than connect. As far as I can tell, Langford always connects.

And with that connection, rooted (as is all connection) in vulnerability, comes a good deal of humor. Inviting the audience to sing along with “Tug ‘O War,” a blues about wrestling with demons, she suggested ways the audience might do so to the point of giddy hilarity, offering up three possibilities in terms of harmonizing “ooohs.” Hell, the show ended with “Goodbye Hawaii,” Langford performing what can only be described as mouth trumpet, as if she were soloing on a horn rather than humming away with (just barely) puffed cheeks.

Langford’s not the only one who is funny: her core band—Alec Brown on cello and woodwinds as well as Hannah Nic Gearailt on keys—hold their own. That night Brown was happy to hint that he was the man caught in the menage a trois suggested by her song, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” And Nic Gearailt seemed to be the instigator of an ongoing gag—a la Pee Wee Herman—which asked the crowd to go wild whenever anyone uttered the “secret word” cork. Since the St. Abigail songs (about five if I have the right count) were all set in County Cork, the word came up a lot even if Nic Gearailt hadn’t found extra opportunities to work it in. 

It's a fine trio.

The show disarmed in countless ways, including a gorgeous rendition of Paul William’s (by way of Kermit) “Rainbow Connection,” a song Langford said she and Nic Gearailt played during so many fallow moments that it made Brown’s “ears bleed.” And Langford started the second set, just her and Nic Gearailt, with Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a song she explained was part of a project called Irish Women in Harmony and a fundraiser for the Aisling Project (a holistic after-school program for children https://www.aislingproject.ie/).

Joined onstage by Lawrence, Kansas’s Carswell & Hope, Langford and company reached numerous powerful crescendos, not least of which was the night’s performance of “Abigail,” an incredibly beautiful song I wrote about when I first saw Langford at Folk Alliance last year (https://takeemastheycome.blogspot.com/2023/02/folk-alliance-day-four-yearning-hearts.htm

Another highlight that night was the powerful “Birdsong,” rooted in a traditional Irish form of chant singing. You can see a clip of it, and get a feel for what she does, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5ZkH1a-t1w   

At Kansas City’s Irish Center, Langford recruited three young dancers to stomp their way through the rallying cry, the effect almost too beautiful and moving to take. 

And that’s Langford in a nutshell, or perhaps an acorn husk—almost too beautiful and moving to bear, but the “almost” there is key. Langford uses her music—wrestling with the dark nights of her own soul—to help the rest of us bear the heavy loads we carry and find ways to keep going. The stop in Kansas City last Thursday night was nothing less than a vision of multi-colored paths forward, delivering new heights and promising even more just around the next corner.

To order "Abigail": https://emmalangfordmusic.bandcamp.com/track/abigail-tomhas-ghobnatan

For all things Langford: https://www.emmalangfordmusic.com/

Thank you Mike Warren and Ben Bielski.

Also, thank you to the Irish Center of Kansas City, who provided this Birdsong video: Birdsong in KC