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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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/
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/
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| 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
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| 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/
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| 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://ahmedmoneka.com/music/
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| Shauit |
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| 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/
