'I saw america changed through music'

it's a grey morning (later in the week sounds better). yesterday horsemouth was bored - he thought it might be a day of events but instead it was same old same old. he failed to go to something he should have gone to. he went down to bow eco park, a tour group paused by the bridge over the railway line to regard london island (recently raised up out of the salt marshes by volcanic activity and already colonised with rent farming tower blocks) and then trooped off across the post modern bridge to... who knows where.

having missed harry smith's birthday horsemouth has been re-reading think of the self speaking (a collection of curmudgeonly interviews). he talks about collecting rare early records that later he compiled to form the anthology of american folk music (arguably one of the most influential collections of recordings ever).

 'I'm glad to say that my dreams came true. I saw America changed through music.' 

he thought the music of blacks and hillbillies and mexicans and cajuns had something to teach us (and he was right).

but smith can't resist putting the interviewer on and laying a false trail, he includes in this list such records as those of jilson setters (as mentioned in jean tilson's book the lost fiddler) secure in the knowledge that those interviewing him will not know that these two were fraudsters mocking up fake appalachian versions of old elizabethan ballads the better to get paid by anglophiles and credulous english people. (indeed setters played the royal albert hall).

but not only was smith an egregious trickster he also wasn't averse to 'earning' his living this way - by hustling.

 j. cohen - 'I've heard people accuse you of living off others - trying to disregard the whole concept of doing things that would earn your living. you've bothered me, my friends, and others in the sense that you don't accept the fact that you have to earn money to be a fruitful part of society. now that's a hard thing for me to say.' 

harry smith - 'certainly, I said it just before you did...' and indeed he had;

 'the purpose of making books on folk songs is to make money. everybody has to eat. we're all trapped in a social system where you have to do something to provide food and shelter. I thought for a while that drinking got me out of food and shelter, but it's a way of living that is pushed underground. thousands and thousands of derelicts...'

 and he continues;

 '... there are certain ways you can evade that responsibility, but it's like, the wages of sin is death. I try not to do that. I've reformed.'

jonas meekas buys smith's film heaven and earth magic and hails him as a genius (here we have the connection with maciunas and fluxus), he lets him have an 'office' in the building for a few years. but pesky interviewers keep showing up wanting to know about folkways records, the anthology, and moses asch. folkways was a cheapskate operation - the compilers of records having to type up their own sleeve notes - smith took this as an opportunity for collage, the kind of collage he applied when sequencing the tracks on the record, to collage magical elements with this music, a mixing on equal terms of high and low cultures, of analysed and analysing. bob dylan got this (perhaps) - but many of the other folk scenesters didn't.

someone has made a recreation of the tarot pack with haitian artists - cards that work (as horsemouth's friend martin has noted) by condensation and displacement but also by collage. it is said that smith once made a tarot pack that was popular with the crowleyites. the haitian artists photographed do great things. it's interesting that many of the poses are in fact mirror images of the cards (as if they wanted to leave some things a bit alone).