a phonograph of blind joe death

 'Oh Dear The Guardian has deleted my comment pointing out that every article they write about musicians is along the lines of ´She/He has been to hell and back but is now a lot more comfortable knowing who they really are. *

I would like just once to read about someone who is cheerful and well adjusted and not the usual ´My drug hell/I am such an outsider/feel my angst´ they always churn out..'

* copywrite Willy Donaldson..

so writes rob lawson (of far off riogordo parish). 

meanwhile someone horsemouth doesn't know has written a book about fahey tying him to the existentialists (those purveyors of authentic experience). you can read some of it over at university of north carolina press. 

you see there are some problems with fahey. that he isn't a blessed saint. that he ended his life in poverty. that he wasa bad tempered curmudgeon. fahey wrote and fahey japed. fahey parodies the whole earnest folk thing and then the whole ethnomusicological thing.  there is satire and burlesque. 

...and this is america, this is the washington suburbs and california and oregon in the 50ies, 60ies, 70ies, 80ies, 90ies, this is collecting trips to the south, this is road trips to rediscover old blues singer. this is america fractured by race, racism and the legacies of slavery and american people fractured by that.

there was a recent disturbing moment on american primitive guitars. 

the NYT publishes an article about the increasing diversity of the american primitive guitar field headed up with a photo of a young black woman, american primitive guitarist  yasmin williams. fahey and the previous 'old white male' founders of american primitive guitar are taken as automatically problematic compared to a young, often female and often multi-ethnic 'new guard'.  it's lazy journalism and analysis but that's not to say there's not an element of truth here. 

horsemouth welcomes the article as (minimally) a list of interesting musicians to research. 

people are primed to row this in the style of culture wars but people should be honest enough to admit that nothing could be more problematic than a style rooted in the blues and the music of the american south (a style itself rooted in minstrelsy). 

that fahey himself was 'not a racist' as his supporters claim cannot extricate him from this conjunction (it cannot extricate any of us, that's the problem). when fahey first plays this stuff he sings as well (under the name 'blind thomas') but there is simply no convincing place for him to sing from, no convincing voice for him to sing in, so he becomes an instrumental musician but with a vaudeville routine as 'blind joe death' but even this does not work and he has to become 'john fahey' american primitive guitarist, a presenter of american fingerpicking guitar as 'a concert instrument', a player not just of the blues and folk but also deploying avant garde classical motifs. 

it is important to remember the young fahey, the confused angry kid saving his money to cut 100 copies of his record, it is important to remember old fahey, the sick old man (still angry), it is important to remember the fahey of his 'career' - the record company owner who finds his own replacement (leo kottke - who does what fahey does 'better'), the guitarist who is not norman blake or stefan grossman (some kind of 'heritage' musician, a conservator of old time-y guitar), nor the other american primitive guitarists,  but one who has his own musical 'voice', a voice  that extends beyond the guitar into sound collages, into writing about music. 

sometime in the 60ies vivian maier takes a photo of musician blind arvella grey  busking on maxwell street, in chicago. she probably doesn't even develop the photo. she works a day job as a nanny. she carries on taking photos (like a soviet era writer writing for 'the desk drawer'). 

it's a privilege to get to make your art, it's a privilege to have people hear it or see it perceptions of artists and musicians are trapped in 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', we are all still trapped in societies that are racist, sexist, homophobic, and within our unreformed selves. 

horsemouth has been practicing high-rise strutter's ball on the banjolin. today he has to go and buy some food (he's rapidly running out). he will read more robert walser (he promises), later he will probably watch more lone wolf and cub. a sunshine-y morning (but it has faded off already).