Screen Bandita presents: Unseen Footage from the Alan Lomax Archive
Well well well, this was a bloody great event. Alan Lomax, for those of you who don’t know, is (to borrow from his own institution’s language) considered to be America’s foremost folklorist. In normal English, he is a guy who went out and made hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of field recordings, documenting the folk culture of communities across the States, and later further afield.
The event at Word of Mouth just off Leith Walk on Wednesday was a screening of selected clips of unseen footage from later journeys where he was able not only to record the music, but to shoot accompanying video as well. It was hosted by Screen Bandita and thoughtfully introduced by Nathan Salsburg, who works for Cultural Equity, the association charged with preserving and disseminating Lomax’s work.
Now, I went to see the Sigur Ros film INNI a while back, and in all honesty I thought it was pretty fucking boring. I enjoyed the music, and the visuals were nice, but that is a long, long way from being a compelling film. I sometimes think that when people make movies like that that they are woefully underestimating the craft of a film-maker. And, actually, of a good, brutal editor, which seems to me to be just about the most important role of the lot.
So, I was a little apprehensive when this started off and it swiftly became apparent that it really was just a collection of songs, rather like a stream of YouTube clips, rather than a single film in its own right. There was no need to be nervous though, because the diversity of music and the fascination of some of the performances made sure this was utterly compelling from start to finish.
I was struck by so many aspects of these recordings, and I don’t want to write an epic here, but for the sake of it I did want to mention a few things.
1. The difference between the performances when being filmed and when simply being recorded seemed immediately obvious. People acted up considerably for the cameras, in ways I strongly doubt they would have for someone with a tape recorder. I’m am not saying this is a bad thing however, and when you are documenting folk traditions and folk music, showing the role of that music in the communities which created it made the feel you got for the whole infinitely richer.
2. Commercial and folk approaches to music are at pretty direct odds.
2.1 The old lie peddled by entertainment conglomerates that if we don’t buy their records then we will lose great art is clearly bollocks. People make art because they are compelled to do so and they gain a great deal from doing so.
You can be sure that pretty much no-one covered in this series was making a penny, but the music was stunning, and it was pretty clearly a joy based on participation, not remuneration. I am not saying that artists shouldn’t be entitled to their share of commercial exploitation of their music, but if people cannot make it commercially viable, we will still have plenty of great art.
2.2 The way copyright is being used to prevent sharing, copying, remixing and reworking is clearly and obviously detrimental to the fundamental culture of music. Stopping Rihanna from nicking someone kid’s killer riff and warbling over the top of it without compensating them is a compelling case, but many of the rest are not.
Listen to the following clip of Little Margaret – these particular lyrics occur paraphrased and in fragments all over the place in folk music. This makes the music richer, not poorer. If you clamp down on this too much you throttle the creative process.
3. So many old people! The folk world may not be all that ageist, but the pop world is, despite the recent surfeit of ‘heritage acts’. I know wrinklies won’t sell Heat For Music NME quite as well, but the way the voice changes with age (and I mean proper old age, not just middle age) was wonderfully clear watching these performances.
The old voices we saw wavered with fragility or burst forth with surprising strength, but they all had tremendous character and impact. More old fuckers in music please. No Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Turds, and not another cynical reunion back-slapping circle jerk-a-thon, but properly old people singing beautiful songs.
4. The ‘over-supply’ of music is not a new thing. This is a common whinge of people who are sadly desperate to be an authority on All Of Music, and also of those who feel the need to be told what to listen to by experts, but honestly, grow some fucking balls, both groups of you. But looking at these films, there is clearly music absolutely everywhere in these communities.
Now, clearly there are more ways to express your creativity and urge for social and cultural participation these days, but that would imply that, infinite wastelands of the internet or not, there should be less music not more. It’s just that back then we rarely, if ever, had access to the grass roots community level music from a hundred miles away, so we got on with enjoying what was going on in our own communities, even if it was no more worthy than an old dude blowing a tune on a half-empty Pepsi bottle.
So stop worrying about listening to everything, it makes you look a bit silly. Enjoy what’s happening around, whether your community is geographical or virtual or a combination of the two. Yeah, you’re going to miss out on some stuff, dry your eyes.
5. Last, but very much not least: fuck me, some of this was bloody amazing. Remind me again, why does anyone actually watch the X-Factor? The Alan Lomax Archive profile already has seventy-eight videos uploaded to YouTube, so go and watch them instead. And thanks so much to Screen Bandita (whose mailing list I recommend you sign up for here) and to Nathan Salsburg for an amazing evening.
