String Theory Blog

I’m contemplating re-engaging with this blog for the first time in a few years. Here’s an inspiring something I found to get started. I hope to find time to read Mr. Davis’s memoir. 

On March 16 and 17, Nashville’s Intersection will return to the stage for a landmark program exploring music from and inspired by the oldest civilization in the world. From The Ancient Valley features contemporary works by Persian composers, including two who will be on hand. Intersection board member and music journalist Craig Havighurst caught up with Kelly Corcoran to learn about the intent and content of the concerts.

What sparked the program for From The Ancient Valley?

Kelly Corcoran: Richard Danielpour, who is a renowned composer and one of our artistic advisers, told me he had written a piece that featured two Iranian musicians, Shahab Paranj, who plays the Tombak, a Persian drum, and Sohrab Pournazeri, an Iranian-Kurdish composer who plays the kamanche, a bowed instrument. Danielpour, who has some Persian descent in him, saw them in New York and was blown away. So he wrote a piece for the two of them and strings, and this was a perfect inspiration for Intersection. Plus we have the largest Kurdish population in the US here in Nashville. So that also suggested it would be really cool to do it here.

And Danielpour has a track record in Nashville right? The Nashville Symphony has worked with him.

KC: Oh yeah. The symphony recorded pieces by him and he’s done stuff at Blair. The ballet has done things with him too. He’s been to Nashville many times.

So then there was an unfortunate turn of events?

KC: Yes. As I went looking for other composers from Persian backgrounds, we got news that Sohrab’s entry to the US was going to be blocked by the new travel ban. Which made our hearts sink. We couldn’t do the Danielpour piece. But Shahab is also a composer and cellist, so we re-tooled by adding some of Shahab’s original pieces. And he will be there.

As you looked into complimentary music for Shahab’s musical outlook, was it easy to find pieces that had continuity with Intersection’s core mission of 20th and 21st century classical music?

KC: For sure. Every piece is in line with the kind of repertoire we do. For example, Reza Vali’s Folk Songs. Reza, who is also coming to the concert by the way, teaches at Carnegie Mellon. These works are awesome. One movement is just crystal glasses accompanying a singer. Elsewhere there is robust percussion, plus flute, clarinet and more. It’s a chamber ensemble. One sees frequent comparisons of Reza to Béla Bartok, in his interest in first-hand collection of folk music. He’s been adding to this body of folk-inspired work since the 70s. And he’s like Bartok in that he will not only take authentic folk tunes and integrate them directly, he will also create original music in the flavor of folk material. And that’s what Reza has done with these Persian inspired “folk songs.”

And there’s Henry Cowell here, the well-known American composer, so is it fair to say he’s more in a posture of borrowing from another culture by listening and engaging?

KC: Yes, absolutely. Cowell’s Persian Set is a classic example of a composer going to another culture and being impacted by it. And he’s honoring and exploring that culture. And he’s an important composer of the contemporary period, so we might have put him on any other program as well.

The title From The Ancient Valley points to the oldest culture on earth. What does that do for the way you’ll present the music and the way the audience will hear it?

KC: Well that came from Shahab. Because I really wanted input from him and from other folks in the community in terms of creating the art work and more. I’m always turned on by the concept of how art is on a continuum – how one piece of art inspires and connects to the next, and the next. I’m into how things are handed forward and how the people of our time take that which has come before and create something new. And From The Ancient Valley speaks to that ancestry, so to speak. Among the pieces by Shahab – one was written at the end of 2017, so it’s just finished. This is as contemporary as it gets.

How will this be similar or different from the Intersection shows so far?

I wasn’t born with prodigious musical gifts but I do think that whether by nature or nurture I grew up particularly well attuned to my sonic environment. I was one of those kids who actually did stop and listen to the birds without prompting. I loved rock and roll but I recoiled from excessive volume, even from that bumper sticker I saw way back when that said “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.” At the age I was supposed to crank it up, my intuition was to focus on the signal and filter out the noise. When I read about the intimate physiological and neurological relationship of audition, balance and orientation in three dimensional space, it felt like confirmation of something I’d felt rather than a revelation. And as the world’s grown relentlessly more visually oriented and noisier over my 50 years here, I cling ever more tightly to my ears as my primary way of knowing my present moment and feeling oriented in a vertigo-inducing world.

Veils & Vesper, the work being presented by Intersection between October 13 and 17 at the Belmont United Methodist Church on Acklen Ave., is going to be a hyper-indulgence in the centering power and esthetic potential of aural perception. Conceived (more than composed) by the immensely original Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams, V&V uses an array of speakers, computer-generated patterns and mathematical algorithms to surround the listener with shimmering, ever-changing flow. The composer calls it a “sensuous, ever-changing soundscape.” There is an over-arching structure of four sections adding up to a six-hour work, but for most visitors, the piece will have no beginning or end. You’ll come and spend time, however much or little as you like, in a novel, detached environment made of timbres and textures shifting in the sonorous space around you.

A few years ago, more than 90 percussionists performed Adams’s environmental masterwork Inuksuit over at Cumberland Park, and it ranks among my most cherished sonic memories – a shifting, surprising, three-dimensional massage of my mind’s ear. I’ve not experienced V&V yet, but everything I know about the composer and the passions of Intersection’s founder Kelly Corcoran suggests that it will be a dream and an escape. In today’s violent zeitgeist, that sounds more appealing than ever.

Full information and tickets here.

Some words from the composer here:

I was once again pleased to contribute program notes for the Americana Honors & Awards Lifetime Achievement winners for 2017. I wanted to give these a permanent home on the web, so to read my short essays on Robert Cray, HighTone Records founders Larry Sloven and Bruce Bromberg, Iris DeMent, Graham Nash, Van Morrison and the Hi Rhythm Section, click through to the jump and scroll. They’re all on one post. 

I was asked recently to write liner notes for the album The Story We Tell by bluegrass band Joe Mullins and the Radio Ramblers. I tried to say something a bit more timely and urgent than the usual review of accolades and aptitudes. They’re posted here in full. Please have a look at Joe’s web site and watch for him on the road.  I really appreciate the chance to contribute to the project. CH

There’s more than one way to be a traditionalist in bluegrass music, and I haven’t ever catalogued them, but I’m pretty sure Joe Mullins is all of them. Joe can harmonize ‘round a single microphone, lead a gospel quartet, shred a banjo instrumental and host an enthralling radio show. Folks, he can front a band in a plaid sport coat – and not with “look what I found at an East Nashville thrift store” posturing but with Jimmy Martin level sartorial dominance.

Okay, I’m indulging in some truthiness here. I don’t have first hand evidence that Joe wears plaid sport coats on stage. But I have imagined this. I’ll bet he has a few in the closet. He reminds me in the best way of the standup Midwestern guy my grandfather (mother’s side) would have been at my age (fifty-ish): A good egg with a sales patter. A character. A closer.

I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Joe through his appearances at our show Music City Roots, and from the get-go, he struck me as something more than another quality bluegrass band leader coming through town. He seemed to have a deep and intuitive sense of our show’s mission and our passion for live radio. It was fascinating to learn more about his background as a disk jockey and builder of an impressive bluegrass and classic country radio network. In his burnished voice and in his bright spirit, Joe is a broadcaster of the old school, and I think that’s as essential to the fortunes of roots music in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.

There’s another, more complicated set of associations that make me glad to know Joe and the Ramblers and their commitment to the timeless. It requires some delicacy and diplomacy to say it right. You know how in recent history everything has been made politics and how politics has been made toxic? Well I think it’s fair to say that Joe and I reside on different parts of the American spectrum. I’m told by talking heads and social scribes that I’m exactly the kind of urban dwelling, secular-minded, Mac using, coffee-shop-nerding, socially progressive journalist type who couldn’t possibly understand middle American conservative bluegrass ways of life or values. I’m told relentlessly by the right and the left that I have little in common with the demographic that includes Joe and probably most of his rural Ohio listeners.

Setting aside the obvious counter-evidence of our cordial professional friendship and mutual respect, the music proves that the construct is flawed. Traditional bluegrass, as performed and cultivated by Joe and his band, affirms our transcendent American connections, and in a stressful time I take huge solace in that. I don’t have to be a believer to feel the sincerity of “When God’s In It.” In the crisp lyrics of “In The Short Rows Now,” I am granted insight into the dedication and tedium of farming. I revel in the nostalgia and sentiment of “Songs That Will Get Em.” And when Joe sings here in “Neighbors” of his reverence for “good and gentle people” I am pulled away from my media feeds and their tempest of ire and irony. I join the band wholeheartedly in their harmonious call for more simplicity and honesty, less guardedness and suspicion. And I don’t have to change my vote or my sense of civics to accept this invitation. 

Joe and his superb band with its diverse strengths and multiple lead vocalists have patiently carved out a special place in the national scene. They’ve won some awards that you can look up, though fewer than they deserve and fewer than they will over time. What matters more is that Joe’s steady contributions and excellent performances are accumulating, year in and out. So is a larger story of an artist who’ll tend to traditional music for decades, something we very much need as the genre widens. Just remember that Joe and his band mates are standing sentinel over something even more profound than the cultural creation we cherish as bluegrass. They’re giving us all tuneful, truthful reasons to have faith in the future of the country. 

Craig Havighurst

We’ve lost an unreasonable number of cultural heroes in recent months. Still, I was jolted by the news last night that Nat Hentoff had passed away (surrounded by family, listening to Billie Holiday, according to his son Nick who announced the news), at age 91.

I can’t think of any writer who opened more doors in my mind or who influenced my concepts of citizenship, democracy and music more than Mr. Hentoff. I genuinely grieve at this passing of one of our wisest elders. He stood for and stood up for everything I’ve come to cherish about art, freedom and the American story.

This morning I note just a sampling of lines from his classic 1961 book The Jazz Life, which I first read so many years ago.

“Jazz offers its players more freedom to express who they are – at any moment – than any other form of Western music.”

“I’ve interviewed several hundred (jazz musicians) and most of them make lucid and often vividly graphic sense about their music and their lives.”

“The music is so personal that with the best players, their instruments have become extensions of themselves.”

“Jazz clubs have become islands of at least acquaintanceship between Negroes and whites. It is instructive to see how in most cities this unintentional function of a jazz room alarms police.”

These sentiments and ideas seem commonplace to me now, but in many cases the writing of Nat Hentoff is where I first encountered them. They were lightning bolts that cleared whole channels of my mind’s architecture. These tidbits implicate nothing less than the idea of America and the sacredness of creativity. And so it never seemed odd to me that about the time I was discovering jazz late in high school, I also found myself drawn to Hentoff’s Sweet Land of Liberty column in the Village Voice. This was my first grounding in the First Amendment - my guide to seeing beyond its mere wording and into its complexities, that awful ideas deserved equal protection and that there could be such a thing as pernicious political correctness. Fundamental distinctions like the difference between being accused and convicted or between a legal and illegal police search, injected themselves into my bloodstream thanks to Nat Hentoff.

And then he could write lyrical, unsentimental sentences about the sound of Lester Young’s horn or Duke Ellington’s band that helped me listen with deeper understanding and emotional response.

He was an independent iconoclast, often the scourge of liberals as well as conservatives. He wrote for 50 years for the Village Voice and then took his Liberty column to World News Daily, a hyper-libertarian home for some bald-ass cranks. Hentoff was fiercely opposed to capital punishment AND abortion. He supported Ferguson protesters and criticized the militarization of the police. Yet he literally called for the impeachment of Barack Obama over NSA spying on Americans and executive overreach on drone strikes. And sadly, there’s a case to be made. There’s a fierce and courageous consistency in his thinking. I certainly don’t agree with everything he wrote. That’s not even remotely the point. He never failed to teach me something that fit into a bigger, largely consistent vision rooted in the Constitution and enlightenment values.

One day in 2007, when I had a production office in a house on Music Row, my phone rang and I answered in a state of pre-caller ID naiveté and a voice on the other end said, “This is Nat Hentoff.” I tried not to have a seizure. He had read a column of mine in the Wall Street Journal about a project by the saxophone player Bill Evans called Soulgrass. Mr. Hentoff wanted to tell me that he too was interested in the historic and formal parallels and overlaps of bebop and bluegrass. I had the pleasure of telling him that we’d had an editor in common: my wife, who’d spent nine years on the WJS arts desk, often working on his pieces (which he delivered to the last in typed manuscript form, by the way). We chatted for five or ten minutes and he bid me a polite farewell.

The following is a reply and rebuttal to an essay published Dec. 14, at MTV.com. The art comes from the original piece. 

I found Charles Aaron’s epic discourse on Americana at MTV.com provocative if perplexing on first reading. I was interested that a veteran rock and pop writer – a long-time music editor for SPIN - would spend so much ink on our musical community. But what might have been an important exploration of Americana and race – a conversation we should always be having - reveals itself on closer scrutiny as poorly reported and unfairly argued.

Mr. Aaron begins by introducing Adia Victoria, a Southern-raised, Nashville-based artist whose lone album suggests influences, in his estimation, of Skip James and, in hers, of Nina Simone and Fiona Apple. She’s also the cover artist on the new blues-focused Oxford American music issue, which is awesome for her. Maybe, he speculates, she’d be “a natural fit for a certain, recently prospering style and format – ‘Americana,’ which exists to emphasize the roots of country that get trampled or ignored by its Nashville pop-radio iteration.”

Hey, maybe so. That’d be exciting. Except the artist herself has no truck for Americana. She says with acid: “I’m not interested in engaging with people through a commodified genre where it’s savvily packaged as a lifestyle that people buy into. It’s not about the music; it’s how you feel about yourself – you’re more open, progressive. You like country music, but not that country music, blah blah blah.”

She’s entitled to her opinion, but the article strongly suggests that she’s formed that opinion from a chilly distance, so she may well be wrong or misguided. Mr. Aaron reports that when Victoria posted her first music, “Team Americana showed interest.” Yet she explicitly stiff armed the idea of entrée into the sector for the reasons above. So is Mr. Aaron presenting us with a story of a woman of color who was treated coldly by the Americana community? Quite the opposite. If he has such a story, I would listen. I would join him in calling out the conditions or people behind it.

Mr. Aaron is enthusiastic about a lot of Americana artists, exhibiting an admirably wide view of the format’s possibilities. But he defines Americana as a “crucial star-making base” and a “mainstream farm team.” I’ve been working with this community for 15 years and if these were its priorities, rather than building platforms and support for authentic artistry, I’d have drifted away long ago. Americana, as manifested by the artists, bookers, agents, managers, radio and label folks I know (hundreds of them), stands opposed to commodified music and packaging-over-substance, and it’s kind of depressing to have such a prominent article out there asserting otherwise based on cynicism instead of observation and inquiry.

Mr. Aaron’s real issue though is the “egregious absence” of people of color in the Americana artist or fan base. And if this piece had come out in 1998, I might not have bridled as I do now at those absolutist terms. One of the earliest conversations I can remember having with a founding board member at convention number one or two was about how badly and aggressively Americana needed to embrace blues, gospel, soul and R&B to become a legitimate forum for all American roots music. We began from a base in country and bluegrass music, whose whiteness was a historic fact long before we got here. That is not an endorsement of any status quo, but the conversation ought to be about what Americana is doing and has done. I’m not arguing that we’re close to where we should be in the diversity of Americana artists or audience, but I can tell you and Mr. Aaron that it’s been on our minds for years, and the venues are welcoming spaces.

Yet on this crucial subject, Mr. Aaron blows off easily discernible facts to support the most injurious and false charge in his article. He writes: “Aside from a smattering of soul legends taking late-career victory laps (Mavis Staples, William Bell, Booker T., the late Allen Toussaint), fewer artists of color have been enthusiastically received in the “Americana” subdivision during the 2000s than in mainstream country of the 1970s.”

This is absurd. Mr. Aaron himself cites at one point the Alabama Shakes as Americana, featuring the extraordinary singer/songwriter/guitarist Brittany Howard. Unmentioned is the black string band revival powered by the Carolina Chocolate Drops or the solo careers it launched of Rhiannon Giddens and Dom Flemmons. Valerie June, a pal of the North Mississippi All-Stars who sounds not unlike Adia Victoria at times, is a core Americana artist. Madisen Ward & The Mama Bear were spot-lit at a recent AmericanaFest. The late, great Sharon Jones was a favorite at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Telluride’s iconic festival. Nashville’s McCrary Sisters formed a full-on touring group for the first time in their distinguished careers with encouragement from Americana colleagues. (Performances by father Sam McCrary’s Fairfield Four are always among the best attended showcases of AmericanaFest, by the way.) One of the more buzzed about new artists at last Fall’s festival was Yola Carter, an English country soul singer. I hear enthusiasm for Hatian-American cellist/songwriter Leyla McCalla. And this is far from an exhaustive list.

Furthermore, why belittle Americana’s efforts to celebrate and showcase the icons of soul? How can one call recent work by Mavis Staples or Candi Staton “late career victory laps?” when it sounds to me like some of the best work they’ve ever done, made in joyful collaboration with Americana leaders like Jeff Tweedy and John Leventhal? William Bell and Bobby Rush were put on pedestals in Nashville last Fall. This type of outreach and evangelism is what might get younger artists of color applying to Americana showcases and festivals and more audiences of color hanging out at live events. It is not to be overlooked.

Finally, Mr. Aaron veers into the surreal by asserting that Americana’s true roots are in Southern Rock and the Confederate flag-waving of 1970s Lynyrd Skynyrd. That will leave hundreds of Americana backers and AMA members slack-jawed and incredulous. Sure, many of us love the Allman Brothers because they’ve been a spectacular band. But if someone suggested “Freebird” or “Sweet Home Alabama” as a final jam at the Americana Honors & Awards, they’d be laughed out of the room. Hell, I grew up in North Carolina with Skynyrd and .38 Special and Molly Hatchet in the musical foreground and I even liked some of it, but I can testify now that for me those were an artistic dead end, not my bridge to American folk and roots music by any means. For all of its (appropriate) vagueness of borders, Americana is pretty clear about its seminal figures and heroes, from Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. Yes, they’re white. That doesn’t mean anyone can drape the stars and bars over their backs.

Mr. Aaron and Adia Victoria seem to join one another in the unexamined premise that Americana is a “commodified” format because some of its artists have recently enjoyed commercial success. But anyone in our world would quickly tell you that those trajectories are due to the power and vision and tenacity of the artists themselves. AMA has cheered and bolstered and showcased. An uncoordinated group of DJs and talent bookers have backed artists based on their own instincts and their sense of their discerning audiences. But intimations (and Mr. Aaron’s article is full of them) that some star chamber of avaricious executives is hand-picking tomorrow’s winners in this format are full of shit. To portray Americana as some sort of corporate board that’s been anxiously awaiting a glorious day of riches, guided by a marketing operation insults one of the most interesting and constructively creative efforts of 21st century culture.

To be sure, we must continue to work to make Americana reflective of ALL American roots traditions, including the blues, black gospel, Creole, New Orleans, Native American. But it IS happening and it’s incredible that over more than 4,000 words, Mr. Aaron couldn’t find time to ask about how that effort is going.

As for Adia Victoria, I see that Spotify included her music on its Best of 2016 Folk & Americana playlist and that she shared that on her Facebook page. She is absolutely welcome to the community any time. She may or may not find purchase, but nobody I know would dream of putting her in a box.

It’s back. String Theory returns to the City Winery lounge on July 18, which happens to be World Listening Day. If you’re in Nashville come on out. 

I’m honored to have written the new bio for guitarist Bryan Sutton’s web site attending the release of his new album The More I Learn. He’s been one of my favorite musicians for years. Read the full thing here:  http://www.bryansutton.com/about/

About — SHEL

Discover the Ondes Martenot with Intersection April 28.

I’m a timbre hound. New sounds and rare instruments stir me. And I’ve found that in this pursuit,  I’m more open than some to the charms of analog synthesizers. I see few obvious reasons why a string or pipe has more inherent value as a source of vibration than a vacuum tube. So I was surprised and excited to learn about the Ondes Martenot, an instrument I’d never heard of until Kelly Corcoran determined to bring not one but two of them to Nashville (From Canada!) for a concert on April 28 by her contemporary ensemble Intersection. Now you might say I’m oscillating with anticipation.

The Ondes Martenot is a hyper-articulate cousin of the spooky, spacey Theremin, introduced a few years after that more famous instrument in 1928. Its French inventor Maurice Martenot was a cellist and a radio telegraph operator. His creation could be considered a love child of those two pursuits.

I’m no expert on this stuff, but as I understand it, the player of both the OM and Theremin is interfering with an electrical field. The OM was developed over years to do this with a keyboard, a sliding ribbon, switchable timbre selectors and a left hand spring-loaded button that smoothly controls volume and enables wild effects on attack, sustain and decay. Then there’s a bit that will make electric guitar players envious; the player can switch among speakers, each of which has its own dramatic effect. One is a simple paper cone. One is metal. One is a palm-shaped wooden box with sympathetic lyre strings. Together the full instrument evokes something Dr. Seuss might have drawn, and it can sound like a flute, a buzzy accordion, a wine glass being rubbed about the edge, a bell choir in a church crypt and many other things one couldn’t name. It can tweak the air with an explicitly electric edge or float with an uncannily woody tone. Far out doesn’t cover it.

Like the much more famous Moog synthesizers of almost forty years later, the OM can only produce one note at a time, so it is more like a cello than the organ it resembles. But in the hands of a good player (as rare as million dollar coins) it has an expressive range and tenderness that I’ve never heard from a Moog and a complex texture that seems to come from the 19th century and the 21st at the same time. That’s why for years it was the go-to sound for science fiction futurism, including the main theme of the original Star Trek TV show, where the Ondes Martenot was paired in counterpoint with French horn.

On April 28, Intersection will offer a program of five pieces for Ondes Martenot and chamber ensemble, featuring works composed between 1933 and 2004. The most recent is the easiest to find online and the one that ought to provoke the most vivid interest as it was composed by Jonny Greenwood, the imaginative guitarist from Radiohead. He’s brought the OM into a half dozen Radiohead albums and brought it to bear on some of his high profile film score work.

Realizing the Ondes Martenot was conceived in the 1920s should recalibrate our idea of how edgy and forward thinking that era actually was. Realizing the instrument has lain in obscurity for decades should prod us into listening more actively for fresh tone colors and textures. Because this odd and elaborate instrument isn’t just a curiosity. It found a way into Jonny Greenwood’s heart and it’s rapidly finding a way into mine. 

Oh yeah. You’ve come this far so read this:

Compared to the arena productions that dominate the entertainment-scape, Intersection’s exotic, daring and exciting programs are a bargain. But they’re not free. Intersection is a startup arts organization with a bold vision and a tall, important challenge. Classical music and composed music are critical parts of Music City and the national culture. I’m part of a team of people in Nashville who are reaching out to friends and allies for a modest but powerful donation. We need financial help now. I’m challenged to raise just $150 but I think you guys collectively can beat that. This is part of an ongoing general expansion of conceptual and art-first music. Some great things are going to happen this year. I urge you to be part of it in the way that helps most. My Crowdrise campaign link is this entire paragraph. Click and give. Thank you so much.

 Here’s more about the instrument by Caroline Martel, who’s made a documentary about the OM. 

Here’s Jonny Greenwood’s ‘Smear’, one of five pieces on the April 28 program.

Shazam doesn’t get talked about much these days, because it’s more than a decade old and well established as the leading music identifier app. I’ve used it for years (with no diminishing sense of wonder that it works), and over time I’ve built up a pretty hefty list of tags, and it occurred to me scrolling through that list the other day that a person’s Shazam tags make a fascinating fingerprint of their musical mind. It’s not like a record collection, which has been culled and curated. Shazam tags are more like a brain scan of sounds you find appealing at an instinctive level - your musical id. What makes you do double take and go through the trouble to find out “What the hell is THAT?”

So as a little experiment, I spent an evening going through my tags from the past two years, seeing what the music sounded like to me now and whether I’d ever followed up on the tags I’d made. As I went, I pulled them all together into a very eclectic Spotify playlist, which I’m sharing here:

https://open.spotify.com/user/chavighurst/playlist/64uT3HsMxeMltLWU8w6GPT

My challenge to you is to do the same. If you’re a Shazam and Spotify user, build a playlist from your Shazam tags, with no skipping over anything just because you might think it’s cheesy or dorky now.