Hard Traveling

Hello folks--we hope your week is off to a good start. Unfortunately, the AOTR laptop is currently awaiting repairs at a local shop...which is going to delay this week's articles. We will try to amend this situation tomorrow; thanks for your patience in the interim. All the best, Matthew Fluharty, Editor

Maskers, Occupiers, Photographers

Painting a Thanksgiving Masker, 11 / 29 / 1911; Library of Congress flickr photostream

This Library of Congress archived  photograph captures a Thanksgiving tradition from one hundred years ago - children dressing up as Thanksgiving Maskers. In the era before Halloween rose to its cultural prominence, children would dress up at hobos and go door to door on Thanksgiving afternoon, asking for pennies and apples.

Thanksgiving Maskers Scramble for Pennies; LOC flickr photostream

The Bowery Boys: New York City History has recently published an excellent overview of masking in the city. Here's short excerpt from their article, I'll include their helpful links:

Newspapers advertised 'Thanksgiving masks' and 'lithographed character masks' for the tots. These featureless disguises were often sold in candy stores alongside holiday related treats like spiced jelly gums, opera drops, crystallized ginger and tinted hard candies.

"This play of masking is deeply rooted in the New York child," said Appleton's Magazine in 1909. "All toy shops carry a line of hideous and terrifying false faces or 'dough faces' as they are termed on the East Side."

Boys frequently wore girls clothing on this occasion, "tog[ging] themselves out in worn-out finery of their sisters" and spending their afternoon "gamboling in awkward mimicry of their sisters to the casual street piano."

The New York Times in 1899 found the streets filled with costumed tricksters that Thanksgiving. "There were Fausts, Filipinos, Mephistos, Boers, Uncle Sams, John Boers, Harlequins, bandits, sailors... In poorer quarters a smear of burned cork and a dab of vermilion sufficed for babbling celebrants." 

Thanksgiving Maskers; LOC flickr photostream

Scramble For Pennies - Thanksgiving; LOC flickr photostream

It's worth considering the reaction to this element of urban community in the mainstream press and city officials of that era - in an excerpt from this article posted in the comments section to the Library of Congress flickr photostream:

"Progressive era reformers regarded child begging on Thanksgiving as immoral and thought children who engaged in it should be arrested. Why were parents not able to control their offspring? the New York Times in 1903 wanted to know. The newspaper castigated parents who allowed children to demand treats or money as indecent. The police tried to enforce a ban against begging. In response to complaints from the public, the clergy, school superintendents, and classroom teachers issued warnings. The New York Times in November of 1930 worried that demanding coins could teach children to become professional beggars and blackmailers and that children were annoying the public. Begging, decided the paper, was a "malicious influence on the morals of children of the city." Boys' clubs and other child welfare agencies organized parades and costume contests as alternative activities. As a result of these efforts, child begging on Thanksgiving finally disappeared by the 1940s."

On this Black Friday, these gatherings and scramblings of Maskers makes a complicated parallel with the Americans congregating inside and outside of retail outlets today. Both the media forces behind the Occupy movement, on one side, and the conservative press, on the other, provide critical readings - yet each reading of these swarms of shoppers neglect the fact that many folks - perhaps out of work, burdened with debt - see these Black Friday deals as their best chance to afford these consumer goods. Certainly, this cultural phenomenon should be examined, but we should also recognize the force of necessity behind those lines of midnight shoppers.

A Thanksgiving Teaser

Folks, today is a day of rest at Art of the Rural Headquarters. We hope everyone has a peaceful and restive long weekend with family and friends.

Here's a teaser for a Thanksgiving ritual I will offer tomorrow that reminds me of one of my favorite photograhers. More soon...

In Brief: The Food Of A Younger Land

As folks may be preparing for family meals in the next few days, here's some news on The Food of a Younger Land, a book by Mark Kurlansky that examines a national food culture project initiated by the WPA that included the likes of Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, and many local writers. Here's a portion of Maureen Corrigan's introduction to the work on NPR:

Nine years ago, when Kurlansky was doing research for an anthology of food writing, the author says he stumbled upon the dusty archives of the America Eats project — an undertaking of the Depression-era Federal Writers Project which was a wing of Franklin Roosevelt's WPA. The Federal Writers Project provided employment for over 6,000 out-of-work writers, among them Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston and Nelson Algren. During the 1930s, the Federal Writers Project produced those now classic guidebooks to all 48 states, but by 1939 it needed another assignment. That's when Katherine Kellock, the director of the program, came up with the idea of a guide to American food and eating traditions which would shed a light on everyday American society. 

A great idea; but America Eats was never completed. The deadline for all copy was Thanksgiving week, 1941; the writers, of course, dragged their heels and then Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II blew America Eats out of the water. The rough copy — typed, on onionskin — that writers across the country had sent into Washington was boxed up and shelved.

In this interview with Mr. Kurlansky in GOOD, offers a taste of America Eats:

Each entry offers a portrait of American custom and American food, before highways, modern agribusiness, or fast food. What people ate was seasonal and, above all, cultural-the traditions from one state to the next varied wildly, and reveal undiluted customs that are all but gone now. So, for example, you've got Choctaw, Sioux, and Chippewa foods; Nebraska pig fries; Florida hush puppies; Georgia possum and taters; and "Washington Wildcat Parties," whose signature draw was fresh cougar meat, which apparently tasted "a little like veal" with a "stronger odor."

Below, please find a link to an hour-long conversation with food columnist Rich Nichols, compliments of C-SPAN's Book TV:

Rural - Urban: Chris Crocker

Still From Me At The Zoo

When Michael Stipe and Mike Mills recently sat down to talk with Pitchfork about the R.E.M.'s retirement, I read that Mr. Stipe is working to help produce Me At The Zoo, a documentary about the internet phenomenon Chris Crocker (of "leave Britney alone" fame). 

What surprised me about the film's narrative is the backstory of Mr. Crocker: he's from eastern Tennessee, where he was raised by his Penecostal grandparents. Though he has engaged with various celebrity-media outlets (and is reportedly becoming an adult film star), he lives there -- and not in LA. He doesn't disclose his exact location, as he has received numerous threats for being openly gay, but he reportedly lives in a small town in this region.

It remains to be seen how the filmmakers choose to address the rural - urban dynamic (or the regional, Appalachian dynamic) but this might be a documentary for folks to keep on their radar. Here's the trailer:

Frybread: In Film, Art, Architecture, And Beyond

Photograph by Visible Narrative, from RPM's Frybread Stand flickr gallery

Revolutions Per Minute: Indigenous Music Culture is a relatively new site that's offering a wealth of news on contemporary music and arts. One of the recurring features on RPM is #frybreadfriday; a multimedia series that explores the centrality of this delicacy across Native American culture. From playwrights to rappers, interpretive dance to comic book art, RPM has opened up a vibrant discussion on this relationship between food culture and the arts. The photograph above is included within RPM's Frybread Stand gallery, a collection that demonstrates how this food is also influencing vernacular art and architecture.

One project that's appeared across a few #frybreadfridays has been Holt Hamilton's More Than Frybread, a hilarious mockumentary currently set to be released in early 2012. Here's an introduction to the film:

The First Annual State of Arizona Frybread Championship, sponsored by the World Wide Frybread Association, will be holding the first ever state frybread competition. All twenty-two federally recognized Arizona tribes will be sending their best frybread maker to represent their nation and to compete for the coveted frybread title. The winner will receive $10,000 cash, the official WWFA frybread trophy and a spot to compete for the National Title, which could possibly then lead to a shot at the World Wide Frybread Championships later in the year.

Five contestants; Buddy Begaye (Navajo), Sharmayne Cruz (Tohono O’odham), Betti Muchvo (Hopi), Sunshine Smith (Yavapai-Apache), and Sammy Powsky (Hualapai) allow a small documentary team to follow them as they travel the frybread road to the state finals. You won’t want to miss this exciting, never before seen, frybread event of the year!

The folks behind this film have made the World Wide Frybread Association a reality -- follow the link for videos, maps and further information.

Again, there's much more to explore on RPM - it has become one of our favorite sites, and we highly recommend a visit. 

Hiss Golden Messenger: Poor Moon, Rich Harvest

MC Taylor and his son; Paradise of Bachelors

Earlier this month, Hiss Golden Messenger released their fourth record: Poor Moon. It's a meditative and beguiling collection of songs that claims a space within some noticeable traditions, yet stands outside of a full-membership within a rock, country, or folk genre. 

This may speak to the boundary crossing of MC Taylor, an accomplished musician whose path led him out of San Francisco and into the folklore program at the University of North Carolina. Mr. Taylor, who collaborates in HGM with former Court & Spark bandmate Scott Hirsch, has settled in the rural Piedmont town of Pittsboro, North Carolina. Mr. Taylor wrote these songs at the kitchen table of his farmhouse, during spare hours while his son slept. These songs (some of which appear in stripped-down, field-recording form on his previous LP Bad Debt) speak to this context, but also exceed their creation myth in startling ways.

From the songs to their sequence, and even to the material object itself, Poor Moon is a stunningly complete work. The LP (or download) was brought into the world by the Paradise of Bachelors label, the same folks whose first release was one of last year's stand-out records, Said I Had A Vision: The Songs and Labels of David Lee. While the transition from a collection of North Carolina soul to Hiss Golden Messenger would be an unlikely bridge for some record labels, it makes perfect sense here. The Bachelors, Brendan Greaves and Jason Perlmutter, come from a folklore and record-collecting background, and their attention to place and culture expands how we think about southern music and reveals surprising commonalities between local soul 45s and the rooted meditations of Mr. Taylor.

The limited-edition, hand-numbered LP release, which also features illustrations by UK-based visual artist Alex Jako, offers a few things to hold on to while listening. All of this culminates in a physical presence that sets a visual analog for the songs themselves - so clear when reviewing the album art alongside the opening track, "Blue Country Mystic."

David Bowie has called the music of Hiss Golden Messenger "mystical country," "an eerie yellowing photograph," some well-deserved praise that will no doubt be mentioned in many reviews. While such a quote seems to get at the atmosphere of the first side of Poor Moon, even the lines from this opening track suggest this is a "mystical country" with a vertical depth. In just a few lines we understand this mystic may also be a "little wandering one," possessed of a vision leading "from the city into the mountains," and that, by song's end, the singer himself becomes the mystic. Between the "wise one" whose image opens the opening song of Poor Moon, and the "little one" who follows, we discover a powerful metaphor for this collection of songs - a kind of spiritual search that reaches backwards while also reaching forwards to a new generation just beginning to learn their language and understand their place. The singer stands where so many of us stand: in between tradition and change, the past and future, looking for a foothold.

Such complex ideas are punctuated by the expert collaborations of over a dozen musicians. From lap steel to gongs, pump organ to saxophone, their contributions offer a coherent counterpoint to the lyrics. We hear many of these collaborators on "Drummer Down," [the third track locatable in the player above] and their instrumentation alongside Mr. Taylor's voice begs repeat listenings. After a few, though, the lyrics emerge - and the floor falls out from that taut, joyful rhythm:

Well it's alright now, the pain is gone.
It's alright now, little one. 
Riven from my body, as a ghost I dwell,
But my home, O I know I loved well

They drew a hex around my body, a hex around my soul,
called me from a place where I did dwell,
driven by my mind, down roads I didn't know
they were roads that I would never see again.

These cycles of birth and death, child to ghost, recur across Poor Moon - as do certain specific images and end-rhymes - and offer another testament to how complete, and how cyclical, a statement is captured on this LP.

Barring Mr. Bowie's words, and the comparisons to The Greatful Dead (and Canned Heat's "Poor Moon"), perhaps one of the most moving ghosts within this project is that of William Butler Yeats, an amateur folklorist, lifelong student of the occult, and, of course, a Nobel poet laureate. While many rock records get mileage by quoting a few lines from "The Second Coming," Poor Moon lives out a Yeatsian poetics without ever having to talk about slouching to Bethlehem. Beyond a line that may or may not reference Yeats's extraordinary late poem "What Then?" we're left with an overwhelming notion that the poet's ideas on lunar phases and their relationships to time and personality might be lurking beneath these songs. One of the rewards of Poor Moon is how it will send you to other sources, across mediums.



In the context of The Art of the Rural, and our interest in the rural-urban exchange, Hiss Golden Messenger's reading of Yeats offers a context and look forward to how else rural folk tradition could be honored and made new within contemporary music. In correspondence with Mr. Taylor, he confirmed that Yeats was an influence on these songs (along with Wendell Berry and the Bible); the Irish poet's own use of folklore and Biblical reference was a mixture of Victorian antiquarianism and a kind of cultural nationalism where the visions of Irish peasants signified how rural space was un-English, inscrutable, and the anchor of Irishness. In short, it was a pastoral, not that far from the pastorals that still flourish in the American arts today.

While some musicians like Sam Amidon take a more curatorial approach in relation to this complicated inheritance, Hiss Golden Messenger's music finds a deeper source, what Yeats himself found in the vernacular: "a powerful and passionate syntax." This selection from an interview with Emma Brown in Interview magazine, where Mr. Taylor discusses his field recording work in North Carolina, seems to suggest the common philosophical ground of his field work and his music:

Emma Brown: Have you always been interested in folklore?

MC Taylor: I guess I was, if you want to consider just being a really obsessive music fan and listener and collector and reader a folklorist, which it sort of is.  But when I went to graduate school, my definition of folklore both narrowed and deepened. We didn't talk about things like myths, not a single time, that's not what it's about. It's more about expressive and/or vernacular culture and how it's deployed in the public realm. To get a little academic about it! [laughs] I'm not looking for people that are old and possibly the only ones playing a certain type of music, I'm not looking for the last remnants of an old ancient story. If people are interested in a certain kind of cultural expression, whether it be low-riding, or hip-hop, or bluegrass music, that's what I'm interested in documenting. Obviously it's important to that group of people, so the question is how to they interact with that art form, what do they do with it, that sort of thing.

There's a gorgeous confluence of art forms in Poor Moon - poetry, music, and folklore - but not what folks might expect. There are indeed field recordings here, but no instruments, no human voices are heard. In interludes between the songs on the second side we hear cicadas, birds, and a rainstorm, as the rhythm of one subtly shifts into the rhythm of another. As these songs conclude with questions of religion and redemption, these field recordings not only place the singer back in the North Carolina Piedmont but they suggest how the largest, most cosmic cycles are rooted in our local hills. That knowledge is part gift, part revelation, part responsibility. As the LP or CD spins in its cycle, alongside that lush album art, we're reminded of the process inherent in what we create, what we cultivate. And we keep listening.