Almanac For Moderns: The Homing Instinct

May Sixth

What can it be, this homing instinct, that brings the birds back to us every year? That brings the wrens and the swallows to the very same nests around the house and barn? That leads the carrier pigeon home across a hundred, five hundred miles? 

The trainer of pigeons has something significant to tell about this. He cannot release his birds for the first time in Moscow and expect them to fly home to Paris. He must first take them not a mile from home, and when they have learned all landmarks thoroughly, he may take them thirty or forty miles away. Each pigeon must be educated in its route. Birds, then, in their mirgrations would seem to have a memory for landmarks, and flying very high as they do, they see so much country in one little eyeful that the memory need not be burdened with a crushing weight of detail.

But the slippery question of the ways of birds upon their majestic travels will not rest as this. If it be true that the young of the season, who have never made the flight before, often travel in little jaunty bands of adolescents, as they appear to, without the oldsters accompanying them, then memory of landmarks cannot be all the story. Something else draws on their restless wings across the sea and the unbroken forest, some feeling in their light, air-filled bones, that sweeps them north in a grand phalanx in spring, and surges south with them in autumn.

More information on our Almanac For Moderns project and the work of Donald Culross Peattie can be found here.

Contexts: How The Magnet Changed A Village

 a mural outside Aracataca, Colombia, the hometown of Gabriel García Márquez

Many year later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village, and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display their new inventions. First they brought the magnet. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands, who introduced himself as Melquíades, put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging two metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots, pans, tongs, and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge, and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades magical irons. "Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." Jose Arcadio Buendia, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: "It won't work for that." But José Arcadio Buendia at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Ursula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him. "Very soon we'll have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house," her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region, even the riverbed, dragging the two iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd. When José Arcadio Buendia and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman's hair around its neck. 

This is the first paragraph of Gabriel García Márquez's  Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), a book no doubt familiar to many of our readers. While it's one of the twentieth century's finest works of literary art, it also tells a grand Genesis-like story of rural place: how it deals with cultural and intellectual change, how it manages the conflicted magnet-like pull between insularity and exchange with an increasingly modern, urbanized, and technologically advanced world.

The novel's Macondo is inspired by Mr. Márquez's hometown of Aracataca, Colombia. His coming-to-terms with this place and its colonial past gave birth to the rich emotional variety of his masterpiece. As he has said, and as muralists have recorded above, "I feel Latin American from whatever country, but I have never renounced the nostalgia of my homeland: Aracataca, to which I returned one day and discovered that between reality and nostalgia was the raw material for my work."

Artists from across the globe have responded to this imperative to find the "raw materials" in their local culture. Ghanian writer Nii Ayikwei Parkes once told The Guardian that One Hundred Years of Solitude "taught the west how to read a reality alternative to their own, which in turn opened the gates for other non-western writers like [himself] and other writers from Africa and Asia." I would argue that, amongst Mr. Marquez's lush, enveloping magic-realist narrative we also come to understand how a writer from rural Columbia may have taught the city "to read a reality alternative to their own." When reading these opening lines, we see a parable for the ways in which many rural communities, from Columbia to Appalachia to China, have embraced--or have been forced to embrace--"new inventions," often resulting in contradictory ends. 

This is the first in a new series of articles we're calling "Contexts," pieces of art found from beyond the contemporary American experience that, though perhaps distant in time and geography, have important lessons to impart to our understanding of rural place and its arts and culture. 

We would love to hear folks suggestions for this series--and also to hear what American works (or art, music, literature) you might think are "equal" or parallel to Mr. Máquez's masterpiece. Which  "opened the gates" for you? Also, if we're thinking about One Hundred Years of Solitude in these terms, what is the great Genesis-like story of rural America?

Thanks again for reading The Art of the Rural; I hope everyone enjoys this new series and finds it useful to their own conversations and visions of our shared rural space.

Remembering Hazel Dickens

As most of our readers know, Hazel Dickens passed away about two weeks ago, on April 22nd. Amid the many remembrances, here are a few sites that add to spectrum of praise. 

I'd first recommend the Southern Folklife Collection's upcoming series of features on their Field Trip South blog. They are linking to a number of other articles, as well as using their rich archives to offer another view into this remarkable woman's life:

Over the next two weeks, Field Trip South will pay tribute to Hazel Dickens by sharing a variety of materials from her life and career that appear across numerous collections at the SFC.  We hope these glimpses–highlighting her struggles starting a music career while working a day job, her wicked sense of humor, and her truly remarkable music–contribute to the continued appreciation of the living legacy she leaves behind.

Also, as posted on our daily Facebook updates, the aforementioned Dust-to-Digital record label has started an online radio station via Soundcloud--and it features many of the finest vernacular music programs streaming online. Nathan Salsburg's excellent Root Hog or Die radio show is included; last week's show focused on Ms. Dickens's music. Please follow that link to the radio show, as I can't embed it below, and make sure to enjoy the other programs on Dust-to-Digital's Soundcloud page. We can't go wrong being led through the tradition by folks like Mr. Salsburg or Joe Bussard or Art Rosenbaum.

As the Southern Folklife Collection also mentions in their piece, please also consider Appalshop filmmaker Mimi Pickering's Hazel Dickens: It's Hard To Tell The Singer From The Song. Here's an excerpt from Ms. Pickering's film:

Related Articles:

Appalshop and the Mine War on Blackberry Creek

Root Hog or Die

Dust-to-Digital

Hamper McBee: The Good Old-Fashioned Way

Holler to the Hood & The Thousand Kites Project 

Dancing the Dust to Digital

Brother Claude Ely

selection from the cover of Ain't No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely

Last night NPR's All Things Considered featured a Radio Diary with Macel Ely, the great-nephew of the legendary preacher and gospel singer Brother Claude Ely. Here, from last night's broadcast, is the founding moment of Brother Claude Ely's artistic and spiritual mission: 

Claude Ely was born in 1922 in Puckett's Creek, Va. When he was 12 years old, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and told that he was going to die as a child. His uncle Leander gave him an old guitar, which he would practice on his sickbed.

"Even as a child, he really had a very strong personal relationship with God," says Roberta Pratt, who was a member of the Cumberland Pentecostal church and knew the family.

When he was sick, Pratt says, Claude's family gathered in his room where he was in bed and prayed for him. And then, according to Pratt, Claude said, "I'm not going to die." And he started singing a song.

Ely says he learned that the family felt that God had supernaturally healed Claude. And they believed that God had given him a song: "There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold my Body Down."

I first came across Brother Claude Ely's music on Dust-to-Digital's essential box set Goodbye, Babylon, and I was excited to learn that these same folks were working to release a book-length biography authored by Macel Ely with companion recordings. Ain't No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely is now available.

As suggested above, "There Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" is his most iconic recording, and it's a perfect introduction: a song that just takes a hold over the listener.

Here is Johnny Cash's version--the last song The Man In Black ever recorded. 

In this final clip, Macel Ely speaks with The Knoxville News Sentinel about how he came to write a book on his great-uncle's life and music: 

Honoring The Treaty: Aaron Huey and The Pine Ridge Reservation

photograph by Aaron Huey

All my first assignments were about poverty and gangs, and all those first stories skimmed the surface. And now, six years later, now that I know the real story, I realize that mainstream American magazines won't print it. The real story is the history: the history of broken treaties, prisoner-of-war camps and massacres. It's too hard to look at, it's too dark, it's too layered and too painful to fit between shampoo ads and car commercials.  This project has reached the limits of print media.

Thanks to the High Country News and their Facebook page, I've had a chance to learn more about the work of Aaron Huey: both his photographs and his commitment to Native American communities. The High Country News linked to this recent piece by Miki Johnson of Popular Photography, which, in its opening paragraphs, expertly sets this complicated scene:

In April 2005, Aaron Huey drove into Manderson, South Dakota, the roughest town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and started knocking on doors. "Hey wasichu (white boy), what are you doing with that camera?" yelled a young Lakota man covered in tattoos.

"Just looking for stories," Huey answered. "You got any to tell?" Huey, then 29, was a determined if somewhat green photojournalist, riding a wave of positive attention from his recent photo project on a solo walk across America. Pine Ridge was the first stop on a self-assigned survey of poverty in America. The survey stopped there, but a new story had just begun.

Pine Ridge, the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, has been the poorest place in America for nearly 40 years, with 97 percent of its population living below the national poverty line in 2006. The infant mortality rate on the reservation is three times higher than the national average, the highest on the continent; life expectancy for men is 48 years old, roughly the same as in Afghanistan and Somalia.

Ms. Johnson tells the story of how this emerging artist (now an internationally-known photographer) comes to terms with his art and his relationship to his "subjects" (Native American or otherwise) through his repeated visits to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Skeptical of the kinds of art that have, from a comfortable distance, profited from the Native American reservation experience, this community often asked Mr. Huey the same pointed question: "Who gives you the right to tell our story?"

Though the breathtaking skill and emotional range of the photographs (see his gallery here) in part help to answer this question, Mr. Huey seems to suggest that by recognizing his own position within this complicated cultural issue he was able to find the right, and the right perspective, through which to share the narrative of life at Pine Ridge--past, present and future. 

To those ends, Mr. Huey has embraced the potential of his art to engender positive change for this community. Here's Ms. Johnson again:

In May 2010, Huey got up on stage at the University of Denver and unequivocally chose his side. In his 13-minute talk, which was posted to the TED lecture series online, Huey outlined 186 years of Lakota history, including dozens of broken treaties and the murder of unarmed women and children at Wounded Knee. After repeatedly holding back tears, he closed the talk by calling for the United States to honor its treaties and restore the Black Hills to the Lakota.

Mr. Huey's talk sparked a lot of conversation; much like the photographs themselves, his audience was asked to look hard at Native American relations in this country and to consider how each American living outside of the reservations are complicit in the forces that have profited from the repeated treaty-breaking and land-grabs that began, by Mr. Huey's narrative, in 1824.

There's an interesting juxtaposition between his evolving role as an artist within this community and how he feels many Americans perceive Native Americans. Here are two excerpts:

You'll see a lot of people in my photographs today, and I've become very close with them, and they've welcomed me like family. They've called me brother and uncle and invited me again and again over five years. But on Pine Ridge, I will always be what is called wasichu, and wasichu is a Lakota word that means non-Indian, but another version of this word means "the one who takes the best meat for himself." And that's what I want to focus on -- the one who takes the best part of the meat. It means greedy. So take a look around this auditorium today. We are at a private school in the American West, sitting in red velvet chairs with money in our pockets. And if we look at our lives, we have indeed takenthe best part of the meat. 

.....

The last chapter in any successful genocide is the one in which the oppressor can remove their hands and say, "My God, what are these people doing to themselves? They're killing each other. They're killing themselves while we watch them die." This is how we came to own these United States. This is the legacy of manifest destiny. Prisoners are still born into prisoner of war camps long after the guards are gone. These are the bones left after the best meat has been has been taken. A long time ago, a series of events was set in motion by a people who look like me, by wasichu, eager to take the land and the water and the gold in the hills. Those events led to a domino effect that has yet to end.

Aaron Huey is responding this by leading the Pine Ridge Billboard Project, an effort to place "guerrila billboards" concerning the real lives of folks on the reservation alongside major urban American thoroughfares, so that the message will be "so loud that it cannot be ignored."  Mr. Huey is using the Emphas.is website (a kind of Kickstarter program for photojournalists), and the response has been "so loud" that the project has been fully-funded by individual donations. Two of America's most well-known street artists, Ernesto Yerena and Shepard Fairey,  have contributed work to help raise donations. He's looking for people not only to make donations, but to join in helping to spread this message, and these images, in the coming months.

Aaron Huey has set up the Honor The Treaties site to document the progress of this project; the full text of these broken treaties is also presented. More information is also available his official art site. 

LaPorte, Indiana

cheerleader portrait by Frank Pease, Muralcraft Studios; LaPorte, Indiana

We're back today with some information on what promises to be a unique and uniquely-moving documentary project: LaPorte, Indiana. Directed by Joe Beshenkovsky (who won an Oscar for his work on the This American Life television series) and produced by Jason Bitner (the co-creator of Found Magazine), this film's genesis emerged from boxes of photographs found in the back of a local diner--and it goes forth to use the photographer-subject interchange to narrate a story of a generation coming to terms with its home town. With these photographs as prologue, we hear from those who stayed, and those who left LaPorte, and we're brought into a richer, and much more complicated evocation of  place. 

Here's the site's introduction, followed by the trailer and a sort clip from the DVD extra features. Please visit the La Porte, Indiana site for more information on film screenings and how to order a copy of the documentary.

Tucked away in the back room of a B&J’s American Cafe lies a secret history waiting to be discovered: 18,000 dog-eared studio portraits from the 1950s and 60s. From baby pictures to graduation shots to young soldiers heading off to war and beyond, each of these photos hints at a personal story waiting to be told.

From 1947 through 1970, the diner’s second floor housed Muralcraft Studios. It was here where Frank and Gladys Pease documented many important milestones—a sailor in uniform, a graduate in cap and gown, a couple newly-engaged—while others made modest attempts at posterity.  Muralcraft was the go-to studio for special event photography but little did they know they would also become the “accidental historians” of LaPorte, Indiana with the extensive archive they left-behind.

Now, the subjects of these portraits share their own life stories: deeply personal tales of love and family, divorce and loss, and the search for identity and one’s place in the world. We also encounter the next generation of LaPorteans, grappling with the decision to stay and begin their adult life in their hometown, or search for opportunities elsewhere, a truly universal dilemma experienced across America and beyond.

LaPorte, Indiana Trailer from Joe Beshenkovsky & Jason Bitner on Vimeo.


Ups and Downs from Joe Beshenkovsky & Jason Bitner on Vimeo.

John Dee Holman

photograph by kinsley1

I recently discussed Blues Houseparty, a gathering of Piedmont blues musicians documented on film by Eleanor Ellis and available streaming on the web at Folkstreams. Since then, the film and the musicians have stayed on my mind; I've checked out some CDs from the library (Alan Lomax's Deep River of Song: Virginia and the Piedmont) and found Guitar Man, a wonderful LP with John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, at a local record store. Blues Houseparty leaves an impression and will send you out to learn more about the Piedmont blues--thanks again to the good people at Folkstreams for sharing it with us all. 

John Dee Holman brought a lot to the Houseparty--laughter, buck dancing, guitar-playing--and I'm happy to share more information on this man and his music. Though many of the folks featured in the documentary have passed away, Mr. Holman is still very much with us, and he is set to play as part of the Blues Warehouse concert series in Durham, North Carolina on July 22nd. 

This series is affiliated with the Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization that "helps the true pioneers and forgotten heroes of Southern music gain recognition and meet their day to day needs" while also reaching out to "present these musical traditions to the world so American culture will flourish and be preserved for future generations." The Foundation also works to bring these musicians into contact with the next generation of Southern musicians, so that these traditions can continue to be rooted in the region.

Here's a selection from the Foundation's biography of Mr. Holman:

"I was born in 1929,” he says. “My father was Willy Holeman and my mother was born Annie Obie near Roxboro, North Carolina. Her daddy moved to Hillsborough and ran a flour mill. James Obie was my uncle; there are still Obies in Hillsborough. I lived on the Sam Latta place at first- he was the High Sheriff. There were three sisters and one brother. My parents are planted in the cemetery of Obie’s Chapel Church in Person County.”  “In about 1935 we moved to a 100 acre farm on Gray Road in Northern Orange County. We would walk four miles to the store at Timberlake to get us some candy. We could play on Saturday or Sunday. You know, fix a swing in a tree, swing in a tire and things like that. One time I took a fender off a Model T Ford, got on a bank, put water on the bank, and slid right down to the bottom!  I completed the fourth grade, then stopped; we weren’t compelled to attend then. I cut short my education because Daddy needed me to farm. I had to do what my Daddy said. I missed my education, but I’ve made a living so far.” 

When John Dee was 14 he bought a brand new Sears Silvertone guitar for $15. “I thought I had something!” he says. His uncle and cousin taught him a few chords. “I listened to 78’s like ‘Step It Up and Go’ by Blind Boy Fuller, the Grand Ole Opry, and heard others play at pig-picking parties. I was good for catching on. My guitar kept me company when I tended to tobacco in the barn so I wouldn’t go to sleep. You had to control the tobacco as it cured-you ran one heat to get the green out, then another to dry it out for cigarettes.”

He moved to Durham in 1954 in reaction to farming’s financial shortcomings. “The government took over the farming and gave you an allotment of how much you could raise. Before that we raised as much as we could handle. If you went over the allotment at harvest time, they’d make you cut it down. In 1954 I got $200 for my portion of tobacco for the whole year.”  “I went to the Liggett and Myers Tobacco Company for work. You could get a three-room ‘shotgun’ house for $6 a week. I also operated heavy equipment, like hauling dirt.”

Though Mr. Holman was a highly sought-after musician and dancer for private parties, he did not appear on the folk and blues festival scene until encouraged by folklorist Glen Hinson in 1989. Since then, Mr. Holman has traveled to all corners of the globe, played with virtually every blues luminary, and has received the NEA's National Heritage Fellowship, the organization's highest cultural award.

I'll include a series of videos below. The first selection is an interview with Mr. Holman conducted by David Holt for the Folkways series on North Carolina Public Television; the second pair of videos features a performance from the 2011 Black History Month celebrations at Central Piedmont Community College. 

John Dee Holeman Part 1 from Doug Short on Vimeo.

John Dee Holeman Part 2 from Doug Short on Vimeo.