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The original one-named diva, known as Odetta Holmes when she was born in Birmingham in 1930 and later by her married name as Odetta Gordon but most of her life simply as Odetta, died yesterday of heart failure in New York, after a couple of weeks in hospital and a couple of years of failing health. I missed her last time she came through Toronto, but saw her at Hugh's Room a couple of years ago, for the first time, and feel fortunate to have breathed the same air as those incredible lungs for a couple of hours as she knocked out her classic covers of Leadbelly and other folk, blues and gospel staples.
But Odetta, truth be told, wasn't exactly a "folk singer" in the sense people in her heyday usually meant it - although she was among the first, alongside the Weavers and Harry Belafonte, to usher in the folk-revival boom in the mid-1950s (and all the McCarthy-era paranoia and struggle that accompanied it). Though born in Alabama she was raised in Los Angeles and trained in opera singing as a teenager and then entered musical theatre. What she did with folk music was, much like Paul Robeson before her, to blend it with the techniques of art music and thereby make an implied argument for its artistic worthiness in a time when the divide between high and low culture was still intense. With a voice that was quite the opposite of an acquired taste, more like a thunderbolt that rivets you to the earth, and an undeniably fine technical command, Odetta didn't require you to listen through scratchy transcriptions and gurgly adenoidal hillbilly vocals. Odetta identified herself more as a folk curator and music historian, taking the old songs and putting them in a clarifying frame.
So for a middle-class kid like Robert Zimmerman, who was mainly interested in rock'n'roll at the time, hearing Odetta in a record shop could be a gateway into the entire folk tradition, and he later credited her as being the one who first inspired him to unplug and pick up an acoustic guitar - followed of course by his discovery of Woody Guthrie and everything else that made him Bob Dylan, folk-music god, for a few years, before he decided to plug back in again.
Coincidentally, Odetta was a gateway drug for me too - the gateway, in fact, to Bob Dylan. I was about 11 or 12 and hanging around my grandparents' house at their farm in Tweed, Ont., and killing some time by going through their musty old records, which consisted mainly of country and Irish music, some Tommy Hunter here, some Irish Rovers there. The falling-apart copy of 1965's Odetta Sings Dylan must have been left there by one of my mom's siblings years before, but just the surprise of my grandparents owning any records by black people was enough to intrigue me. I'd heard a little Dylan but was, I think, a bit put off by the voice. But when I heard this woman who sounded like I hadn't realized any black woman could sound (in my disco-era racially tinged ignorance), making what seemed like epic oratory out of Masters of War, The Times They Are A-Changin' and even Mr. Tambourine Man (frankly an interpretation that I now find too heavy handed for the song), I was arrested. Suddenly the whole phenomenon of early-sixties protest music seemed fascinating and Dylan as a wordsmith electrifying. When we got back to Brantford, I got some Phil Ochs records and Dylan's greatest hits out of the library, and soon bought my first Dylan record (I forget if it was Another Side or Bringin' It All Back Home) - a pretty significant development in a collection till then dominated (with pubescent randomness) by the three B's: the Beatles, Bach and Billy Joel.
A few years later, my friend Sean reintroduced me to Odetta via a mixtape made from his dad's Smithsonian Folkways collection - stunning songs steeped in the history of slavery and oppression such as the above (Water Boy), God's A-Gonna Cut 'Em Down, John Henry and others from the ballad tradition, including my single favourite cut of hers, the old English song John Riley, a "recognition scene" ballad involving long-lost love. Those tapes are a cherished part of the history of my friendship with Sean - the longest, most consistent in my life - today.
Earlier this year I read at the Happy Ending Reading Series in New York, where the rule is that you not only read but must do something you've never done in public. I chose singing a capella, and decided that since I was talking in the book about music that's meant to make you cry, I should sing a song that often makes me break down - that is, John Riley. For comfort, and to solve the a-capella problem of what to do with your arms while you sing, I asked two members of the audience to come up and hold my hands. It wasn't exactly singing O Freedom at the 1963 March on Washington, as Odetta once did, but it was a moment that wouldn't have been the same without her inspiration.
So thank you, Queen Odetta, and rest in peace - the joyful, angry and proud sound of your soul never, I hope, to be forgotten.
Posted by zoilus on Wednesday, December 03 at 4:06 PM
In a case of very inconvenient timing, there are two strong contenders for can't-miss avant-jazz events in Toronto tonight.
At the Imperial Pub near Yonge-Dundas Square, from Chicago's fertile improv scene, the Valentine Trio led by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and trombonist Jeb Bishop's trio, both with Jason Roebke on bass and Frank Rosaly on drums. Anyone familiar with Ken Vandermark's various groups or with Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet will know Jeb and Fred's stupendous playing. 8 pm, twelve bucks.
Meanwhile at the Lula Lounge there's a triple-headed party with some of the city's very best improvisers to launch the Xmas-season bounty of cd's from local improv label Barnyard Records, including the debut of Blah Blah 666 (reviewed as "witty and playful" today in the Globe by my colleague Robert Everett-Green), Jean Martin and Justin Haynes' set of duets on ukelele and drummed-suitcase with tunes by Saint Dirt Elementary School composer Myk Freedman (reviewed by David Dacks as having "an intimacy reminiscent of Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto's collaborations" in last week's Eye) and Kyle Brenders' Toronto Duets with Anthony Braxton, about which, well, need I say more than "Anthony Braxton"? (Though he won't be there tonight.) That's on Dundas between Lansdowne and Dufferin, at 9 pm, $10 (or $15 with a cd).
Posted by zoilus on Tuesday, December 02 at 5:08 PM
Burning Ears Give You So Much More
Sorry posting's been so light - I bet you're all busy this time of year too. I will try to redouble Zoilusian efforts. Just a quick note today of gratitude that my book (see left) was selected this weekend in The Globe and Mail's "Globe 100" selection of best books of the year. Because I work at the paper, feel free to be skeptical, but honestly the honour was unexpected - and a very nice boost for the book since most of its reviews and publicity came out at the very beginning of the year.
Postscript: I also just heard that it was listed among the UK Telegraph's seven choices for Christmas books on pop music, which calls it "the year's most essential book on music." And this time I don't know anybody there.
Posted by zoilus on Monday, December 01 at 5:18 PM
She Said, 'Johnny You Got Big Eyes'
In the NYT Magazine's "Screens" issue, coming this weekend, some prominent types name "Moments that Mattered" in their encounters with flat, candescent images of all sorts this year. Novelist Heather O'Neill picks the above YouTube video, titled "Dance Dance Revolutions Co.," and tells a touching story about it and her daughter. As she says, the song ("The End of Poverty") is by Toronto band Tomboyfriend (see the Zoilus entry about chief 'boyfriend Ryan Kamstra earlier this week). But she neglects to mention that the video itself was created by Toronto artist (and Zoilus comrade) Margaux Williamson using found YouTube footage of teenagers dancing in their basements (as she explains here); it was shown in an exhibit at Harbourfront in Toronto earlier this fall.
(Margaux was also inspired by YouTube in her full-length video, Teenager Hamlet 2006, previously mentioned here.)
But what O'Neill says of it is lovely and true: "Each time you watch it, you have a different favorite kid. They flail their arms around and gyrate their hips and completely, completely let themselves go. ... the side of them that just lives in the moment and laughs all afternoon and feels a rock song the way adults never can and spends all day looking for the most original way to shout out: I am here! I am me!."
Speaking of "I am here! I am me!" and of Harbourfront, try tonight or tomorrow to catch one of the last two performances of Hospitality 3: Individualism Was a Mistake, a performance by ex-Torontonian, now Montrealais, Jacob Wren and PME-ART's , in its world premiere. I'll be there tonight.
Posted by zoilus on Friday, November 21 at 3:24 PM
I hate to side against Kraftwerk, but ...
Germanymoves closer to justice on sampling than most legal systems have so far, in a decision against Kraftwerk, who were suing a rap producer for using two seconds of their song "Metal on Metal" (from 1977's Trans-Europe Express).
The court errs in banning quotation from melodies - are German jazz soloists in trouble now? - and indeed I'd be curious what their definition of a "melody" is. Do they mean vocal melodies only? What about instrumental hooks? What about rhythmic hooks? I'm curious if the ruling includes any guidelines in those directions. Personally, the only two tests I would advocate are (a) that the use must be substantially transformative of the source material, by whatever means; and (b) that the source material be credited. I realize licensing fees have been good for some under-appreciated artists, but the censoring effect has been greater - just ask Public Enemy, whose work has never been as powerful as it was in the sampling age. Conscientious artists could still donate profits from sales on songs where they sample deserving obscurities (and acknowledgements would permit those obscurities to pressure with public shaming of the non-conscientious). Meanwhile, if the original artist felt that someone had just ripped them off, not really created a new work, they could sue to make that case.
Does anyone know of anywhere else that explicitly has liberal sampling laws, rather than just weak copyright regimes because they're poor and it's not a priority? I know Gilberto Gil was trying as Culture Minister in Brazil, but as far as I can tell what's been done there is only to allow artists to use Creative Commons if they choose to. They haven't made the leap that Germany made today, where sampling artists would be innocent until proven guilty.
Posted by zoilus on Thursday, November 20 at 6:04 PM
Ryan Kamstra's Apocalypse Madge (And Girl Talk Etc.)
Madonna underdeveloped, underperforming
underwater, untamed . . . deserted North America.
There are Post-it notes in each drawer. Either my regime's
been changed or else I colluded.
My ass is missing. I really don't recall.
Between hunger or adoring welter, another interior hunchbacking
to another interior.
The crucial updates only:
There are a series of outstanding waiting lounges into which
I'm now departed.
A turntable made of only more but ever smaller dreams.
Orange slums beyond metal cities.
Cities barnacle the empire.
No matter which floor, it's repeating like this.
Sarah Liss wrote a very sharp, insightful profile of poet and musician Ryan Kamstra in this week's Eye, in anticipation of his launch on Tuesday night at Mitzi's Sister for his new book iNTO tHE dROWNED wORL_D, an end-times phantasiac poetry cycle in which the world ended eight years ago, dedicated and addressed to Madonna, or at least to a tattered poster of her Drowned World Tour (which ended the week of 9/11).
As Liss's article mentions, I've created a Madonna trivia contest for the occasion, though unfortunately I can't be there in time to deliver it in person. Skill level: middlingish. In addition there is a Madonna-costume contest with actual prizes and two sets by Ryan's ever-more-excellent band Tomboyfriend (currently recording their first full-length, Don't Go to School). Doors at 7, readings & shenanigans at 8, music at 10, drinks throughout.
I have had a lot of other things to talk about but no time to talk about them - for instance the way that Eye has been mixing up filesharing and appropriation art in its discussion of Girl Talk (Girl Talk doesn't threaten the "economic engine" of the music business because he's just making collages, not giving away the original music, and indeed is probably making people more likely to seek out the original music); how the usually perspicacious Mike Barthel became oddly literalist in his discussion of the same subject on Idolator - if Girl Talk "is not fair use" in the current legal definition then that definition needs to be expanded, mainly because its fixation on parody as the primary legitimate use of appropriated material is out-of-date, as I think Idolator's lawyer understands; how this is really just the sampling debate of the 1990s all over again - in fact it makes me dizzy with a sense of proximal amnesia - and Girl Talk's use of the technology is not anywhere near as exciting as the Beastie Boys' was; how music writers as a broad group seem to be way behind the curve conceptually on this stuff; and how everyone should read The Gift by Lewis Hyde, or at least, as a starting point, the quite beautifully written NYT magazine feature about him this weekend.
(On a related subject, was I the only one who initially missed Suzanne Vega's charming NYT blog post [many weeks ago now] about how the infinite number of remixes of Tom's Diner came to be, and how she inadvertently helped invent the MP3? You can tell it's written by an artist because she's not afraid of what she doesn't know.)
I wish Ryan had incorporated lines from Madonna songs throughout Into the Drowned World and I could make all these points tie up neatly, but he didn't, but you get the general idea.
Posted by zoilus on Monday, November 17 at 1:47 PM
Darren O'Donnell: Can he tell us how to get to Sesame Street?
I've gota piece about Toronto writer-artist-performer-impresario Darren O'Donnell, creator of Haircuts By Children along with much more, in the new issue of Toronto Life. It's a radically reduced version of my original but gets the job done as an introduction to O'Donnell and his take on participatory/relational/social art-theatre - which he charmingly reduces to an attempt to recapture the Sesame Street urban-community fantasies of his childhood in his real life in Toronto. Forget Allan Kaprow and the Internet, he hints - all this social-art stuff of the current generation might be traceable to the Children's Television Workshop.
Posted by zoilus on Tuesday, November 11 at 4:35 PM
