#Othar Turner

[lunescentsounds]

Otha(r) Turner was a blues musician from north Mississippi, and his music was rooted in a fife and drum blues tradition from that area. I was immediately struck by the way it feels like northwest African music I've heard (gnawa, Master Musicians, Paul Bowles recordings from Morocco).

Then I got to the album "From Senegal to Senatobia," in which a group of Senegalese drummers played alongside Otha's band. This is just so amazing.

I don't know a whole lot about any of the music I've mentioned here, really. I'm a dabbler at best. It's just so good.

[somebaconlover]

Gangs Of New York (2002)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, John C Reilly and Liam Neeson

“Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.”

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: Daptone Records Continue Their Preservation of the Mississippi Delta Gospel Sound with New Release from The Como Mamas

New Audio: Daptone Records Continue Their Preservation of the Mississippi Delta Gospel Sound with New Release from The Como Mamas

Over the past couple of years, the world renowned soul label, Daptone Records. the label home of the late (and great) Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings,has released a series of albums…

[cardest]

New Orleans playlist

Hungry for some po boys? Feeling the Mardi Gras vibes for this weekend? This is the ultimate NOLA playlist, right here. Play the songs here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC182dTlE-Gii6ZOO5ZrN1Z1T

Louisiana and New Orleans, all in the one awesome playlist. If there are songs I left out, let me know and I can add those. Or come meet me at Le Bon Temps Roulé  and we’ll listen to this NOLA playlist together with drinks.

LOUISIANA & NEW ORLEANS

001 Bob James - Take Me To The Mardi Gras 002 Earl King - Ain’t no city like New Orleans 003 John Lee Hooker - goin’ to Louisiana 004 Crowbar -  Wrath Of Time By Judgment 005 True Detective - Theme (The Handsome Family - Far From Any Road) 006 EyeHateGod - New Orleans Is The New Vietnam 007 The The Meters -  Chicken Strut 008 Paul McCartney - Live And Let Die (from Live And Let Die) 009 The Rolling Stones - Brown Sugar 010 Lucinda Williams - Crescent City 011 King Hobo -  New Or-Sa-Leans 012 Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting 013 Down - Underneath Everything 014 True Blood Theme Song (Jace Everett - Bad Things) 015 Corrosion of Conformity -  Broken Man 016 The New Orleans Jazz Vipers - I Hope Your Comin' Back To New Orleans 017 Willy DeVille - Jump City 018 Left Side - Gold In New Orleans 017 Necrophagia -  Reborn through Black Mass 018 Johnny Horton -  The Battle Of New Orleans 019 Dr John - Litanie des Saints 020 Foo Fighters - In the Clear 021 Redbone - The Witch Queen Of New Orleans 022 Jucifer - Lautrichienne 023 Danzig - It's a long way back from hell 024 Harry Connick, Jr. -  Oh, My Nola 025 The Gaturs - Gator Bait 026 Jon Bon Jovi - Queen Of New Orleans 027 Cyril Neville -  Gossip 028 Carlos Santana - Black Magic Woman 029 Gentleman June Gardner - It's Gonna Rain 030 Eddy G. Giles - Soul Feeling (Part 1) 031 Tool - Swamp Song 032 Beasts of Bourbon -  Psycho 033 Seratones - Gotta Get To Know Ya 034 Chuck Berry -  You Never Can Tell 035 Grateful Dead - Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo 036 Pale Misery - Hope is a Mistake 037 Exhorder - Homicide 038 King James & the Special Men - Special Man Boogie 039 Chuck Carbo -  Can I Be Your Squeeze 040 Amebix - Axeman 041 Tomahawk - Captain Midnight 042 Waylon Jennings - Jambalaya 043 Heavy Lids - Deviate 044 Red Hot Chili Peppers -  Apache Rose Peacock 045 Necrophagia -  Rue Morgue Disciple 046 Johnny Cash -  Big River 047 Albert King -  Laundromat Blues 048 Meklit Feat Preservation Hall Horns - You Are My Luck 049 Le Winston Band  - En haut de la montagne 050 Dr. john - I Thought I Heard New Orleans Say 051 Down -  New Orleans is a dying whore 052 Samhain -  To Walk The Night 053 Creedence Clearwater Revival -  Green River 054 Southern Culture on the Skids -  Voodoo Cadillac 055 Bonnie, Sheila -  You Keep Me Hanging On 056 Warren Lee -  Funky Bell 057 Elf - Annie New Orleans 058 Cannonball Adderley - New Orleans Strut 059 Doug Kershaw - Louisiana Man - New Orleans Version 060 Willy deVille  - Voodoo Charm 061 The Animals -  The House of the Rising Sun 062 Porgy Jones -  The Dapp 063 Lost Bayou Ramblers - Sabine Turnaround 064 IDRIS MUHAMMAD - New Orleans 065 John Lee Hooker - Boogie Chillen No. 2 066 Hank 3 - Hillbilly Joker 067 Nine Inch Nails -  Heresy 068 Talking Heads - Swamp 069 Irma Thomas - I'd Rather Go Blind 070 Mississippi Fred McDowell -  I'm Going Down the River 071 Dee Dee Bridgewater   - Big Chief 072 Dr. John  - Creole Moon 073 Agents of Oblivion -  Slave Riot 074 Steve Vai - Voodoo Acid 075 Saviours -  Slave To The Hex 076 Kris  Kristofferson -  Casey's Last Ride 077 JJ Cale - Louisiana Women 078 Cher - Dark Lady of New Orleans 079 LE ROUX - Take A Ride On A Riverboat 080 The Melvins -  A History Of Bad Men 081 Floodgate - Through My Days Into My Nights 082 Opprobium - voices from the grave 083 Quintron & Miss Pussycat - Swamp Buggy Badass 084 Child Bite - ancestral ooze 085 Sammi Smith - The City Of New Orleans 086 The Explosions - Garden Of Four Trees 087 Bobby Boyd - straight ahead 088 Bobby Charles - Street People 089 Wall of Voodoo -  Far Side of Crazy 090 Rhiannon Giddens - Freedom Highway (feat. Bhi Bhiman) 091 Elton John - Honky Cat 092 Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie and Clyde 093 Fats Domino - I'm Walking To New Orleans 094 Cruel Sea - Orleans Stomp 095 Down -  On March The Saints 096 Danzig -  Ju Ju Bone 097 The Neville Brothers ~ Voodoo 098 Megadeth -  The Conjuring 099 Miles Davis - Miles runs the voodoo down 100 Elvis Presley - King Creole 101 Led Zeppelin - Royal Orleans 102 The Lime Spiders -  Slave Girl 103 BIG BILL BROONZY  -'Mississippi River Blues'   104 Kreeps - Bad Voodoo 105 Dirty Dozen Brass Band -  Caravan 106 Kirk Windstein -  Dream In Motion 107 Eletric Prunes - Kyrie Eleison - Mardi Gras 108 Merle Haggard - The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde 109 Corrosion of Conformity -  River of Stone 110 THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN (MAIN TITLE) 111 Zigaboo Modeliste - Guns 112 ReBirth Brass Band - Let's Go Get 'Em 113 Inell Young -  What Do You See In Her? 114 Jimi Hendrix - If 6 as 9 (Studio Version) Easy Rider Soundtrack 115 Deep Purple -  Speed King 116 Exhorder - The Law 117 Crowbar -  The Cemetery Angels 118 A Streetcar Named Desire OST - Main Title 119 WOORMS - Take His Fucking Leg 120 steely dan - pearl of the quarter 121 Tabby Thomas - Hoodoo Party 122 Black Label Society -  Parade of the Dead 123 Dwight James & The Royals - Need Your Loving 124 Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter (2012) The Rampant Hunter (Soundtrack OST) 125 PanterA - The Great Southern Trendkill 126 Ween - WHO DAT? 127 Earl King - Street Parade 128 Ernie K-Doe - Here Come The Girls 129 Dejan's Olympia Brass Band ~ Mardi Gras In New Orleans 130 Body Count -  KKK Bitch 131 Goatwhore - Apocalyptic Havoc 132 C.C. Adcock - Y'all d Think She Be Good To Me (from True Blood S01E01) 133 The Meters - Fire On The Bayou 134 Dr. John - I Walk On Guilded Splinters 135 Balfa Brothers - J'ai Passe Devant ta Porte 136 Ween - Voodoo Lady 137 King Diamond -  'LOA' House 138 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Born On The Bayou 139 Dax Riggs -  See You All In Hell Or New Orleans 140 Professor Longhair - Go to the Mardi Gras 141 Dixie Witch -  Shoot The Moon 142 Ramones - The KKK Took My Baby Away 143 Fats Waller -  There's Going To Be The Devil To Pay 144 Mississippi Fred McDowell -  When the Train Comes Along with Sidney Carter & Rose Hemphill 145 Treme Song (Main Title Version) 146 Tony Joe White - Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll 147 Nine Inch Nails -  Sin 148 Exodus -  Cajun Hell 149 NEIL DIAMOND - New Orleans 150 James Brown - Call Me Super Bad 151 Jimi Hendrix -  Voodoo Child ( Slight Return ) 152 Allen Toussaint - Chokin Kind 153 Dash Rip Rock  - Meet Me at the River 154 Hawg Jaw- 4 Lo 155 Hot 8 Brass Band - Keepin It Funky 156 Hank Williams III - Rebel Within 157 Dejan's Original Olympia Brass Band - Shake It And Break It 158 Jelly Roll Morton -  Finger Buster 159 The Royal Pendletons - (Im a) Sore Loser 160 Little Bob & The Lollipops - Nobody But You 161 Gregg Allman - Floating Bridge (True Detective Soundtrack) 162 Michael Doucel with Beausoleil - Valse de Grand Meche 163 Dolly Parton - My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy 164 Othar Turner & the Afrossippi Allstars – Shimmy She Wobble 165 Jucifer - Fleur De Lis 166 Soilent Green -  Leaves Of Three 167 Ides Of Gemini -  Queen of New Orleans 168 Betty Harris -  Trouble with My Lover 169 Lead Belly - Pick A Bale Of Cotton 170 Candyman Opening Theme 171 Goatwhore - When Steel and Bone Meet 172 Acid Bath - Bleed Me An Ocean 173 Pere Ubu - Louisiana Train Wreck 174 Walter -Wolfman- Washington - You Can Stay But the Noise Must Go 175 Alice in Chains -  Hate To Feel 176 Body Count -  Voodoo 177 Live and Let Die - Jazz Funeral 178 Smoky Babe -  Cotton Field Blues 179 Professor Longhair - Big Chief Part 2 180 Lewis Boogie - Walk the Line 181 James Black - Theres a Storm in the Gulf 182 The Balfa Brothers - Parlez Nous A Boire 183 The Jambalaya Cajun Band - Bayou Teche Two Step 184 The Deacons -  Fagged Out 185 Thou - The Changeling Prince 186 Black Sabbath -  Voodoo 187 King Diamond -  Louisiana Darkness 188 Doyle -  Cemeterysexxx 189 KINGDOM OF SORROW - Grieve a Lifetime 190 Hank Williams III - Louisiana Stripes 191 FORMING THE VOID - On We Sail 192 BUCK BILOXI AND THE FUCKS - fuck you 193 Down in New Orleans - The Princess and the Frog Soundtrack 194 Trombone Shorty & James Andrews  - oh Poo Pah Doo 195 Whitesnake -  Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City 196 The Dirty Dozen Brass band - Voodoo 197 Joe Simon - The Chokin' Kind 198 Down -  Ghosts along the Mississippi 199 AEROSMITH  - Voodoo Medicine Man 200 Nine Inch Nails -  The Perfect Drug 201 The Byrds - [Sanctuary III] Ballad Of Easy Rider 202 The Iguauas - Boom Boom Boom 203 PJ Harvey - Down By The Water 204 Louis Armstrong - Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans 205 Dr John - Right Place Wrong Time 206 ESTHER ROSE - handyman 207 Lightnin Slim - It's Mighty Crazy 208 Slim Harpo - Blues Hangover 209 Irma Thomas - Ruler Of My Heart 210 WEATHER WARLOCK - Fukk the Plan-0 211 Superjoint Ritual - The Alcoholik (Use Once And Destroy) 212 Stressball - dust 213 Trampoline Team - Kill You On The Streetcar 214 Xander Harris - Where’s your Villain? 215 Dukes of Dixieland - When The Saints Go Marching In 216 Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds - Su Su 217 Danzig - I'm the one 218 EyeHatteGod - Pigs 219 Hank Williams Jr - Amos Moses 220 The Cramps - Alligator Stomp 221 Crowbar - The Serpent Only Lies 222 Shrüm - drip 223 Thou  - The Only Law 224 DR. JOHN - Babylon   225 Garth Brooks - Callin' Baton Rouge 226 Wild Magnolias - All On A Mardi Gras Day 227 NCIS New Orleans TV Show theme 228 Skull Duggery - Big Easy 229 Harry Connick Jr. - City beaneath the sea 230 Elvis Presley - Dixieland Rock 231 Tom Waits - I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward) 232 Neil Young - Everybody's Rockin 233 Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals - Delinquent 234 CORROSION OF CONFORMITY - Wolf Named Crow 235 Widespread Panic - Fishwater 236 Lillian Boutté - Why Don't You Go Down to New Orleans 237 Bryan Ferry - Limbo 238 Scream - Mardi Gras 239 EyeHateGod - Shoplift 240 Better Than Ezra - good 241 Duke Ellington - Perdido (1960 Version) 242 Bob Dylan - Rambling, Gambling Willie 243 Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - sAve my soul 244 Le Roux - So Fired Up 245 Concrete Blonde - The Vampire song 246 Boozoo Chavis - Zydeco Mardi Gras 247 Idris Muhammad  - Piece of mind 248 Les Hooper - Back in Blue Orleans 249 Doug Kershaw - Cajun stripper 250 DOWN  - Witchtripper 251 Soilent Green - So hatred 252 Professional Longhair - Big chief 253 Willie Nelson - City Of New Orleans 254 Tom Waits - Whistlin' Past The Graveyard 255 Brian Fallon - sleepwalkers 256 Patsy - Count It On Down 257 Into the Moat - The Siege Of Orleans 258 Bruce Cockburn - Down To The Delta 259 Jello Biafra · the Raunch and Soul All-Stars - Fannie Mae 260 Exhorder - Asunder 261 Cane Hill - Too Far Gone 262 The Slackers - peculiar 263 Crowbar  - A Breed Apart   264 COC - Wiseblood 265 Necrophagia - Embalmed Yet I Breathe 266 EYEHATEGOD - Fake What's Yours 333 Alan Vega - Bye Bye Bayou 666 DOWN  - Stone the crow

I don’t beads by the way! Hit play here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC182dTlE-Gii6ZOO5ZrN1Z1T

[thedeltareview]

Celebrating The Legacy of Otha Turner at Coldwater Back in 1950, Othar Turner, of Gravel Springs, a few miles east of Senatobia in Mississippi's Hill Country region, decided to hold a picnic for his friends and neighbors in the community.

[prehistoricsounds]

Jessie Mae Hemphill was born in Senatobia, Mississippi in 1923. Her grandfather was Sid Hemphill and some of her neighbours were Othar Turner, Fred McDowell and R.L. Burnside! She was destined to play the #blues Her albums “She-Wolf” and Feelin’ Good are classics! “Run Get My Shotgun” is a field recording from New Years Eve 1989. Anton Cleary is playing out the front today from around 11am. We’re here until 2pm! #prehistoricsounds #jessiemaehemphill #rungetmyshotgun #biglegalmessrecords https://instagr.am/p/CXmlH5xhQlP/

[ivandimarcofotografo]

William Ferris: the folklorist who made black America immortal

Going from farm to front porch across America’s south in the 1960s, William Ferris recorded everything from praying pigs to haunting blues – a political act, he says, at a time when black voices were being silenced

In the summer of 1968, as the wider world reacted in shock and protest to war and assassination and attacks on civil rights, a young, white, Mississippi folklorist named Bill Ferris roamed the back roads of his home state, looking for the blues. “I thought of it as a political act in the face of racial violence,” he told me recently from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he lives now. “In the 60s, when a white man came to hear a black speaker or musician, they knew he was doing so at a risk. They would say to me: now if I tell you this, will you be sure to put it down and get it out?”

Locals in the little cotton town of Leland pointed him toward the home of a singer named James “Son Ford” Thomas, but the woman who answered the door claimed he didn’t live there. “When I turned to go, she asked me, what do you want with him?” Ferris recalled of Thomas’s wife, Christine. “Then she told me I could wait on the porch. By the time he came home, his children had befriended me and were holding my hand.” Ferris and Thomas became fast, lifelong friends, too. “He was very spiritual,” Ferris remembered, “and instinctively knew situations with his heart.”

A few days until the release of “Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris.” Among the films included in the box set is the 1972 doc “Gravel Springs Fife and Drum,” a portrait of Othar Turner that shows how he and his music shape the community. pic.twitter.com/aDytzHbupu

Continue reading... https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/13/william-ferris-voices-of-mississippi

[musiconanironingboard]

14 May 2019: It Came from Memphis, various artists. (Upstart, 1995)

3 June 2019: It Came from Memphis Volume 2, various artists. (Birdman, 2001)

Immediately following my Terry Manning post we have a pair of acquisitions directly inspired by my Big Star reading, which quickly went beyond the band itself and into a general interest with Memphis (or fascination, I should say; I read so much about Memphis this summer, I started to think I was from there). A great thing the Rob Jovanovic book (see previous post) did was to get me to pull other books off my shelf that had been there unread for as many as 25 years (not to mention get me to buy things I would have balked at extravagantly in days past). I have long been a believer that books will eventually be read if they sit there long enough, and one piece of proof I have is that in July this year, by god, I finally read Robert Gordon’s It Came from Memphis (1995), which I bought in a Champaign, Illinois, bargain bin when I lived there, and I haven’t lived there in over 20 years. I loved and lived with this book so much this summer that I actually lost it on a night of barcrawling with my oldest friend, and the damn thing is so out of print and long gone in its original guise that I can’t hope to get a copy back that compares to my mint-condition first edition, but as I always take dust jackets off hardcovers when I read them I at least have the cover that I can show you. I had to finish reading it with a copy from the library, which thank goodness was there and available. But first, let me mention those CDs pictured above. What I did not know until four months ago is this book has not one but two companion albums, and as soon as I learned that I was pressing “purchase” on whatever sites it took to get them to my house. The discs were fantastic companions that in some ways I liked even more than the book. Robert Gordon is eminently qualified to write about Memphis, but he let his flag fly a little too wildly at times in the book, which strives with frequent success to tell the story of the lesser known Memphis and the city’s singularity as one of America’s numerous hotbeds of culture. Here is the book, both its front covers and back, which I’ve looked at countless times and that I’ve packed and moved from state to state on more than one occasion, always wondering, “Should I read this? When will I read this?” It has survived the trade pile countless times. Again, I lost the book--somewhere between Hugo’s Frog Bar and Dublin’s--but I still have the dust jacket.

Now, what of the discs? One strange thing is they both contain plenty of music by people who are never mentioned in the book. I felt at times that Gordon was a better compilation producer than writer, but that isn’t fair (and I’ve since read other writing of Gordon’s that I enjoyed more). Let’s start with the first compilation, whose design matches that of the book’s first edition.

I hadn’t thought about the Upstart label in a good long while; Nick Lowe recorded for it briefly, but not much else of interest to me came from it. This compilation is my favorite of the two. It focuses heavily on the eccentric: Drive Inn Danny (who’s never mentioned in the book) and Ross Johnson (a Chilton associate who also drummed in Tav Falco’s Panther Burns) both turn in exceptionally bonkers tracks, and Alex Chilton’s muse Lesa Aldrige is not far behind with her musical entry; there’s a very light smattering of traditional Memphis-area music (Furry Lewis doing acoustic blues and Othar Turner’s Rising Star Fife and Drum Corps); there are a couple of clips from crazed 1950s Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips’s radio shows; the early Stax scene gets a bit of coverage through The Martinis, a phony studio band led by Packy Axton; and up-to-the-minute group Big Ass Truck, featuring Steve Selvidge, son of Sid Selvidge whose 1976 a capella stunner Boll Weevil is also included. I could go on and on about each of the tracks on this album. I fully enjoyed it--it made the book come to life all the stronger, and it’s one of the compilations I’ve enjoyed the most in recent years.

Now, Volume 2:

The artwork on this volume matches that of a paperback edition of the book that came out in 1997. I don’t know who was calling for a second album four years after that edition’s publication, but nonetheless Birdman Records released a follow-up in 2001 and I was happy to get a copy (from a man whose wife was making him thin his collection; I promised him in an email conversation that it’d have a good home). It’s a bit less daring than the first volume, although Band of Ones (never mentioned in the book, though its frontman Randall Lyons does figure heavily throughout) turns in a deranged track called Family Values; traditional music figures more heavily here (Otha Turner makes another appearance, and then there’s the Beale Street Jug Band); Sid Selvidge, both with and without obstinate chooglers Mud Boy and the Neutrons, appears again, too; and a special treat for specific kinds of Memphis maniacs comes with the notorious appearance by Tav Falco’s Panther Burns on Marge Thrasher’s morning talk show where the band (featuring Alex Chilton on guitar, introduced by Falco as Axel Chitlin) performs a Captain Beefheart-level destruction of Johnny Burnette’s The Train Kept A-Rollin’. Maybe it’s not less daring than the original volume. 

Out there in the universe is a completely different two-disc anthology of Memphis music also called It Came from Memphis and also compiled by Robert Gordon. My absolute fever for all things Memphis has faded a bit, but I have threatened loved ones that I “need” to visit Memphis in 2020. I’ve been there twice before: once in 2000 to present a paper at the University of Memphis and again in 2007 for a work conference, but never for pure pleasure. If that day comes I may be scouring the internet for that other Gordon collection.

[plusorminuscongress]

North Mississippi Home Place

North Mississippi Home Place By Neely Tucker Published May 29, 2019 at 09:00AM

  Michael Ford’s work in 1970s Mississippi was the foundation of his new book.

Heat. Molasses. Wooden houses, tin roofs. Grist mills. Mules, ears twitching. Metal on iron. Ice falling into a glass. Screen door hinges. Wind in the oaks. Eight-track music from the truck. Long orange sunsets that hang in the sky, a gloaming that gives way to a deep, penetrating darkness ruled by crickets and cicadas and four-legged animals that move, unseen, in the woods.

Northeast Mississippi’s hill country is a largely forgotten corner of the nation, peculiar in its mixing of Appalachian white culture and African American life more associated with the Delta on the western side of the state. It’s been one of Michael Ford’s artistic muses since the early 1970s, when he made “Homeplace,” a half-hour documentary that enshrined the place and time. A photographer and filmmaker, his subject was the vanishing culture of rural, agrarian America, where craftsmanship and self-reliance molded the shape of daily life. He was on point — one of the villages he filmed, Chulahoma, is now listed as an “extinct community,” and the general store he filmed and photographed there is long gone.

M.R. Hall. Photo: Michael Ford.

This bittersweet perspective informs  “Northeast Mississippi Homeplace,” a book of Ford’s photography and writings published this month by the Library in association with the University of Georgia Press. It encapsulates Ford’s original work and a trip back to the same places a few years ago. The Library’s American Folklife Center acquired Ford’s Mississippi collection in 2014 — several hundred photographs, film reels, manuscripts and audio recordings — and the book grew out of that project.

North Mississippi “is a special place, a special part of America,” said Todd Harvey, a collections specialist in American Folklife Center and curator of the Alan Lomax Collection, during a recent onstage conversation with Ford and Aimee Hess, the book’s editor.  The conversation, part of the Botkin Lecture Series, was at the Whitthall Pavilion, and launched the book’s publication to a full house.

Ford grew up and was educated in the northeast, but took his young family to Mississippi in the early 1970s to work on an in-depth exploration of the folkways of one of the poorest places in America. He apprentinced himself to blacksmith Marion Randolph Hall, whose shop in Oxford was just off the town square that William Faulkner had made so famous. He hung out at Hal Waldrip’s General Store in Chulahoma, watched A.G. Newson make molasses, went to Othar Turner’s barbecues (featuring fife and drum music) and studied how Riller Thomas made quilts.

“When I got to north Mississippi and went wandering  in late afternoon when it was first frost, I knew what I was seeing,” Ford said during the onstage conversation. “People were self-sufficient,without a lot of outside stuff.”

Michael Ford discusses his work with Aimee Hess, managing editor of the Library’s Publications Office. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The first lesson Hall taught him about blacksmithing? When looking at a piece of metal in the shop, “spit on it to see if it’s hot.”

Mississippi is that kind of place — gut-bucket deep with labor, practicality and mother wit. Ford, new to an old place, was struck by its poverty, by the raw relationship of people to nature.  He stuck to a few counties that are to the south and east of Memphis, tucked below Tennessee and not far from the Alabama line. Interstates were things that ran someplace else. In these rolling hills and small villages, he struck up friendships and stayed for four years.

“They’re about the land,” he writes about his pictures of the era, “and about the people living their lives as best they can in the circumstances they are in. I was there in a rural America that was at its end.”

In his lecture, four decades later, he counted himself fortunate to have done so.

“I was lucky to get it,” he said, “while it was there.”

Riller Smith ‘s quilts on the line. Lafayette County, Miss., 1972. Photo: Michael Ford

Read more on https://loc.gov

[lipwak]

VHS #381

Accordion Tribe - Music Travels!, American Masters - Muddy Waters - Can’t Be Satisfied, Blues Story, Concert For Bangladesh, Pink Floyd Live - Pulse, Soundstage: Bill Laswell: Axiom Sound System, Musical Freezone *** Accordion Tribe - Music Travels1&1/2 hr, sGuy Klucevsek, Maria Kaleniemi, Bratko Bibik, Lars Hollmer, Otto Lechner5/21Link TV Dolores · Bratko Bibic, Otto Lechner (https://youtu.be/IAZwxg6Byr8) Not this clip. Audio only.Itflykt M. Dacyckl (LH) - frenetic intros all the bandOtto rehearsing in Uppsala to record CD, Swither then onstage (https://youtu.be/LaV7OaRcpzc) Not this clip. Audio only.more rehearsalMaria: 'in the beginning, what was going to be happening', otto playing fast notes (https://youtu.be/OtWYAIcyRog) This clip.Cirkus 1 (LH)! onstage (https://youtu.be/AS7YifBkHR4) Not this clip. Audio only.Maria, Otto talking about Finnish music, Otto doing throat music, Maria talking. (https://youtu.be/EiDz5hvRN_s) This clip. Tune is Unikko (https://youtu.be/0VOa9gjCeHY) Not this clip. Audio only.unknown tuneOtto’s accordion, his sweetheart, plays short segmentsTagozide (GK) - nice tangothey all play a huge accordionsign accordionGuy’s hometown, his accordion teacher, Waltz, Waltz, teacher notes something he didn’t likeGras (OL), interesting up and down scalesWintersonnenwende (OL), slow, beautiful, w/ wavering notesBoeves Paselm (LH), Lars Holmer sweet simple tune with hook (https://youtu.be/6qBbkUCViqE) Not this clip. Audio only.Lars, Yes, I’m a romantic bastard. Lars and Otto jamming at the breakfast table. Maria goes back to sleep. unknown tunetrying to find the hotel using the GPS on the bus(Police - Walking on the Moon on accordion)Otto in his hotel roomconfused tune, Otto throat singingBratko Bibik tunes, extreme breathing intro - that was the title of the next song we were going to play.folk tune?, Slovenia, doing stone work, talks of his youth playing accordion in the 60s, Guy in NYC (Staten Island?), old family footage of Eastern PA, polka music, driving in NYC, minimalism wasn’t interesting to him after several years, then he wrote a polka, Happy Chappie Polka (https://youtu.be/HKuzZabjda8) Not this clip. Audio only.Otto on tv show. another confused tuneOtto throat singing, extreme breathing on the busMaria singing/playing, talks about doing music she loves, walking onstage, Finnish duo by lake (https://youtu.be/YpaJY9c8CuQ) This clip. (a Swedish version of a Scandinavian song called Ramund = Ramunder (MK and Marrianne Moore)Porteletype (love this one) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV50p1qjKyk&t=1012s) Not this clip. Audio only.Helsinki, Maria, lake with lily pads, Tuttuni (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV50p1qjKyk&t=2005s) Not this clip. Audio only.Maria at Lar’s studio. Slow song. Karelian love song!… frozen lake scenes (in compilation?), wolves howling at the moon… Otto ad libs at end, then coughs.Dark Side of the Accordion (OL) (Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon) as credits roll Compilation of clips from the movie (https://youtu.be/KYeQdKQUNXA) walk towards cam, otto, guy, group *** American Masters - Muddy Waters - Can’t Be Satisfied1 hr Long Distance Call (https://youtu.be/fe2LZYFaIho) This clip, BB King, Keith Richards, Buddy Guy, Bonnie Raitt, Rollin’ And Tumblin’, Jim Dickinson, granddaughter, talks about family in car, David "Honeyboy" Edwards, Willie Dixon, Catfish Blues - Robert Petway, Robert Morgenfield, You Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone, Alan Lomax, Ron Wynn, original Lomax recording talking to him, I Be’s Troubled, Still A Fool, James Cotton, street musicians in Chicago, I Can’t Be Satisfied, Marshall Chess, I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man, Juke - Little Walter, stepson, house he used to live in - abandoned now, watched baseball on tv all the time, Bob Margolin, She’s 19 Years Old, old girlfriends, at Newport, I’ve Got My Mojo Working, Chuck D, Charlie Musselwhite, beer bottle in his pants, Just Make Love To Me, painting the celling at Chess?, Electric Mud, I Just Want To Make Love To You, Honey Bee, My Home Is In The Delta, Westmont, IL, Crosseyed Cat, Mannish Boy (Dortmund, 1978), Bird Nest On The Ground. *** Blues Story1 hrall kinds of blues people circa 2003 See the whole thing (1 & 1/2 hrs) here: https://youtu.be/5qq_qnLHf74 Willie Foster - My Dear Old Dad, Koko Taylor, BB KIng, Honeyboy Edwards, Little Milton, Othar Turner and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band - Fife & Drum Music, Philadelphia Jerry Ricks, Charles Brown, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lowell Fulsom, Blind Blake, John Jackson - Police Dog Blues, Charley Patton, Hubert Sumlin, Pinetop Perkins, Rufus Thomas, Gatemouth Moore, Ma Rainey, Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood, Honeyboy Edwards - Cross Road Blues, Snooky Pryor, Ruth Brown, R. L. Burnside - Poor Black Mattie, Sonny Boy Williamson (1 & 2), Howlin’ Wolf, It’s Rainy Outdoors, Baby, Pinetop Perkins - How Long Blues, Robert Lockwood - In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down, Willie King and the Liberators, Roosevelt Sykes, T-Bone Walker, Clarence "Gatemouth” Brown, Louie Jordan - Caldonia, rope dividing audience, Bobby "Blue” Bland on (the new) Beale St, BB playing, Bobby "Blue” Bland - That’s The Way Love Is, WDIA, Pep-Ti-Kon jingle, Buddy Guy playing (If You Ever Been Mistreated), Snooky Pryor, Maxwell St, Snooky Pryor - Snooky & Moody's Boogie, Koko Taylor - Wang Dang Doodle, Williw Dixon was in the audience as an A&R man for Chess to hear Koko, Chess brothers, Little Milton - We're Gonna Make It, Magic Slim and the Teardrops, Howlin’ Wolf, Hubert Sumlin w/ Magic Slim, Muddy Waters w/ James Cotton, Philadelphia Jerry Ricks - Hey Hey, John Lee Hooker - Boom Boom Boom, Big Mama Thornton, Rolling Stones w/ Howlin’ Wolf. And lots of others. *** Concert For Bangladesh1&1/2 w/o some of the pledge breaksVERY edited…6/1/? See the whole thing here: https://vimeo.com/66413717 Jesse Ed Davis! Ringo and Jim Keltner on drums, Leon Russell, Billy Preston, Badfinger Wah-Wah, Clapton lead gtrMy Sweet LordThat's the Way God Planned It - Billy Preston, gets happy at the end...It Don't Come Easy - Ringopledge break, reissueGeorge intros bandWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps, Clapton soloJumpin' Jack Flash - Leon Russell (medley cut out)Here Comes the Sun -George Harrison Blowin' in the Wind - Bob Dylan pledge break/edited short by meJust Like a Woman - Bob Dylan w/ George and Leon SomethingBangla Dhun - Ravi ShankarBangla Desh - all *** Pink Floyd Live - Pulse 49:32, s2006 (missed beginning) Learning To Fly (https://youtu.be/tresPsC7WCA) This clip.Breathe (https://youtu.be/74tuTW8h0P0?t=127) This clip.Wish You Were Here (https://youtu.be/tiF-q2h7tSA) This clip.Comfortably Numb (https://youtu.be/vi7cuAjArRs) This clip.Money (https://youtu.be/smlOI4YWn6M) This clip. “Bullshit" edited out.pledge break I edit outTime (https://youtu.be/pgwjGrdieIY) This clip.Us And Them (https://youtu.be/JbGyNtKKK5I) This clip.Brain Damage/Eclipse (https://youtu.be/1Z39KZAryzk) This clip. *** Soundstage: Bill Laswell: Axiom Sound System, Musical Freezonemissed beginning52:24, ssaturated colors See the whole thing here: https://youtu.be/qurVdB-HwUU Ustad Sultan Khan, Zakir Hussain, Pharoah Sanders, Buckethead, Bootsy Collins, Toshinori Kondo, Hamid Drake, Abegasu Shiota, Bill Laswell, Foday Musa Suso, Aiyb Dieng, Karsh Kale unknown song (Indian)Pharoah Sanders sax, synth, Toshinori KondoFoday Musa Suso, Pharoah SandersFoday Musa Suso, Toshinori Kondo, Pharoah SandersBuckethead, Big D as Buckethead dances, then plays gtr, Brain on drums, dj Bootsy Collins - Keep That Funk Alive, Buckethead

[mealha]

William Ferris: the folklorist who made black America immortal

Going from farm to front porch across America’s south in the 1960s, William Ferris recorded everything from praying pigs to haunting blues – a political act, he says, at a time when black voices were being silenced

In the summer of 1968, as the wider world reacted in shock and protest to war and assassination and attacks on civil rights, a young, white, Mississippi folklorist named Bill Ferris roamed the back roads of his home state, looking for the blues. “I thought of it as a political act in the face of racial violence,” he told me recently from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he lives now. “In the 60s, when a white man came to hear a black speaker or musician, they knew he was doing so at a risk. They would say to me: now if I tell you this, will you be sure to put it down and get it out?”

Locals in the little cotton town of Leland pointed him toward the home of a singer named James “Son Ford” Thomas, but the woman who answered the door claimed he didn’t live there. “When I turned to go, she asked me, what do you want with him?” Ferris recalled of Thomas’s wife, Christine. “Then she told me I could wait on the porch. By the time he came home, his children had befriended me and were holding my hand.” Ferris and Thomas became fast, lifelong friends, too. “He was very spiritual,” Ferris remembered, “and instinctively knew situations with his heart.”

A few days until the release of “Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris.” Among the films included in the box set is the 1972 doc “Gravel Springs Fife and Drum,” a portrait of Othar Turner that shows how he and his music shape the community. pic.twitter.com/aDytzHbupu

Continue reading... from Photography | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MkyvOZ

[eliashiebert]

Side B Rev 2

Manu Dibango “Soul Makossa”

Scholly D “Put Your Filas On”

Othar Turner & the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band “Shimmy She Wobble’

Jungle Brothers “Peace Ahki”

Biz Markie “Albee Square Mall”

Bob James “Mardi Gras”

Hugh Masekela “Bajabule Bonke”

Aimee Mann “Ballantines”

I didnt really like Book Of Rhyme Pages in the spot between Filas and Albee Square but I never really liked Filas and Albee Square right next to each other, so instead I stuck in a couple beat metamorphoses leading from one to the other. 

Side B Rev 1

Side B

Side A

[thedeltareview]

The Rising Star JuBallLee Takes Over Cherry Place At Waterford Since the death of the legendary fife and drum musician Othar Turner, his granddaughter Sharde Thomas has done stellar work in preserving that musical tradition, as well as the…

[hottytoddynews]

Thacker Mountain Radio Host Jim Dees: shirts from Hawaii, voice from Mississippi

Two-hour show celebrates with smorgasbord of literature, music and food for thought.

By Tad Wilkes, Nightlife & Lifestyles Editor

tad.wilkes@hottytoddy.com

Thacker Mountain Radio fans and newcomers alike will come away stuffed to the gills from a veritable buffet of words and music. This week brings a special two-hour Thacker Mountain Radio show, celebrating the show’s fifteenth anniversary.

Since its beginnings among the peanut shells at Blind Jim’s bar (now the Burgundy Room) as the “Words and Music” show, Thacker Mountain Radio has come a long way. The brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Bryan Ledford and then-budding folk song craftsman Caroline Herring, and friends, Square Books’ TMR, usually hosted at Off Square Books, celebrates its birthday on the air this Thursday, October 18, at 6 p.m. at the Lyric Theatre. TMR sets a fine table, with guests including Sharde Thomas and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band and authors John Dufresne, Randall Kenan and Monique Truong along with musician, James Barrier of the Pine Hill Haints.

Doors open at 5 p.m., and admission is free. A cash bar will be available. The show will be broadcast on Rebel Radio (92.1 FM) and online: www.myrebelradio.com.

After Thacker, at 7 p.m., the audience is encouraged to stick around for the film premier of Pride & Joy, a one-hour documentary film directed by Joe York that celebrates the culture of barbecue in the South.

Constant Celebration

“We’re continuously improving our content and accessibility,” says TMR Producer Kathryn McGaw about the weekly Thursday show that for years was broadcast live on Oxford’s Bullseye 95.5 and now on Rebel Radio 92.1, rebroadcast on Saturdays on Mississippi Public Radio at 7 p.m. This week’s two-hour show intends, as TMR has for 15 years, to celebrate “the talent and history of talent that we have not only in Oxford but in Mississippi in general,” McGaw says.

The show presses on in the wake of the very recent passing of Duff Dorrough, guitarist in the Thacker house band, the Yalobushwackers. “Obviously that is a sad part of our history right now,” McGaw says. “But at our show on October 4, which was the show immediately after his death, instead of offering a moment of silence, we offered a round of applause. That’s how we’re going to be—remembering his legacy through that constant celebration.”

That rejoicing continues for two straight hours this week.

“What we were lucky with this time around,” she adds, “is that our fifteenth anniversary coincides with the Southern Foodways Symposium. In thinking about how we would set up a really great show, I talked with (Southern Foodways Alliance Director) John T. Edge at the beginning of the year. John T. got me in touch with David Morgan at the Mississippi Humanities Council, which has a year-long initative called Food for Thought, For Life, and they are really highlighting our need to tie together all the great cultural things we have going on—art, music and literature, with some of the pressing issues of nutrition and food in our state … It all dovetails nicely with Thacker. What we were able to do is to partner with both SFA and MHC to pull in some really great authors, who will also appear at the symposium.

“Lastly, John T. and I were talking about what music would really highlight all of those different aspects; the symposium this year is centered around barbecue, and Joe York’s film is going to premiere right after Thacker, and that focuses on food traditions across the region.” Fife and drum music is associated with Southern barbecue events, and the Pine Hill Haints provided music for Pride & Joy, to help tie everything together, with funding assistance from the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council.

Words and Music

Wallace Lester, drummer of the Thacker Mountain Radio house band The Yalobushwackers

Host Jim Dees and the Thacker house band the Yalobushwackers hold it together, as usual, this week, welcoming authors and musicians.

Sharde Thomas is the granddaughter of the late Othar Turner, a leading practitioner of the North Mississippi fife and drum tradition. She began playing music at the age of seven with her grandfather’s group, the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band. She started writing songs when she was 13, and in 2010, at age 20, she released her first CD, What Do I Do? The CD is a mix of the old fife and drum traditions, mixed with smooth soul and hip hop. Thomas, who has been called the last living link to fife and drum music, is a student at Delta State’s Delta Music Institute.

John Dufresne is the author of the short story collections, The Way That Water Enters Stone and Johnny Too Bad and the novels, Louisiana Power & Light, Love Warps the Mind a Little, (both named New York Times Notable Books), Deep in the Shade of Paradise, and his latest, Requiem, Mass. He is also the author of two fiction writing guides, The Lie That Tells a Truth: a Guide to Writing Fiction and Is Life Like This: a Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months, as well as two screenplays and a play. He lives in Dania Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University. Earlier this year, Dufresne was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Randall Kenan is author of the novel A Visitation of Spirits and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was among The New York Times Notable Books of 1992. Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century was published in 1999 and was nominated for the Southern Book Award. His latest book, The Fire This Time, was published in May 2007. Kenan was the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi from 1997 to 1998. He is currently associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Born in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1968, Monique Truong is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Bitter in the Mouth and The Book of Salt and was a bestseller and named a New York Times Notable Fiction Book, a Chicago Tribune Favorite Fiction Book, one of The Village Voice‘s 25 Favorite Books, and one of The Miami Herald‘s Top 10 Books, among other citations. Truong writes a monthly online food column, Ravenous, for The New York Times’ T Magazine. She was a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow.

Originally from Alabama, The Pine Hill Haints formed in the late 1990s and have since released several CDs, including Split, Welcome to the Midnight Opry (recorded in Water Valley) and their latest, Tales of Crime. Lead singer and main songwriter, James Barrier, sings the group’s “snazzed up, working-class rockabilly” behind his homemade wooden microphone stand.

    The post Feast at Fifteen: Thacker Mountain's Anniversary appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[wacanakolektif-blog]

Pearl In a Haystack, Jon Kastella

Oleh: Oscar Lolang

“Adakah ku tuduh waktu tlah mengejar di belakangku? Akankah ku salahkan waktu tlah berjalan lebih cepat di depanku?”

Besar kemungkinan kamu belum pernah mendengar penggalan lirik lagu diatas. Adalah penggalan lirik satu lagu bernada Folk dan semi Ballad berjudul Kini karya Jon Kastella. Jika kamu kerap mampir ke Perpustakaan Batu Api atau ke tempat ngopi Pallets di bilangan Caringin, Jatinangor atau pula bertempat tinggal dan menghabiskan masa kecil di kompleks perumahan IPDN, mungkin sekali kamu mengenal nama musisi yang saya sebutkan tadi. Pria tersebut berbadan gempal, kerap memakai sweater atau jaket vintage, paras wajah yang tak henti-hentinya tersenyum dan sering merokok produk rokok kretek herbal yang panjangnya hampir sepanjang jari kelingking karakter Samson. Ya, sangatlah wajar jika banyak yang belum mengenal lagu tersebut karena beliau memang belum merekam lagu bernada sendu dan bermakna dalam nan tajam tersebut.

Bernama asli Zuhud Islami Kastella, pria berdarah campuran Maluku-Minang ini lebih banyak dikenal dengan panggilannya sekarang, Jon. Berawal karena kepiawaiannya memainkan Gitar dan bernyanyi. Jon tersebut diambil dari nama besar John Lennon. Nama tersebut kini menjadi sangat menarik untuk di hafal khususnya kala beliau tampil di banyak panggung-panggung pertunjukan musik. Gaya tuturnya yang halus dan cenderung memakai Bahasa Indonesia yang baku (terkadang dicampur dengan sempilan berbagai kosa kata Bahasa Sunda) serta ekspresif membuat nya semakin mudah untuk diingat. Suara beliau begitu lembut namun lantang. Getaran nya lihai dalam memancing orang untuk terpaku pada setiap nada dan lirik yang dipersembahkannya. Permainan Gitar atau Ukulelenya terkadang lebih pelan (jikalau tidak ada sound system yang menopang) bahkan di beberapa lagu (termasuk lagu Kini) petikannya terdengar sungguh lirih dan anteng sehingga membuatnya sebegitu kuat untuk mengiring nyanyiannya, pula kita, penonton yang menyimaknya. Figur nya di panggung sungguh dominan. Wawasan musiknya pun luar biasa. Dari sekian banyak musik yang ia cerna, Bob Dylan, The Ronettes, Beach Boys, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, Simon and Garfunkel, Hank Williams, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Phil Spector, sampai musisi lokal seperti Eros Djarot dan Yockie Suryoprayogo hanya segelintir nama yang ia idolakan dan berpengaruh besar pada musik Beliau.

Suatu ketika saya mengundangnya bernyanyi pada suatu acara di Perpustakaan dan Ruang Kreatif Sosiologi 14, Bandung, saya sungguh terketuk ketika beliau, meskipun sebagai penampil pertama, memaksa penonton yang masih berkeliaran di luar venue untuk masuk kedalam, lalu bergoyang sesuai irama dan bernyanyi bersama hanya dengan panggilan musik yang ia sodorkan. Bahkan kala ia bernyanyi lagu anak-anak, hadir beberapa anak kecil disana lalu ia dengan senyum ramah, jujur dan humble kepada penonton ciliknya tersebut memperlihatkan suatu relasi yang manis antar keduanya. Kita tahu untuk melakukan hal seperti itu susahnya bukan main.

Bang Jon, begitu saya biasa memanggilnya, sering sekali membantu penampilan panggung saya sebagai salah satu penyanyi latar. Jujur, kehadiran beliau ditambah Andri Cahyaningtyas (Alvin & I dan Soft Blood) sangat menolong kondisi panggung yang kosong, jikalau saya hanya naik seorang diri. Banyak kenalan yang menanyakan mengapa saya memilih Bang Jon untuk memeriahkan musik ku. Argumen mereka rata-rata karena Bang Jon juga merupakan seorang penampil dan dia memiliki persona panggung yang bisa dibilang tak kalah kuat.

Kekhawatiran mereka Bang Jon berpeluang untuk mengambil alih panggung dengan suara dan pesona nya yang dahsyat. Namun begitu, Bang Jon justru memperlihatkan sisinya sebagai seorang seniman dan penampil yang sebenarnya. Beliau paham betul dengan perannya. Selain kerap membantu dalam menggubah lagu ku ke dalam format panggung yang berbeda, Bang Jon mengiringi suara dan musik ku dengan sangat sopan dan elegan. Berbeda dengan kala ia main seorang diri. Meskipun begitu, kekuatan suara nya juga hadir menggema dalam kepaduan musik ku pula suara ku maupun Andri. Banyak orang yang menanyakannya dan menanti nya untuk tampil lebih jauh lagi seorang diri.

Saya mengenal beberapa lagu beliau dengan baik. Beruntunglah aku, beliau kerap kali mempertunjukan karya-karya nya di hadapanku. Ada yang berjudul Perahuku, ada yang berjudul Sewindu adapula berjudul Kidung dan favoritku adalah yang berjudul Kini.

Kebanyakan lagu beliau bernada folk sederhana dengan progresi yang terkadang tidak biasa. Mengaku tidak terlalu pandai merangkai lirik, tapi jika mendengarnya secara langsung aku yakin kawan-kawan pun tidak akan setuju dengannya. Memang, setiap penggalan liriknya bukan merupakan rangkaian sastra yang muluk. Lirik-lirik itu mudah sekali diingat bahkan sungguh lugas untuk langsung dicerna. Paragraf berikut akan membicarakan lagu yang berjudul Kini.

“Kini” intinya bercerita tentang seseorang yang resah akan alur hidupnya. Mimpi, harapan, tuntutan, pujian dan kebutuhan kadang mampu berbalik menjadi hantu yang mengerikan. Meski ihwal-ihwal tersebut seringkali berputar membingungkan, pada akhirnya waktu lah yang berlaku sungguh kejam. Ia berjalan semaunya, pelan maupun kencang tanpa rasa bersalah. Umur yang dirayakan kala bertambah justru mengabarkan kerisauan yang lainnya. Semua itu dirampung dengan sangat bijak oleh Jon Kastella. Versi yang saya dengar hanyalah yang sangat simpel yaitu dengan Gitar. Pernah satu ketika saya meminta secara personal agar lagu tersebut dipakai untuk membuka penampilan panggung kami. Kala itu ia bernyanyi tanpa instrumen apa-apa. Meski lagu tersebut tidak lengkap ia nyanyikan, tetapi cukup untuk menghentak setiap orang yang disana dan merupakan sebuah epilog indah untuk memberi nyawa lebih pada pertunjukan kami yang gundah dan resah tetapi manis dan lantang. Meski beliau memiliki visi tersendiri untuk lagu ini, entah akan dibalut dengan format band atau apalah itu saya tidak tahu, namun apa yang selama ini saya dengar adalah karya musik yang luar biasa apik.

Memang sayang lagu ini belum beredar di platform musik maupun sosial media manapun. Keberadaan beliau di dunia maya pun sangat sedikit. Banyak sekali orang yang menanyakan beliau. Saya seringkali bingung membalasnya dan hanya menyodorkan video-video beliau di Youtube atau rekaman beliau (di Soundcloud) bernyayi bersama kawan-kawan di grup yang kini sudah bubar bernama OSK. Itupun sangat terbatas jumlahnya. Coba bawalah gitar mu, temui ia dan todong beliau agar mendendangkannya. Ku yakin pun beliau tidak langsung mau. Ada beberapa onggok prinsip dan idealismenya dalam bermusik yang menarik untuk kita hargai. Salah satunya adalah kesempurnaan. Tempat bermain, kesiapan beliau memainkan lagunya sampai waktu adalah hal penting dalam membawakan sebuah gubahan musik. Itulah salah satu hal ihwal yang beliau camkan. Dalam merekam lagu pun beliau masih menunggu. Memang unik Jon Kastella ini.

Jika membayangkan karakter Johnny B. Goode dalam lagu Chuck Berry, Jon Kastella adalah salah satu contohnya. Dalam tradisi pop musik rakyat Amerika, bapak anak John dan Alan Lomax banyak berkeliling dan mencari musisi hebat, merekamnya dan mengenalkan ke dunia musik-musik yang luar biasa tersebut. Muncullah nama-nama seperti Othar Turner dan lain-lain. Saya membayangkannya seperti mencari serpihan suatu barang di tumpukan jerami. Tidak hanya serpihan tersebut yang ditemui Lomax, tetapi seringkali sebuah mutiara. Melanconglah ke Jatinangor dan temuilah mutiara itu, ia lah Jon Kastella.