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Not being one to enter a room and immediately start shaking hands, I'll begin this guest blog with an introduction that suits my nature and allows me to skirt the edges to share a little about myself before I jump in with my commentary. Joe has graciously agreed to allow me, Collins, to help cover some of the talent that will be showcased during this year’s 2017 Americana Fest. I intend to do just that.
For months I have been looking forward to this year's line-up. This being my second Fest I feel like I've shed my sea legs and am ready to actually enjoy myself this year. To do so I've outlined a plan on who I will make sure to support. This plan though began long ago, on one blurry summer's day twenty years ago...
The woman was never a great photographer. She was hardly even a good one. Though for reasons all her own, she inserted herself into the folds of an Atlanta based, Buddhist community as their official photographer. On July 22nd 1997 this woman, with her untrained eye and trembling hands, captured a blurry image of me in a crowd gathered around an equally blurry though poised and seated, Rosa Parks.
This photograph - one I keep framed even in it blurriness - frames Mrs. Parks with her ankles elegantly crossed and a bell of flowers draped across her lap. She is waving, smiling it seems with her chin slightly towards her chest as if giving a bashful bow. Three smeary faces to her left, is me: an enthusiastic ten-year-old, dressed in her Sunday’s best.
It is in this image that my blurry cast will forever be captured in hazey stop-motion. In what I assume was the beginnings of a wave, my right hand fist forward in an empowered, clenched symbol of solidarity. Though I didn't know what my gesture meant at the time, or even that I was making one, I did know that my parents adored this picture and would smile over it with a joke between them that they’d done something right in the rearing of their little girl.
Growing up in Georgia it would be easy to assume that by pure virtue of being Southern I would have been witness to racial injustice. Somehow though because of my parents devotion to a widely international Buddhist community, I was raised in a hive of multiculturalism. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that the realities of racism in America became real to me. To that point I honestly believed that it was a thing of the past; something overcome by Rosa Parks’ generation's struggles and capped by the “I Have A Dream” speech.
It was my folk’s divorce and the need to find affordable housing which led my single mom to move out of the city and into the suburbs. The 25 minute drive O.T.P. (outside the perimeter - for those unfamiliar with Metro Atlanta Sprawl) placed our family in a totally different world. This move would come to mark the first time that my whiteness and the privilege of it would come to mean anything to me at all.
Though I was the new girl, scrubbed clean with freckles, red hair and braces, I was for the most part welcomed to my new school without mayfair. I don’t suppose anyone would have guessed how surreal it felt to be among a class of very nearly all white children. Today I know that my whiteness granted me the freedom of easy inclusion in that suburban world. It was a protection that allowed me in many ways to be blind to the realities behind why there would be such a distinct demographic difference from living in a Southern city to a Southern suburb.
Outwardly my family fit the accepted mold. Subtleties in the ways in which I was included into the fabric of this new community led me to learn what coded behavior to perform in order to continue feeling normal among my new peers. Even though my family's religious practices were outside the scope of what was expected, we had been able to shelter our difference in this community, a luxury (you could say) that many who found themselves living in this Georgian suburb were not able to do.
Today I live in Nashville, TN. I have grown up to embrace my upbringing and have learned to side-eye anyone who would callously rebuke a child for their family's religious beliefs, heritage or race.These days it seems silly that I ever allowed suburban normalcy to infiltrate my self esteem. It is clear to me now how easy it can be for prejudices to become internalized in communities that are too homogeneous.
This past Fourth of July, 2017 I went down to a venue to listen to two of my favorite songwriters perform: Mary Gauthier and Kevin Gordon. I go out to listen to each of these artists whenever I get the opportunity because embedded in the rhythms of their turns of phrase are un-blurred images of solidarity. With clarity they speak to the ‘normal’ and call it what it many won't - discrimination.
On this particular Independance Day, during their respective sets, Gauthier sang a song about mercy; Gordon about marching straight ahead through a daytime gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. I easily locked into their cadences and waltzed through the brackish flood waters of their Louisiana born lyricsims.
In listening to Gauthier’s song “Mercy Now”, I came to love my country despite its current misgivings. Entranced in the narrative-coupled cadence of Gordon’s song “Colfax”, I felt compelled to keep on marching, straight ahead towards a better tomorrow.
When the sound man switched over to house music, the fireworks began popping off in celebration. Caught in between the tradition of the evening and the terseness of the night's musical message I was left feeling nostalgic for a time that we as a nation haven't really gotten to yet. I reflected on how it was the strengths of Gauthier’s and Gordon’s role models who had emboldened each of them with their passions to communicate the all too normal prejudices we still see within our society.
It was meeting Rosa Parks, on that blurry day in July more that 20 years ago, when an equally august role model influenced me to not be blind to the potentials of prejudice. Mrs. Parks’ nonviolent resistance modeled dignity and respect in the face of strained humanity as did Gauthier’s father, brother, church and country - as did Gordon’s marching band leader.
Artforms allow our humanity to peek through while we tossle and play with the at times harsh details of our existence. In art and especially in the sharing of it, we have the power to intentionally attune our awareness to the diversity of our spaces, notice patterns of exclusion and change these patterns to reflect a more dynamic humanity.
A form of nonviolent resistance in its own right, music may be worn like a tailor made garment, lavishly expressive and customizable. The tradition of weaving experience into melody is as American as Searsucker and Americana, Roots Music is a pattern of our country’s fabric that is worn by a broad and diverse community.
We who love the history of Roots Music know its strong influences: from Blues to Gospel, Cajun to Creole folk, Appalachian folk, Zydeco, Spirituals, Scotch-Irish Ballads, Tejano, and Native American music, among many others. By listening and supporting the diversity of our musical artists we have an opportunity to compel a vision of unity and to strengthen and fortify ourselves in divisive times.
With Americanafest upon us I feel compelled to acknowledge patterns of diversity in my own musical community. In my sphere, I’ve inadvertently accumulated a lot of white men with guitars. Though each of these acclaimed songwriters reflect awareness and respect in their art, I know that it would enrich my perspective to change this unintentional pattern of exclusion and seek out more diversity in the songwriters that I support during this year’s conference.
In reviewing the 2018 Lineup for Americanafest, I am pleased to note that the conference itself has also been deliberate about reflecting the scope and scale of who Americana music is created by and for.
Because it is impossible for one person to cover an entire scene when there are so many excellent performers to support, I will be helping Ear to the Ground by reviewing some of the Americana performers who are keeping the diversity of heritage and roots music strong in this year’s Americana Fest official showcases.
Many thanks in advance to Joe for agreeing to let me scribble my thoughts on his well loved blog. May the Festivities begin!
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