Songlines

Hillary cries. Obama surges. Huckabee strums, or rather, plucks. Hillary surges. Obama pledges to continue. Oh, and Britney shows her private bits again. Surf your favorite news site and it’s all the same. Year after year after year. The names may change, but humans got a way of just doing the same old same old. Politicians crash and burn. Voters defy all logic and common sense and elect a complete moron. Pop stars continue to disprove Darwinian law, living their weak-kneed lives long after some stronger species should have put them—and us—out of their misery. You can thank liberals and lawyers for that.

I’ve long given up on the traditional heroes. Professional athletes, politicians, movie stars are nothing but groveling toadies jonesing for power and attention, worse than any decrepit needle addict. When I get like this I beat the bushes, I zig when everyone else is zagging, I head out on the fringe, away from the maddening crowd.

I started casting around for new music. Music is such a wonderful diversion for me. It takes me away from wherever I am, and it’s not that I don’t like where I am, I simply love to travel, whether it’s physically or in my mind. And I love my music collection, but I do get bored listening to the same stuff.

It’s probably not news to a lot of the visitors to this site, but I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of Songlines of a while now. Actually have skimmed one once or twice but tossed it back on the shelf. This time I bought one and found a gold mine of new music, at least for me. A nice distraction from the world of politics and current events.

It’s called world music, but I think that’s a funny name for it. Kind of like people calling anything not from the U.S. “foreign.” Well, it’s only foreign to you, dude. I keep saying country music, good country music, not that sugary crap manufactured in Nashville with all its empty calories, is all about what happens between birth and sleeping in the dirt. And that’s what a lot of this music is about. Hey, when you get down to it, isn’t that really what all good artistic endeavors are about—life between birth and a dirt nap?

The November issue that I bought (well, it is printed in the UK; don’t expect the most up-to-date issues here on “foreign” ground) came with two compilation CDs. I love hearing all kinds of music from all countries sung in all different languages. But obviously I’m a product of my own environment, and right off the bat I was drawn to Linda Thompson and Kate Rusby, both British folk singers.

Thompson sings Katy Cruel, a traditional song dating back to colonial times (American colonial times, that is) in a lilting voice accompanied by a guitar and the beat of the hand on a drum, backed by female vocalists reminding you that Celtic ghosts are what make those lace curtains sway:

When I first came to town,
They called me the roving jewel;
Now they've changed their tune,
They call me Katy Cruel,
Oh, diddle, lully day,
Oh, de little lioday.

High on the Hill, which is on Kate Rusby’s newest album, Awkward Annie, is a beautiful English song in the folk tradition that opens with a plucked banjo (or is it a mandolin?) and Rusby’s sweet voice accompanying. The song picks up with more instrumentation, lilting lyrics (that’s really the only way to describe Irish/British folk music, isn’t it?) and Rusby harmonizes with Chris Thile from Nickel Creek.

oh, darling, let’s go over now, the devil’s here….

I can’t find the album in stores. It’s an import, so Amazon.com ships it in one to three months.

There’s a ton more. More that will keep me preoccupied from the rest of the madness.

Oh, darling, let’s go over now, the devil’s here…