12 minute read
ARTS & EVENTS
Reviving Black and Indigenous Folk Music
Acclaimed roots artist Jake Blount to perform at McCabe’s in Santa Monica
By Bliss Bowen
Hearing “The Man Was Burning,” an obscure spiritual recorded in 1936, sparked excitement and a sense of recognition in multiinstrumental roots musician Jake Blount. First, because it had been recorded at a Virginia state prison about an hour away from Blount’s family’s farm, which is located near a plantation where his enslaved ancestors had labored; and second, because the knife-edged intensity in 71-yearold inmate Joe Lee’s performance immediately directed Blount to “where that song needed to go” in a modern arrangement. Blount’s new version sharpens the original’s edge. “My interest in this music is always at least partially coming from wanting to know what my family would have been singing,” said Blount, who found the song on “Virginia Work Songs,” a Smithsonian Folkways collection of field recordings made by John Lomax. Searching for folk songs not already embedded in the traditional canon is challenging when so many potential sources have already been “scoured,” but Blount believes finding something nobody’s heard before is less vital than approaching the material with integrity. “If you’re a modern musician and you’re going after these old songs, everybody’s gonna have a slightly different take on what to do with them,” Blount said. “Part of what encouraged me about working with ‘The Man Was Burning’ is that it would have been very easy for me, given my skill set and what I’m often doing, to make a bluegrass or old-time version; I’ve been performing a bluegrass version of that song on the road because I don’t have a rock band with me
PHOTO CREDITS: MICHELLE LOTKER
Multi-instrumental roots artist, Jake Blount, revives Black and Indigenous folk music for modern audiences at McCabe’s in Santa Monica on Friday night.
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right now. But I’ve been reading a bunch about Sister Rosetta Tharpe and thought, ‘Oh, I can do this rock ‘n’ roll thing with this spiritual that nobody’s really been doing since her.’” Recording amid pandemic restrictions, he wrote all the parts and played all the instruments except bass. Against an ear-tugging backdrop of electric guitar, handclaps and rhythmic loops, he updated the original anti-gambling lyric into a more timely condemnation of greed: “That man was countin’ his money Yeah he was grinnin’ mighty broad He held a greenback dollar aloft, said This money gonna make me a god!” “I try to take approaches from across the timeline of folk music, rather than simply thinking I’m going to go back and update this thing for today,” Blount said. “I examine where it comes from as far back as I can go and then scan through all the approaches that black people have taken to folk music throughout the years and decide which one feels best for me to approach it. Even if you’re listening to something a lot of other people have heard, you can still wind up making such a different choice that it still feels unique to you.” Despite holding a bachelor’s degree in ethnomusicology, Blount isn’t entirely comfortable identifying himself as an ethnomusicologist; he prefers to speak through his music and contextualizing stories he shares onstage and in post-show conversations. His widely lauded 2020 album, “Spider Tales,” named after a trickster character from West African mythology, and his 2017 EP, “Reparations,” refreshed traditional tunes from Black and indigenous communities in the Southeast and became part of the ongoing conversation about what truly constitutes “Americana.” That positioned the Providence, Rhode Island resident amid a burgeoning wave of artists — alongside the likes of Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell and Yasmin Williams — who are refocusing attention on how Black and Indigenous musicians have developed and shaped American roots music. Hearing “The Man Was Burning,” an obscure spiritual recorded in 1936, sparked excitement and a sense of recognition in Blount, whose new version sharpens the original’s edge. When he headlines at McCabe’s in Santa Monica on Friday night, he will be accompanied by fiddler and banjoist George Jackson, Lula Wiles bassist Mali Obomsawin, and guitarist/banjo-uke player Gus Rich. Even with such traditional string-band instrumentation, however, Blount’s arrangements take left turns; he isn’t hidebound in his presentations. “There’s a lot of value in having people who are really invested in presenting these old traditions the way that they used to be heard,” he noted. But having grown up playing in rock and metal bands in Washington, DC — “an urban, middle-class environment in the 21st century” — he said it “wouldn’t necessarily be realistic or respectful for me to go pretend I have the same background as Joe Lee or the same belief system or have the same aesthetic. It’s part of an ethical approach to this work to respect the differences between where those artists come from and where we come from.”
Jake Blount
WHERE: McCabe’s, 3101 Pico Boulevard, Santa Monica WHEN: 8 p.m., Friday, April 22 COST: $20 INFO: 310-828-4497 jakeblount.com, mccabes.com
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New musical from Pacific Resident Theatre centers on women’s collective experiences
By Paul Wozniak
Pacific Resident Theatre (PRT)’s 2022 season is debuting a world premier by unlocking women’s stories and making them center stage. Playwright and co-lyricist Liesl Wilke’s new original musical “Stalled” about four women in an executive washroom is more about getting “un-stalled.” “The idea is that they’re all stuck in some way, either afraid to face something or not telling the truth... And that they make a step forward by the end,” Wilke said. The show runs through May 15. The script went through multiple adaptations before its stage debut, from award-winning short story to television pilot to original musical over 12 years. In a series of fortuitous meetings, Wilke connected with composer Andy Marsh to compose the songs and co-wrote the lyrics, PRT artistic director Marilyn Fox to serve as the show’s executive producer, and Cal Brady to direct. Wilke was surprised at first when Marsh agreed to compose the music. “He is the son of a friend of mine and I was going to ask him to refer me to someone, a woman probably who would want to work on something,” Wilke said. “And he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to write a musical. Can I read it?’ And I said ‘It’s women in a bathroom. I don’t know.’ And he was game.” Ultimately, Wilke said Marsh’s different perspectives helped mold the show. “He would push me on what was happening with the characters and make me explain it to him and in certain cases, forced me to acknowledge that I hadn’t fully fleshed out something I didn’t even know,” Wilke said. “Or we together came up with something better.” Fox, who Wilke met through a mutual friend, said she felt surprisingly moved by the themes in the script. “I had very personal feelings about it,” Fox said. “And it was kind of like, ‘Oh, this is a musical about this?’” As the show moved closer to staging and after some workshopping and tweaks, Fox introduced Brady to Wilke as a potential director. “Cal, who I knew from UCLA,
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Written by Liesl Wilke and running through May 15 at Pacific Resident Theatre, “Stalled” is an entertaining, perceptive and rewarding study of the going’s on inside a high-end executive ladies room.
we were together there some years ago, as teacher and student,” Fox said. “But then Cal directed “The Last Five Years” in our worship space. And I thought Cal’s hand was a delicate one and egoless one. I thought, ‘This is the talent that has the right heart for developing this piece.’” Brady shared that they also connected to the script right away. “When I first read it, I was just really struck by this kind of mother-child bond that was happening throughout all the characters,” Brady said. “They’re all kind of struggling or working through some issues with their mom or with their daughter, which is kind of just a universal problem. I feel like everybody goes through that with a parent or child in some way or another.” Fox said she resonated even more with the nearly finished production during a final rehearsal with the full orchestra. “It was almost like the play had some metaphysical thing inside of it that has been placed there from Liesl’s psyche, that is a very deep thing about mothers and daughters,” Fox said. “And it opened something up in me, you know, that, it’s there all the time, but I had forgotten about it. And it’s very beautiful because it has to do with this deep love or lack of it, you know, that we all have with our moms. I feel like there’s something very special, I think that the piece has enormous potential.” While the COVID-19 pandemic has quite literally stalled countless theatrical productions, Fox said it also actually helped create a healthier creative environment for “Stalled” to grow. “I’ve had a couple of colleagues say to me, ‘I think the pandemic saved my life,’” Fox said. “And I know it’s a strange thing to say, but because theater is so guerrilla warfare, and you just keep going and going. There was something about it that it was all calm, and that this piece came floating along the river.” But getting closer to the debut date still had its risks. “We’re supposed to have a full cast read-through gathering and Liesl tested positive for COVID,” Brady said. “And we had to go back on Zoom for three days, right at the start.” Brady said they think the show is especially important and relevant, especially coming out of the pandemic. “Everyone’s so jumpy and scared to connect or like touch,” Brady said. “So yeah, it’s just an intimate musical. That’s unique in that way. It’s not full of flashy anything. It’s very intimate, and just connected and deep, which I love.” Fox thinks it’s a show anyone can connect to. She’s seen men in the preview audiences have strong reactions to the show. “It’s a lot about the child-parent bond, and in both ways, the child to the parent and the parent to the child,” Fox said. “So I think it’s just affecting everybody in the audience in different ways.” Stalled runs through May 15, Thursdays to Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Single tickets are $35 to $45.
