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Odetta CDs
Looking
for a Home /
The Essential Odetta /
Blues Everywhere I Go /
Sings Ballads and Blues /
Absolutely the Best /
Odetta Sings Dylan
Tradition Masters
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Hail! Odetta: Seminal Matriarch of Modern Black Music
Looking for a Home
Reviewed by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya
Salaam
--from
Breath
of Life
We don’t fully know ourselves. We
need to know ourselves. All of us. All of us need to
know the all of us. Especially the obscure sides of us,
the hidden, ignored and just plain forgotten sides of
us. The Odetta of us.
The women and men of us who stood tall when America
wasn’t nothing but mostly one big old giant chopping
axe. When it was common to think of us as much less than
we actually was. Even among ourselves we low-rated our
peoples, our history, the rich survival legacies we
passed around, legacies what was blankets in the
wretched times of our economic nakedness and was cool
sips of water in the desert of the mock democracy we
endured. I don’t mean to solely focus on the political
in talking about Odetta, about our music, about what is
commonly called American folk music, but what you going
to do? If you tell the truth about our music, you gotta
tell the stone truth about what was going down all
around as the music was being made, even though it’s
also true that you don’t have to know none of the
context to like what you hear.
Here in the beginnings of the 21st century, we are kind
of used to music as mostly being ass-shaking
entertainment, so these life stories of ramblers,
prisoners, heartbroken individuals, struggling families,
and assorted strivers, all these reels, airs, tunes,
melodies, musical tapestries and such probably strike
our modern sensibilities as odd. But what is really odd
is how reluctant many of us are to handle up on the guts
of our traditions, the 19th and 20th century roots of
our current humanity.
Americans are used to thinking there is no past worth
studying and remembering. History is boring and civics a
waste of time. So we not only don’t know, we don’t want
to know. Fortunately, Odetta, who started recording in
the late Fifties is still with us and well into the
Nineties continues to drop sonic gems.
Born Odetta Gordon on December 31,
1930 in Birmingham, Alabama, this Los Angeles-raised
woman was training for classical music when she found
herself in a San Francisco Bay coffeehouse and was
captivated by what she heard, i.e., folk music. What is
folk music? What is the difference between folk music
and classical music or any other music?
Folk music is a label usually used to designate
non-literate musical expressions of a specific ethnic or
social group. The emphasis is usually on the performance
of music that has passed on from mouth to mouth, from
older musicians to younger musicians. In America, the
term "folk music" is generally associated with guitars,
fiddles, dulcimers, tambourines and other portable hand
instruments. The real deal is that folk music is a
particular people’s music told at a basic level, whereas
classical music is a "refined" expression filtered
through the consciousness and techniques of an educated
composer and trained musicians. Anybody can play or sing
folk music but you have to be educated (at the very
least be able to "read" music) to perform classical
music in a manner considered acceptable by the
mainstream.
That’s what is usually meant by "folk" music, but people
such as Odetta surpassed the limitations often imposed
on folk music. She was literate, she was a serious
student of music and she had the ability to play all
types of music. The notion of "just grew," i.e., a
natural performer who has not studied, does not apply to
Odetta. In other words: you don’t have to be illiterate
to be a folk musician.
What Odetta did was consciously
collect the music of the various ethnic groups that make
up America, which is the same thing the early blues
artists did. They could perform all of the popular music
both national and regional. Thus, Odetta does a song
like “Sail Away Ladies.” This is all our heritage,
especially so when we speak of African Americans who are
the most creolized, i.e., mixed, of any identifiable
sub-group in America.
Odetta’s impact on American music in general and folk
music in particular is most easily measured when you
consider that a young Bobby Zimmerman gave up his
electric guitar and started playing acoustic after
hearing Odetta. It doesn’t matter than less than a
decade later, that Zimmerman, bka Bob Dylan, would shock
the folk world when he electrified his music. What
matters is that Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan partly as a
result of Odetta’s inspiration. “Don’t Think Twice” is
taken from
Odetta Sings Dylan.
Although it may not be immediately obvious, Odetta
inspired a lot of people, yours truly included. Around
1959, I was just starting to study and collect black
music. I got into the blues through two performers:
Harry Belafonte with his
Belafonte Sings The Blues
recording and Odetta, especially that 1962
Odetta and The Blues album with Vic Dickerson
on trombone. Neither Harry nor Odetta is primarily known
for the blues but they introduced me and, as some sort
of seal of approval, check out that the both of them are
still active. Two songs from Odetta’s early recordings
will always stay with me: “Make Me A Pallet On The
Floor” and “Another Man Done Gone.”
“Pallet” has a deep traditional New Orleans jazz feel
but even though I was a native, back then I didn’t know
much about the history of jazz. I was just responding to
what felt good. “Another Man” struck me as an important
witness statement about running away from oppression. At
that time, those of us who were teenagers in the Civil
Rights Movement saw ourselves as standing and fighting
back. We believed that the best the previous generation
could do was run. It was through deeper study of the
music that I began to hear much more than fleeing, I
also heard fighting and that bucked me up.
On another level, listen to “Black
Woman” and you will hear Odetta still tapping that
resistance sound, hooking up external social situations
and internal personal loss into one big ball of hurt and
pushing it on down the road. Our people have long known
that one of the most important social functions of music
is publicly expressing hurt as a way to heal the self.
Odetta’s version of “Amazing Grace” is a “soul” song
done up old-time congregation style. Recorded at a
festival, “Amazing Grace” scoops up the audience and
teleports them into a spiritual space that many of them
had probably never visited afore.
Our featured song is a Nineties version of “The House Of
The Rising Sun.” Odetta calls her duet with pianist
Henry Butler simply “New Orleans.” Like Odetta, Henry
Butler is deep into the blues and is also a trained
musician who studied classical music—you can hear the
breadth of Butler’s musical experiences in how he offers
altered chords and unexpected progressions on this
traditional song.
The last two songs “Give A Damn” and “Hit Or Miss”
represent recent recordings from Odetta done in a
contemporary style. Check the fatback drum intro on “Hit
Or Miss.” Here we can easily hear how
Joan Armatrading and
Tracy Chapman are Odetta’s daughter and
granddaughter, respectively.
I’d like to close this homage to Odetta with a note on
her appearance. She was a big, black woman who wore her
hair short and natural. Marilyn Monroe was the beauty
icon of the Fifties. Joan Baez became the major image of
the folk singer. Odetta was a big, black woman. Who wore
her hair cut short. Real short. And natural. Go look at
the pictures of black women in Jet or Ebony
in the Fifties (or the Nineties for that matter).
See how many big, black (i.e., dark-skinned) women you
find with short and natural hair.
Hail, Odetta! A seminal matriarch of modern black music.
Musically, she collected our roots and passed them on to
the most conscious elements of musicians from the
Sixties and Seventies. And now in the 21st century, she
continues to offer guidance and inspiration.
Hail, Odetta.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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A personal
hang-up
It may be a personal hang-up of mine, but I’ve always
had a problem with educated people "putting on" as
though they aren’t. I always think, man, just do you.
Just be what you are.
I don’t know Odetta the woman, of course. For that
matter, I don’t know the first thing about Odetta the
musician either. So these comments are less about Odetta
herself, and more about my reaction to Kalamu’s
biographical sketch and to the (relatively) few
selections I’ve heard here.
I listen to some of these tunes and I think of how much
it drives me crazy when I hear a university professor
playing Dixieland or when I hear classically-trained
jazz musicians playing New Orleans street music or, as
Kalamu and I talked about last week, when I see
well-spoken, well-educated, well-dressed blues musicians
on PBS singing to a mostly-white and affluent-looking
audience about how po’ broke and lonely they feel now
that they woman done gone.
The particular tune
that got me thinking about of all of this is “Another
Man Done Gone.” I was actually digging that one. I was
feeling the whole thing: the lyrics, the handclaps, the
vocals, everything. Then Odetta finished and immediately
this loud – but polite – applause came in. I was like,
‘What?! That was recorded live?”
If you don’t get the point I’m trying to make, listen to
something like Aretha’s Amazing Grace album. That
music was recorded live in a church full of true
believers, music lovers and probably assorted hangers-on
and political types who managed to snake their way in.
Of course, if you’ve heard the record, I don’t have to
tell you it was recorded live because from beginning to
end, the audience never shuts up. They never let you
forget it’s live, not even for a minute. And Aretha
wouldn’t want them to.
Live recordings of authentic folk music (black folk
music, at least) done with an authentic folk crowd would
never have that austere quiet of a recording studio. How
could it when the audience is clapping and yelling and
hollering, “sure, you right,” and “go ‘head,” and
“testify!” I’m not just talking about gospel. I’m
talking about blues, hip-hop, R&B, reggae, anything. In
its early manifestations, every type of black music
there’s ever been is folk music, and if it’s live,
you’re going to hear that audience participating in the
music. They’re never quiet observers.
Over and over, it seems, our music becomes popularized
until it loses all connection to the people. Then it’s
treated as what it has actually become: as a museum
piece. Upscale people of all races pay lots of money to
see musicians (usually quite sincere musicians – I’m
actually not knocking the musicians themselves) recreate
the same music that, back when it was actually relevant,
those same upscale people wouldn’t be caught dead
listening to.
I saw a blurb the other day announcing that Grandmaster
Flash & The Furious Five had become the first hip-hop
artists to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of
Fame. As someone who’s been loving hip-hop since the
early Eighties, I guess I should’ve been proud. Instead,
I felt a little queasy. Go to a show featuring “real
hip-hop” these days and you’ll find it’s just like the
Odetta thing. It might be real, but for me at least,
it’s real in a vacuum.
—Mtume ya Salaam
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Don’t sleep on
Odetta
Mtume, remember this: you were learning to play bass and
you had a horrible music teacher in high school. You
gave it up. Later, there was a conversation with Ellis
Marsalis. Ellis grinned his acid Cheshire cat grin and
intoned: so you let a lame cat stop you from learning
something hip? (or something to that effect). I’m sure
you remember.
That said, I’ve had
some of the same feelings you describe. Odetta came
through the folk scene, a scene that was overwhelmingly
white. Moreover, during the sixties, the folk scene was
almost a frenzy of embracing black folk artists,
particularly acoustic blues players who were often
literally in their last years alive on earth. Your (and
my) general aversion to scenes where the performers are
black and the audience is overwhelmingly white is a
residue of being raised in America. You go to Europe and
you don’t quite get the same feel, even though it’s the
same black performer/white audience syndrome.
So, Mtume, what did you think about the version of
“Amazing Grace” on which the audience does as much, if
not more, singing than Odetta. What about those last two
tracks recorded in the nineties with a band? You stopped
playing bass because of your square-ass, obnoxious
teacher. One of the great paradoxes of black music is
that very, very often (some, like you and I, would say
way, way too often) the available venues for the
presentation of the music is in alien spaces and places.
Certainly we both are aware that the audience is an
important element of the music. You can’t produce hip
music if you only play for square audiences. No argument
from me on that count. But what’s a musician to do: turn
down gigs unless there are a specific number of blacks
in the audience. “Oh, um, sorry, we can’t play tonight,
not enough black people out there.”?!?!? And do we give
up touring Europe altogether?
Obviously this can quickly fall off into the realm of
the senseless, but it’s a necessary discussion. In some
ways the role of the audience is critical to the
development of the music. I don’t approach this issue
mechanically, nor do I think it makes any kind of sense
to have some kind of racial quota, as if being hip was a
racial thing. Condeleeza plays piano, you think she’s
hip?
There’s a very, very interesting discussion going on in
the blogasphere about this very subject. Check out
Hello black folks? Can you hear me?, an article by
jazz saxophonist Matana. She delves into the "absence of
a black audience" question from her perspective as a
musician.
Ok, we took the long way around, but Mtume I urge you to
give the Odetta tracks another listen. Not just for the
music itself, but also to understand that paradox and
contradiction are at the heart of what we do—if we let
the absence of blacks or the presence of whites totally
determine what we do or don’t do, we’re not going to get
very far. We may never learn to play the bass.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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Response
Real in a
vacuum? Maybe so. But I'm not sure that that causes any
diminution in value and significance. I suppose at one
point that was my view about the Fisk Jubilee Singers.
They did not sing the Spirituals in the same manner as
folks did in the backwoods. On reading James Weldon
Johnson's sermons, though artistic, they seemed somewhat
of a shadow of the authentic Negro sermon of, say, a C.L.
Franklin, Aretha's father. And I know I've said that the
blues of Langston Hughes and those of Sterling Brown
fall short in ways from the blues of Robert Johnson or
Sun House or even Muddy Waters. The same applies to
their ballads. These formally "educated" artists,
however, brought something else, an important addition,
I think, a self-consciousness, a self-awareness,
possibly absent in the authentic folk artists, of a
broader and deeper significance of the folk material.
This "backward glance" and the understanding of the
larger significance of the material made the folk
material itself and more than itself at the same time.
This may be a paradox. But there is indeed something in
it. It is ironic too that it took a lot of young white
men and women to refocus our attention on the importance
of Negro folk material and folk artists. Without them
I’m not sure we would have had a blues/folk revival in
the 60s and 70s. Different times, places, and audiences
are indeed important for a greater appreciation.—Rudy posted 25 March 2007 |
