A New Age of Regional Folk Music?

A New Age of Regional Folk Music?
By Peter Berris
9/13/13

In the summer of 1941, only months before America would find itself in the midst of the Second World War, musicologist Alan Lomax was on a mission of an entirely different nature—in a place that must have felt worlds apart from the military tension building across the globe.  He was deep in the American South making musical recordings for the Library of Congress, documenting the surviving folk sounds of a rapidly changing nation.  From a historical standpoint, his luck was excellent (even if they were actually seeking Robert Johnson who had been dead for some time)…  Lomax and his team arrived on Stovall’s Plantation in Mississippi at the right moment to wax the first recordings of a man who would go on to be one of America’s most important and influential figures.  His name?  Muddy Waters.  The Lomax-Waters recordings are intriguing for both their musical excellence, and the snapshot they provide of a rising star.  But they are illuminating in a way that has nothing to do with the phenomenal talent of Muddy, or the magic of hearing his very first recordings. 

            Included among the songs, are recorded interviews between the Library of Congress team and Muddy Waters.  Apart from the basic questions about guitar tunings and such, Lomax and his associate John Work, sound preoccupied with where exactly Waters had learned his craft.  The reoccurring question was not so much about who his influences were, but instead whether he had learned his material directly from other performers, or indirectly from their records.  It was an important distinction, because learning songs directly from other area musicians was likely indicative of a regionalist musical form, isolated and unique from other similar idioms in other portions of the country or state.  Learning from records suggested external influences that could have altered an original musical language.  Though the questions seem moot today, due to the immense value of the recordings, they were actually not far off base.  Waters, as it turned out, had learned his repertoire from a mixed group of sources: records, straight from acquaintances like Son House, and some derived from his own imagination.  And while Waters had grown up in the Mississippi Delta like many other great bluesmen, according to some sources he had also been to Chicago and/or Saint Louis before Lomax made his recordings. 

            As a result, the somewhat persnickety sounding interview questions are actually indicative of a divide in time.  On one side were the early bluesmen—musicians considered truly regional and original in their influences and creations.  On the other, were musicians whose influences were both regional and scavenged from records, radio, and various travels.  Obviously, this divide is subjective and abstract with exceptions, qualifications, and outliers.  But the basic idea is simple.  Before radio, movies, cars, and records made the nation effectively “smaller,” or specific areas less isolated, music was stuck in regional pockets. 

As a metaphor, consider an ocean tidal pool.  The seawater comes pouring over the rocks during high tide, and when the ocean retreats it leaves behind small pools of water—tiny ecosystems filled with crabs, shellfish, and shrimp.  Similarly, as people began to settle the new world, by choice, force, or necessity, they were stranded with their music.  In whatever region they inhabited, the music was left to develop its own personality—perhaps influenced by that of other regions—but also largely distinct from such areas.  Again, this is similar to how the composition of two tidal pools can have many similar component species but still be different in aggregate.  In other words, regional folk music forms were created.  And they likely continued, albeit with greater external influence in some places than others, until the developments of the 20^th century began to increase the intermingling of regional styles and approaches.  In a nutshell, while the first wave of folk recordings may have captured purely regional performers, subsequent decades gave way to folk-influenced recordings that were of increasingly tenuous regional ties. 

            But what about now?  In the age of high-speed internet, extensive road networks, 4G phone service, digital song downloads, and instant access to nearly all of the music ever recorded—do we live in an era where regionalist folk music is dead?  By a traditional set of standards: absolutely.  However, the answer really may not be so simple.  The path folk inspired music took is not simply a matter of technological change eroding isolation, but also of the great success of both the music business and certain musicians.  For a good chunk of the history of recordings, some of the biggest stars were roots-inspired musicians who took their folk influences and combined them in a way that made them wildly popular.  As a result, figures like B.B. King, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and even (or especially) Elvis Presley were musicians operating within various folk-derived contexts, and musicians whose popularity altered the very fabric of the musical idioms they were a part of.   Their popularity also spread various folk styles far beyond the boundaries of the areas where they had originally formed—resulting in acts that were incredibly far removed from their literal roots.  As an example, consider the blues breakthrough acts of Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry, whose influence was so great that bands formed in their image across the Atlantic—groups like the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, and the Animals.  Beyond whatever labels this hybridized music carried, it was folk music, it was big business, and its combination surely undermined regional styles.

            But, the current age does not have a Johnny Cash, or a Muddy Waters, or even a Rolling Stones (except for the original ones, they’re still at it, god love ‘em).  It has folk influenced musicians, and it has popular musicians, but with very few exceptions it is a case of “never the twain shall meet” as far as the music business is concerned.  It is a rare musician in the modern era that can combine both folk influences and national dissemination via record sales, radio, and major touring.  Paradoxically, perhaps more than ever, popular music is not folk music—it is cyclically popular, because it is popular.  Certainly, this sort of laboratory derived “better music through science” approach is nothing new.  Even in the 1950s, which enjoyed the rhythm and blues influenced early rock of Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino, there were safer alternatives like Fabian and Pat Boone.  As rocker Tom Petty puts it in the Paul Zollo’s Conversations With Tom Petty:

It’s insane.  It’s Fabian.  It’s worse than Fabian.  We’ve gone full-circle back to the days of the early Sixties when pop stars were just created, when all the bobbys were out, and they went from leather jackets to sweaters, and they tried to say that they aspired to be something more than rock […] And we didn’t learn a lesson from that? (Zollo 2006, 286).  

What is missing today, and what may be the reason for this conspicuous vacancy in the roots-star department, is a liaison between would-be folk inspired crossover artists and the major record labels.   Back in the day, one existed—independent record labels with the influence to gain national distribution and exposure for their artists.  There are independent labels, and national labels, but again it’s a case of “never the twain shall meet.”  The age of independent and influential labels like Sun (Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis), Chess (Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry), Stax (Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Booker T. & The M.G.’s), and Hi (Al Green, Anne Peebles, Syl Johnson) seems to have largely passed.  This leaves musicians with more traditional sounds turning to new options for a starting place, since the traditional business model has been effectively nullified.

            For many, this means the world of “do it yourself.”  Services like DiscMakers allow musicians to print their own albums, CDBaby provides international distribution via the internet, Radio Airplay offers guaranteed internet play for a price, and sites like soundcloud and youtube make artist content accessible at the click of a mouse.  Musicians who crave national tours may look past traditional options such as arenas and theatres towards alternatives such as “living room tours” (see this article).  Or, they may just be out of luck.  In an article about how the changing landscape of the music business has affected a band in Maine, the Portland Press Herald appropriately summarized the situation in their secondary headline, “Thanks to advances in technology, making it in the music business nowadays is easier for everyone – and, just maybe, harder than ever.”

            There is one obvious implication to this new reality.  At the top of the pack, in terms of what is nationally popular, music is suffering.  There is no Little Richard to complement your Fabian. 

            But the other implication should this strange new media climate continue, is subtler.  We may, in fact, be entering a new age of regional folk music.  Think about it.  The traditional music business establishment seems currently interested in what might be called pure pop.  Whether that be chart-topping country or modern R&B, they have little or no ties to any discernable folk music tradition apart from the odd instrumental decoration, well-placed vocal inflection, or frequent reliance on clichés.  Thus, a folk influenced musician must look elsewhere for success.  And though venues such as the ones described earlier do exist, as the Portland Press Herald suggested, their accessibility to everyone means that there is almost too much competition for most to distinguish themselves on a national scale.  It is almost a socialist musical reality, where the listening public is split into tiny pieces to be shared among an endless number of hopeful recording artists.  As a result, folk musicians, and their styles are stuck.  Their tours may be limited to the region they reside in, and only those who experience their music first hand may be aware of it.  Thus people may only listen to new musicians from their area, buy new music from their area, and model their own view of music based on music in their area.  After all, what other new folk music will they realistically find out about?  And while musicians were for so long influenced by records from anywhere in the world, acts that toured the world, and radio signals that brought regional sounds around the world, they may now only be influenced by other musicians in their area.  In short, those practicing anything other than pure pop would be regional folk musicians. 

            It sounds an awful lot the last era of isolated Appalachian hollows, or southern river deltas, where musicians learned from their peers in the area, and from a rich sonic heritage that had formed in ways distinct to each location.  Of course, many may object that there is an obvious flaw in this argument.  New “folk” music may suffer, but there is still a wealth of old folk inspired recordings that everyone knows about, which would undermine this modern regionalism.  Maybe, but all regional American folk music started somewhere, be it in the fiddle reels of Ireland, the sea songs of the United Kingdom, or the rhythm and sounds of Africa.  These influences were the origin point in what would become the unique combinations found in American music. Thus, the body of recorded material we carry with us into this new era—everything from Ernest Tubbs to Muddy Waters, may be the origin point for the new age of regional song.  It is the same metaphor about the ocean and tidal pools, with different isolated ecosystems formed from some of the same ingredients.  The great irony however, is that it is no longer a story of regional music forming at the hands of abject isolation due to the obstacles that kept its practitioners from moving beyond area boundaries.  On the contrary, what may restart American regional music is the decay of a major method of sonic diffusion, and a series of technological breakthroughs that have made musical communication easier than ever before—but that have resulted in an egalitarian din that has left so few to listen to so many. 

References:

Muddy Waters.  1993 [1941-1942].  The Complete Plantation Recordings: Muddy Waters.  Chess/MCA, CD. 

Routhier, Ray.  2013.  “The Pete Kilpatrick Band: A Sound Business Plan.”  Portland Press Herald, 13 September. 

Trust, Gary.  2013.  “House Music: Your Living Room Might Be Your Next Concert Venue.”  Billboard, 14 June.

Zollo, Paul.  2006.  Conversations With Tom Petty.  New York: Omnibus.