God Bless Americana: Singing Political Victory

Sitting in an old oak pew in Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium, "the Mother Church of Country Music," I'm waiting for American roots music apparitions to rise from the dark pine floors and whisper to me the secret key to a rebirth of a progressive nation. A guy can dream.

You may think my hope grandiose and based on idle superstition, but you would be wrong. The occasion is this week's 2008 Americana Music Festival, and I'm giving witness that the spirits rose, and they told me their secret. More on that in a minute.

As I made this pilgrimage, my little brother and his family, along with millions of other survivors, are putting it back together in post-hurricane Houston while another old friend writes that she's hunting a friend in Galveston who has not yet been found on the island city devastated by Ike.

Wall Street, too, is drowned, victim of a sea of greed. Financial security and federal oversight gave way like long-forgotten levees to Republican winks, nods and the old special interest quid pro quo.

If you want more portents, the Chihuahuan Desert is flooding. A storm lingering over the mountains of northern Mexico has sent the Rio Grande out of its banks south of El Paso. Four are dead, including the two leaders of the bi-national border flood control agency. Their flood survey plane crashed two days ago.

Also, there's a war on, and a presidential election, too.

America's up to its ass in alligators, so I head for the high ground, in this case a Nashville bar called the Mercy Lounge. That seems like a well-named place to be these days. I listen to blues star Marsha Ball sing, "Ride It Out," a song about a Mississippi family's hand-built home so strong that when a great storm lifts it from its foundation, it doesn't sink or break apart, but just sails on over to Alabama.

Now would be a good time to make a wish that we could all live in a house like that, one that floats without a balloon payment.

Back at the Ryman, before the Levon Helm Band cranked up, one of my pew-mates wondered why a political guy like me was looking for salvation in, of all places, the spiritual home of country music. That's where the spirits come in.

"Americana" music is a newly named genre whose deep roots go way back, further even than the colonial era since there are Native American licks in this broad category. Levon Helm sure qualifies for the genre. So does Marcia Ball, Steve Earle, Alison Krauss, Sam Bush, Delbert McClinton. They all played Wednesday night at the Ryman.

But most definitions of Americana are too lean. Bluegrass, rockabilly, blues, hip hop, jazz, and country, to name a few, all seem to fit. Let me try this. In Australia, some displaced indigenous people have an egalitarian ritual tradition that re-connects them to one another and to the land they've been forcibly removed to. Inma kuwarritsa, it's called. It means New Ritual. Every citizen of the community is expected to sing a song of new attachment, to the land and to each other.

That's what Americana music is to us. We're a nation of immigrants and displaced natives who won't be still and won't be quiet, and we reach again and again for one another in song and story. Hank Williams did it. So do Lil Wayne and the Dixie Chicks. And we sing and tell stories to one another in extraordinary numbers of garage bands, book clubs and, yes, bars.

That's the secret told to me by the ghost pickers and spirits in the Ryman Auditorium. While it's true that Levon Helm's heartfelt smile is big enough to win an election, they reminded me that Americans' political views are not shaped by cable news or politicians' speeches. Politics is nothing but the public negotiation of solutions to our common problems and opportunities. We bring to those negotiations deeply human values, hopes, fears, and dreams that rise from our songs and stories, from our culture.

See, one old grizzled spirit whispered to me, facts and rational arguments have neither rhyme nor reason. "You wanna touch somebody, you gotta sing to them. You wanna know what makes 'em tick, don't ask 'em how they vote. Ask 'em to whistle a favorite tune."

Despite a glorious American tradition of resistance singing (think of the abolitionist songs of the Hutchinson Family in the 19th Century), progressive political types often think it's enough to have a celebrity singer deliver our arguments at fundraisers or benefit concerts. But that's not what it's about.

It's about our individual journeys to the aboriginal Dreamtime and the songs and stories we bring back to share with one another. We are social animals, and our beliefs are embodied in these diverse and multi-colored traditions, and we'd do well to heed the authentic voices singing like angels all around us. And we'd better sing back to them.

Yes, I said to my pew-mate in the Ryman, some country music tilts toward the conservative end of the scale. I still think it's sung by people trying to find their way in a perpetually new land.

Americana is a good name for some new innovations in some very old cultural traditions. It's artists aren't, by and large, sentimental traditionalists or lost romantics. They're tough, they're skilled, they're scared, they're hopeful, and its all in their songs.

Levon Helm, joined by Sheryl Crow, Steve Earle, Little Sammy Davis, Billy Bob Thornton, John Hiatt and others, ended the show Wednesday night with a poignant version of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young." They were singing to a country that doesn't feel especially young these days.

May your hands always be busy, May your feet always be swift, May you have a strong foundation When the winds of changes shift. May your heart always be joyful, May your song always be sung, May you stay forever young, Forever young, forever young, May you stay forever young.

When the last note faded, the bluesman Davis lingered on stage a moment. He tipped his top hat to the crowd, put his hands to his lips and waved the world a kiss.

I approve that message.

Comments

[Nommo]

Not a nation of immigrants--who was here before the immigrants? A nation of land thieves, mass murderers and slave holders. Music thieves as well.
How do Yardbird, Monk, Pres, Duke, always escape discussion of "American" music?

[magicmary]

Thanks for the perspective. Whenever I think about what an American is, I always boil it down to our music.
Maybe you all can help me. I've started a playlist on my Zune called American a couple weeks ago and have Dylan and some Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Band and Robbie Robertson. Leon Russell (oh do go and look up his lyrics to Prince of Peace and carry them around with you..). Cash, Carter - as in Mother Maybelle. Ollabelle. All of the Oh Brother Where art Thou soundtrack. Blind Boys of Alabama. Joan Baez. I would really like to build this playlist so please do post your recommendations.
By the way, Putamayo did a CD a couple years ago called Cover the World which is foreign artists doing American songs. It's awesome.

[sarchasm]

http://www.americanamusic.org/

Some of my (what I call) Americana favorites:

Anything by Sam Bush, Darrell Scott or Buddy and Julie Miller
Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl
Strength In Numbers - The Teluride Sessions
Short Trip Home - Sam Bush, Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall
The Greencards - Viridian

[MajorKong]

I'd say Americana is closer to country music than most of what's coming out of Nashville today, which largely sounds like bad 70s pop.

Or as someone described it to me "every bad Eagles song that never made it onto an album back in the 70s".

[sarchasm]

Well put Glenn. As someone who was backstage at the Americana awards show Thursday night I can say that the atmosphere was one of a bi-partisan love-fest. I have a love-hate relationship with this town for sure but I find that the longer I'm here the more I learn about myself and the ones I disagree with politically. The music encompasses a wide swath of the musical landscape proven by the presence of Robert Plant, Edgar Meyer and Sam Bush. Hey if we can all get along here in Nashvegas then y'all can too.

[GlennWSmith]

Thanks, I hope others who were there will see the piece. You write, "the more I learn about myself and the ones I disagree with politically." I think that's right on target, and it goes with full engagement in life, in culture, engagement in a broader and deeper sense than isolated political activism. Don't get me wrong, the latter's important. But you are touching on something more real and three dimensional. Thanks for that.

[magicmary]

I went back to my roots after a wild and crazy youth determined to become friends with my right wing sister. It's still hard but we found that we can discuss our desire for a civil society without discussing politics and we can talk about faith without discussing religion. Talk about a new ceremony. That's a ceremony I highly recommend performing in as many ways as you can.
Perhaps we really will heal our country with music...

[pshorridge]

In Twelfth Night Shakespeare said it this way, "If music be the food of love, play on." If we replace the word "love" with "life" we have your piece. Thanks for putting beautiful prose in a sea of punditry.

[PATina]

Not big on country music... so when I read Nashville in your first sentence... I almost clicked back to the home page. I'm really glad I didn't... and instead finished the article. This was a great piece!!!!!!

[jbullock]

Glenn, I think this is one of your most eloquent posts!
Now more than ever, we need leaders who understand this common sense of purpose. Though lyrical prose has been mocked by some as lacking substance -- you remind us that we would all do well to hear the song...and allow ourselves to move to the music! Bolstered by our diversity, yet bound by a shared culture, Americans have managed to build a remarkable nation. There's more work to be done! Thanks for the reminder.

[pshorridge]

I agree...You expressed it better than I could.