"River Run" (Nancy Maker Brown Song) Revisioned and Reimagined

Video Description (on YouTube): "River Run." Revisioned and Reimagined. 2021. Words, music, arrangement by kei slaughter. Originally written in 2019 while participating in the Acoustic Guitar Project - where artists are given one guitar, for one week, to write one song. This intimate performance is a reimagined and revisioned version, weaving deconstructed elements of the original work, with improvised vocalizations, body percussion, and flute loops, and live vocal and flute performance. "River Run" is dedicated to my maternal great great great great grandmother, Nancy Maker Brown. For me, this (re)mix is an exploration and expression of Black aesthetics - imagining and conjuring new sound worlds through my queer, gender expansive Black body while engaging with ancestral memory. The stripped back elements of breath, tone, and voice, were intentionally used to ground me in my musical-cultural origins, back to a kind of roots music. Thus, embodying the West African concept of Sankofa, as I look back to the past, I also look ahead towards futurity, reflected through the use of live looping, layering, and circular storytelling. Closed captions available.

Music in the Francophone Caribbean

The Francophone Caribbean is a complex region: while it shares a history of French colonialism, it is also marked by divergent political trajectories and profound economic disparities. On one hand, there is Haiti, the first independent postcolonial Black nation; on the other, the overseas French départements of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Guiana. This combination of a shared history of colonial violence (including the genocide of indigenous populations and the enslavement of African people) as well as the diversity of modes and means of resistance against it has made of the Francophone Caribbean a crucible for a rich intellectual, artistic, and musical life. Indigénisme, négritude, marvelous realism, Antillanité, créolité are as many intellectual and artistic movements that have emerged from this crucible to impact intellectual life beyond the Caribbean. Likewise, biguine, konpa, and zouk are just a few of the musical genres whose aesthetic and commercial reach has far exceeded their islands of origin. For all of this musical richness, it is surprising that scholarly literature on music in the Francophone Caribbean has a rather limited scope. In Haiti, it has largely been focused on those practices associated with Vodou (ritual drumming and singing as well as the songs and music of rara) and, in the realm of popular music, with konpa and, to a lesser degree, mizik rasin (roots music) and classical music. Coverage in the French Antilles and Guiana is even more uneven. Guiana has received near to no attention. If scholars have written extensively about gwoka, the Guadeloupean drumming tradition, its Martinican counterpart, bèlè, has received less attention. And if there was a veritable craze for zouk in the 1990s, scholars have not followed Antillean audiences as their musical tastes evolved toward other styles of popular music in the new millennium. Likewise, biguine remains understudied given its transnational circulation in the 1930s. The various sections in this entry reflect these imbalances. If the current entry focuses on Haiti, the French Antilles (Martinique and Guadeloupe), and French Guiana, it should be noted that Dominica and Saint Lucia share the same Creole language, and contribute to the circulation of people, goods, and music in the Lesser Antilles. This being said, because the Oxford Bibliographies entry on music in the Anglophone Caribbean already covers Dominica and Saint Lucia, they have been left out of this overview.

Industrial Strength Bluegrass

In the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking economic opportunities relocated from the Appalachian region to southwestern Ohio. They brought mountain and gospel music with them, as well as an openness to new sounds that were emerging in mid-century. Without access to capital, formal instruction, or mainstream media attention, a core of devoted musicians and entrepreneurs built an unrivaled radio, recording, and performance infrastructure for bluegrass music. Between 1947 and 1989, important careers were launched and the distinct artistry of bluegrass made during those years in Cincinnati, Dayton, Middletown, Hamilton, Springfield and environs—an area of approximately 250 square miles—had a permanent influence on American roots music. This work explores the history of southwestern Ohio’s Appalachian migration and the subsequent proliferation of bluegrass musicians, radio broadcasters, recording studios, record labels, bars, festivals, and sacred music. It also explores how following generations built upon that base, how bluegrass reached non-Appalachian participants, how bluegrass was used in public education and community development, and how distinctive musical qualities of bluegrass that flourished in the southwestern Ohio region influenced the worldwide development of the genre. First-person narratives of key figures are included as well as analytical essays by academic and independent scholars, along with suggestions for further reading and listening.

She's A Country Girl All Right

Classically trained vocalist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and 2017 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Rhiannon Giddens has in recent years enjoyed increased visibility in the contemporary country music world. In 2016, she was a featured singer on Eric Church's top-ten country hit, “Kill a Word,” and she won the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass that same year. Giddens also had a recurring role as social worker Hanna Lee “Hallie” Jordan on the long-running musical drama Nashville in 2017 and 2018. While Giddens now enjoys a certain degree of acceptance in the country music world, she has not always felt included in the various largely white, contemporary American roots scenes. As such, she continues to speak out to audiences and the press about the erasure of African Americans from histories of string music, bluegrass, country, and other styles and forms of American roots music. Using Giddens's 2017 International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) keynote, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops' music video for the song “Country Girl” from 2012's Leaving Eden, I demonstrate that Giddens effectively reclaims American old-time string music and country culture as black, subverting historically inaccurate racialized notions of country music authenticity.

Reaping the Harvest

Earl Scruggs was well positioned for renewed stardom when people’s thirst for American roots music took off in the 1990s. He had recovered from illness and gone off the road with his high-powered Earl Scruggs and Family and Friends band. Honors showered on him from governments and big-time nonprofits. His hometown of Shelby planned to make a shrine to Scruggs out of the old Cleveland County courthouse. Also taking up arms for Scruggs were acoustic stars such as Béla Fleck and Jerry Douglas's Flatt and Scruggs homage group, the Earls of Leicester. Warren Beatty honored Earl at a 2008 bash thrown for Beatty. Louise Scruggs died in 2006 and Earl in 2012. He was widely eulogized and remembered.