On Race and the Folk Community
(with Jazzfolk from KJ Denhert and Lizz Wright)
The relative dearth of both musicians and audience members of color in the American folk scene is both a running gag and an embarrassing secret; as evidence, I note that I once saw Vance Gilbert remark onstage to Ruthie Foster that, with both of them in the same songcircle, “every black person at the festival is on stage right now — we should start a movement!”
While Gilbert’s attempt at brash humor may not have been technically accurate, his comment — and the uncomfortable laughter which followed it — speaks to the self-perpetuating stereotype of American folk as white music for white folks, a stereotype only deepening now that the predominantly white indie movement and its almost exclusively caucasian hipster fans have begun a comprehensive usurpation of the term “folk” to reflect a particularly acoustic and/or appalachian authenticity within their own communities.
Ella Jenkins, Elizabeth Cotten, Taj Mahal, Odetta, Richie Havens, The Carolina Chocolate Drops (pictured above), and the above-mentioned artists aside, it is true that the percentage of black musicians in folk music is curiously light — an oddity, especially given how powerfully and deeply the roots of american folk music reach into the acoustic blues forms of the American South. And it is also interesting to me that the few black musicians performing today who identify as folk lean heavily towards the blues and jazz ends of the genre, where hybridization is the name of the game, and where one can legitimately make a case that blues and jazz are, to some extent, the folk music of the black community.
Which is to say: The question of race and folk is a recognizable (albeit oft-avoided) phenomenon worthy of more serious study than a blog can provide. But whether you choose to embrace the discomfort or sweep it under the proverbial rug, acknowledging this very real issue provides an especially interesting context in which to present relatively new works from two still-rising black female musicians from the jazz end of the folk genre, both of whom crossed my desk in past few weeks.
KJ Denhert has plenty of indie and folk cred — she’s won songwriting contests from Kerrville to Mountain Stage, and she produces her records on her own label. But this NY-based singer-songwriter, who has also opened for the likes of Alicia Keys, defies easy genre categorization. Her recent live album Vivo a Umbria Jazz was, as the title notes, recorded live at this past year’s Umbria Jazz festival in Italy — an unusual place to find folk music, to say the least. The rich, fluid, improvisational music which Denhert produces with this wonderful ensemble didn’t sound like folk to my ears at first, either, though it was highly rewarding in its own right.
But something kept nagging at me to reconsider Vivo a Umbria Jazz for Cover Lay Down. It certainly sounded familiar as folk, and once I finally placed the sound, I realized that this is a sterling example of the kind of folk music that Joni Mitchell was making in the studio in the mid to late seventies, starting with Hejira: freestyle jazz production built around an acoustic guitar and a low, slightly breathy voice which weaves in and out of rhythm like a saxophone soloist.
Denhert’s last live album won the Independent Music Award for Best Live Recording, and if it was anything like this, it’s easy to see why: the more I listen, the more I appreciate both the sheer glee of Vivo a Umbria — Denhert’s eighth — and the delightful musical hybrid form which Denhert categorizes as “Urban Folk and Jazz”. Here, she takes on Police standard Message in a Bottle, playing with the sax like Sting himself in his Dream of the Blue Turtles days, and strips down old Oz chestnut Somewhere Over the Rainbow into something acoustic and quite Joni-esque; at her promoter’s request, they are available here in streaming form only. For both produced and live versions of these covers and more, plus some stellar confessional originals, head over to KJ Denhert’s website to peruse, and/or to Motema to purchase.
- STREAM: KJ Denhert: Message in a Bottle (orig. The Police)
- STREAM: KJ Denhert: Somewhere Over The Rainbow (orig. Dorothy Gale)
Lizz Wright hit the blogs a long while back, and I liked it; my father recommended her again this summer, and I nodded my head and said I liked it again. But it wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, when I finally got a chance to sit down with her 2005 album Dreaming Wide Awake and listen to it all the way through, that I really felt the pull.
Wright is an alto jazz siren who gets filed under “vocals” in our local library; Dreaming Wide Awake topped the Contemporary Jazz charts the year it was released, and her MySpace trifecta calls her particular style R&B/Soul/Jazz. But as so many others have noted, there’s something quietly stunning here which transcends the dubious and oft-cheesy genre categorization. The songs on Dreaming Wide Awake teeter on the edge of popfolk production values, showing Wright in stellar control of a full range of emotion that runs from hushed R&B emotion to smooth bluesy harmonies to full-bore vocal jazz; it is telling to find both similarly powerful folkblues icon Toshi Reagon and versatile crossoverjazz guitarist Bill Frisell stepping in for guest slots here.
The Neil Young cover is solid folk poprock, both here and live via YouTube; the cover of seventies hippie hit Get Together is inevitably precious, but still manages to hold its head up. But it’s the Ella Jenkins folkcover that really blows me away: warm and viscous as honey, sultry and dripping with anticipation. A perfect album for fireside nights, whether you’re staring into the fire or cuddling beside it; snag it and her 2008 crossover release The Orchard — which includes several equally great covers, including a gorgeous rendition of Hey Mann, from folkblues a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock — here, direct from Verve.
- Lizz Wright: Old Man (orig. Neil Young)
- Lizz Wright: Wake Up, Little Sparrow (orig. Ella Jenkins)
Cover Lay Down posts new features every Sunday, Wednesday, and the occasional holiday and otherday. Stay tuned this week and beyond for more of the stuff you like best, including an exploration of the folkier solo output of one of my favorite stars of the late eighties and early nineties alt-punk scene, who is most famous for the band he formed in the hallways of my very own high school.
Category: Jazzfolk | Tags: KJ Denhert, Lizz Wright
November 29th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Kudos for raising an important question. My impression on the question why the folk scene is so white is that folk music tends to celebrate past traditions where the African American musical tradition is very forward looking. I think the same phenomenon exists in blues music. The blues developed as black music but is now played, almost exclusively, to white fans.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Interesting thesis, Paul, and one borne out, I think, by both your own example of the blues and the continued move away from Jazz (and towards hip-hop) which one sees in urban black communities like the one in which I teach. One could probably look at the white usurpation of black forms, and the subsequent rejection of those forms by the black community, as a facet of the phenomenon.
I suspect there’s more to say, here — I realized, after I wrote the piece, that I hadn’t posted anything by Ruthie Foster OR Vance Gilbert here. Perhaps a few pieces, over time, exploring race/ethnicity and folk would be worth doing; I can see good fodder in inclusion of native american folk musicians such as the previously-mentioned Bear Fox, and of crossover hispanic folk artists such as Tish Hinojosa, not mention that I still haven’t started to take apart hawaiian folk from the likes of Israel “Iz” Kamakawiwo’ole.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:28 am
If you attempt to define “folk music”, you realize that you cannot say that it is limited to traditional material: this eliminates two thirds of what you post here, and really means works of unknown authorship. So maybe you would say that “folk” is consistent with tradition, but that means almost nothing. If you want to talk about how music functions within society, I would argue that the music of the Beatles has a place in society now that is comparable to the place of the Child Ballads a century ago.
So we are left with the conclusion that the term “folk” is a marketing label. And the question you posed at the beginning of your post becomes, “why isn’t folk music marketed better to black audiences?” This is a fair question, and I for one would be delighted to hear an acoustic set by India.Arie at a festival, for example. I think festival bookers should experiment with this kind of programming, and see if there is a wider audience available out there.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:45 am
I think it is true that The Beatles have the place in society that Childe Ballads once did, and true, as well, that the concept of folk as a traditional music is long gone, washed away by the new confessional forms of the sixties. But I deny that this makes the Beatles “folk”, and I also deny that an acoustic session by a rock or pop artist is necessarily the same thing — else we’d have to allow for the Nirvana Unplugged sessions as folk, when they are certainly not.
Though it is to some extent also a marketing label in the hands of modern indie promoters, I continue to maintain that the term “folk” continues to have real meaning, both to the culture at large and to the musicians who genuinely see themselves as part of a folk tradition, and that the meaning therein is partially about narrative structure and narrative positioning, and about instrumental authenticity and audience scale, among other things. No folk musician would ever claim to be bigger than Jesus, for example — it’s anathema to the very premise of modern folk.
As such, I accept your question about targeted marketing as valid but peripheral. Folk cannot, by definition, be a question of whether or not something is marketed towards the folk community; such a logic is ultimately meaningless, as it is circular. Instead, for genre to have meaning, it must have content and style considerations and norms, even if those are as stretchy as taffy; I believe folk to have such a norm, and as such, to be a true genre, not just a marketing segment.
December 1st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
oh, there aren’t a majority of people of color in most blues and jazz audiences north of the Mason Dixon, either. That’s entertainment… in America.
December 7th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
not to mention a great CCD cover.
December 8th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Thanks for the link to the Chocolate Drops cover, Whitney — it’s not jazzfolk, of course, but the old-timey jug band sound really works well with Blu Cantrell’s “Hip Hop Soul” hit.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 am
[...] On Race and the Folk Community [...]