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Reverend Goat Carson: Lovers, Love Songs, Hymns and Blues
(Mi Abuelo Records; no catalogue number)
John Sinclair: White Buffalo Prayer (SpyBoy 1001)
John Sinclair: Underground Issues (SpyBoy 1002)
Spoken word records don't come pouring out of New Orleans skies like rain. It's a crying shame because of the surge in popularity of "spoken word" readings in about a dozen venues around town, and because of the availability of studios, musicians, copacetic bars and coffee houses, illustrators, engineers, & the latest in high-tech easy-set up recording equipment, no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, that can turn any evening's reading into a document of the times.
But the past twelve months have brought a few notable recordings from notable poets to talk about.
One new cd that ought to get a listen is "Lovers, Love Songs, Hymns and Blues," by Reverend Goat Carson. It's his second collection of poetry and reveries on Mi Abuelo Records ("Simmerin'" being the first) and his third recording with George Ingmire's independent label. (Previously, Goat and New Orleans Light provided the music for "My Life Is My Sun Dance," a recording of prison writings by Leonard Peltier and read by Harvey Arden.) The arrangements are spare and dreamy. Goat delivers over rhythms plucked on a handmade buffalo jawbone harp with Ingmire on guitar, percussion and omnichord. Ingmire's production is restrained throughout. Neither the backing vocals nor accompanying instruments ever overwhelm Goat's words.
The pieces deal with love and loss, but also with social, spiritual and historical matters they don't teach you in school about Indians. One of Goat's best, for instance, is "Redskins" (from "Simmerin'.") It tells the chilling story of why that word is so abhorrent to Native Americans, and pits that story against a softly crackling version of "You Are My Sunshine." There are a couple of pieces on this record just as memorable: the first, "Captain Kirk and Custer," tells how "Captain Kirk and Custer/they sat down one day/had a long conversation 'bout the USA/ Kirk said, "Custer, have you seen my crew/we've got a yellow black white got a green one too/let me tell you what we did in honor of you/there ain't a single Lakota Sioux." "Maroon Nation" traces the origin of "forty acres and a mule" to a Native American land grant to escaped African slaves, and features Charles Neville on saxophone. "Yonder," a ballad about a privileged young woman who gets hooked on crack, features Goat's wizened vocals against some unbearably tender whispering. Check out "Lady of Revelations" for Goat's unique take on the confluence of Christian and Native American spiritual traditions.
John Sinclair's "White Buffalo Prayer" (SpyBoy Records 1001) was recorded with the Los Angeles version of the Blues Scholars, and features Wayne Kramer and New Orleans Blues Scholars drummer Michael Voelker. The first piece, "The Legend," tells, in the words of Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse, the origin of the White Buffalo legend in a vision of a beautiful woman and the choices of two young men who saw her. Sinclair intones Charles Neville's poem, "History 101," which tells another aspect of the Maroon Nation story, focusing on the need for colonial labor, the common resistance of the dark-skinned people and the dismemberment of their alliance when the U.S. Army began to employ African Americans as Indian hunters.
Prophecy is what happens when myth enters history. Bringing myth into history is something that has been returning to the West through poetry, where imagination is privileged over reason. Says Chief Looking Horse, "I believe our voices and message will be heard through the medium of music." Said the American poet Charles Olson, who would have dug that: "The content of history shall be poetry."
These disks by Carson and Sinclair make up a remarkable introduction to the secret history of Native Americans and Africans in America.
His "Underground Issues" (SpyBoy 1002) employs eight different groups of musicians to back fourteen pieces, including a couple of new ones. Of special interest is his elegy for Jazz Festival founder Allison Miner, "Thank You, Pretty Baby," and "Scuze Me While I Kiss the Sky," a paean to Jimi Hendrix. The latter was produced by George Clinton and first released in Japan in 1995 on "P-Funk Guitar Army," a homage to P-Funk and the MC5. The image of Hendrix as a paratrooper forms the vortex through which Sinclair's words rush, "the bomb in his front pocket/and Miles Davis on the phone." Guitarist Ras Kente has the musical sense to suggest Hendrix's style without trying to imitate it. Throughout Sinclair employs some pretty heavy musicians: Wayne Kramer; Michael Voelker, one of the silkiest drummers in New Orleans; James Andrews; Rockin' Jake on harmonica; even Little Milton makes an appearance on a brief memento mori piece called "Mother Earth." His concentration on music makes it possible for him to talk to a broad audience about things the mass media choke out of it, like the value of knowing history and those weird cracks in the universe that allow true creativity to enter and transform popular art.
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last changed on 28 July 01 by