#4935, Based On Folk Songs
Hear many ways of interpreting American folk songs from musician/scholar Jake Blount and bassist/bandleader Mali Obomsawin, pianist Lara Downes, and American composer Peter Gena.
Listen to electro-acoustic Indigenous and Afrofuturist folklore from folk banjo player, fiddler, singer, and scholar Jake Blount, and bass player, songwriter, and composer Mali Obomsawin. They adapt the spiritual “My Way’s Cloudy” and have enlisted the Minneapolis-based Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey of the Ojibwe community to feature as vocalist over the electronic drone. Also, hear pianist Lara Downes in an arrangement by Jeremy Siskind of the old traditional folk tune "900 Miles" – “a song about this insatiable nostalgia we seem to carry, as Americans, for our roots, this longing in our bones to find our way home”, (Lara Downes, writing in the liner notes from This Land).
There’s music by the Martha Redbone Roots Project from her album, The Garden of Love - Songs of William Blake. Redbone’s take on the Romantic 18th century English poetry draws on her Native and African American roots, mixing folk, blues, and gospel. Plus, hear American composer Peter Gena’s piano adaptation of “John Henry”, as played by pianist Anthony de Mare plays the work. Gena additively builds up the theme of the folk song and continues motoric repeated notes (reminiscent of a machine) based on the tune, before the blues harmony thunders out in slow-moving chords against the constant motion. - Caryn Havlik
Program #4935, Based On Folk Songs (First aired 10/10/2024)
ARTIST: Sam Amidon
WORK: Little Johnny Brown [1:28]
RECORDING: All Is Well
SOURCE: Bedroom Community HVALUR4CD/LP
INFO: bedroomcommunity.net
ARTIST: Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin
WORK: My Way's Cloudy, feat. Joe Rainey [3:21]
RECORDING: symbiont
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
INFO: https://jakeblountmusic.bandcamp.com/album/symbiont
ARTIST: Martha Redbone Roots Project
WORK: The Garden of Love [4:12]
RECORDING: The Garden of Love - Songs of William Blake
SOURCE: Blackfeet Productions 93001
INFO: martharedbonerootsproject.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin
WORK: In the Garden [4:19]
RECORDING: symbiont
SOURCE: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
INFO: https://jakeblountmusic.bandcamp.com/album/symbiont
ARTIST: Sam Amidon
WORK: Little Johnny Brown [4:28]
RECORDING: All Is Well
SOURCE: Bedroom Community HVALUR4CD/LP
INFO: bedroomcommunity.net
ARTIST: Lara Downes
WORK: 900 Miles [2:35]
RECORDING: This Land
SOURCE: Pentatone
INFO: https://lnk.to/ThisLand
ARTIST: Last Forever
WORK: Leadbelly: Boll Weevil Blues [9:16]
RECORDING: Acres of Diamonds
SOURCE: StorySound Records
INFO: storysoundrecords.com
ARTIST: Anthony de Mare, piano
WORK: Peter Gena: John Henry [9:51]
RECORDING: Beethoven in Soho
SOURCE: New World Records
INFO: https://newworldrecords.bandcamp.com
