Journey through the past
 |
| The Carolina Chocolate Drops : l. to r., Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson |
Half Afro-American, half of Mexican descent, Flemons was born in Phoenix, Arizona. He studied English at Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, where he met Súle Greg Wilson, a local percussionist, banjo player and folklorist who became a mentor to him.
In the end of 2005, Flemons and Wilson, with Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson formed the old-time string band, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, based in Durham, North Carolina. While active in the band, Flemons was leading a parallel solo career, but in the end of 2013 he left the group to pursue his "Prospect Hill" project.
He also forged his “American Songster” roots personality and look : plaid shirt, corduroy pants, suspenders and a funny kind of Buster Keaton hat he says he purchased one day in Australia while on tour !
On working on both albums, "Prospect Hill" and especially "Black Cowboys", in order to reach a historical understanding of the roots of American traditional folk music, Flemons became a music scholar, historian and record collector. Discovering the African, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American origins of banjo music, he became himself an expert player.
Originally this is the first chapter of Flemons' project, released in 2014 and completed with a second CD in its 2020 re-issue. And you know what ? It's great ! Dom Flemons intends to immerse the listener into the early roots of American folk music and the result is fascinating. So musically intelligent, so imaginative and so skillfully done that I miss the right words to talk about it.
 |
| Guy Davis with Flemons (on the right) |
Banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, harmonica, flute, fife and quills, sax and clarinet, upright bass, drums, jug, rhythm bones (an adaptation of Spanish castanets), snare drums, woodblocks, marching bass drum…, Flemons uses the instruments of the past, with a prominence of banjo, and revives a time when no definite lines divided folk, bluegrass and blues, still closely linked and nourishing each other.
This traditional style of music is presented with a contemporary approach though, using all resources of modern recording technologies, and in particular with the precious help from great multi-instrumentalist Guy Davis on many titles. The 35 tracks of the 2020 release are so rich and varied that it's impossible to review them in detail. Just to give an idea of the objective of the project, let's review just a few.
 |
| Hambone & rhythm bones |
The first track, "'Till The Seas Run Dry", throw us back to New Orleans in the early twentieth century when jazz was in the birthing, while the following "Polly Put The Kettle On" mixes early Piedmont ragtime style with some bluegrass accents. The banjo on the early bluegrass "But They Got It Fixed Right On" illustrates the fact that guitar was not always the dominant instrument in early folk music.
"Marching Up To Prospect Hill", a hambone (2) instrumental with just a shuffling harmonica, goes back straight to the African tradition that survived in South Carolina.
 |
| Banjo & quills |
Globally, the second CD, and especially the 12 unreleased instrumentals and/or alternate versions gathered in "The Drum Major Instinct" section, are focused on the rhythmic roots of traditional American music. But to be honest, except for a few numbers like "Milwaukee Blues", "Clock On The Wall", "Keep On Truckin'" and the final "Blue Butterfly", this second CD doesn't add anything really new to CD one, the real gem of the lot.
The exact title of this unique 2018 project about the overlooked roles played by Afro-Americans in the expansion West after the Civil War is "Dom Flemons presents Black Cowboys". Sounds quite academic, and in a way, as mentioned earlier, it is an ethno-musicologist and historian work as much as a musical one.
“From ranches to railroads, learn about the often unrecognized role that African Americans played in the range cattle industry, as Pullman porters and in law enforcement”, says the dedicated page of the very serious site Learningforjustice.org (link below) in introducing Flemons' opus.
The album was released on the Smithsonian Institute label Folkways Recordings (in the African American Legacy collection), with a 40-page booklet including historical essays on the part played by African-Americans in the conquest of the West, as well as extensive track notes by Flemons and photographs. A recognition of the seriousness of Flemons' work.
 |
| Bill Pickett the “Bull-dogger” |
Until the recent decades, Hollywood had largely ignored (censored ?) this reality : cowboys, settlers, sheriffs and soldiers were always white. The non-white were either aggressive Indians, Mexican bandits, Chinese railroad workers or African-American slaves or poor sharecroppers.
But Flemons is entitled to restore the facts : he is himself a descendant of the people he presents on the album, and proves it in the booklet with pictures of some of his great grand-parents and grand-parents.
He has exhumed old songsters as "Ragtime Texas" Henry Thomas (1874–1930?), “Jack” Thorp, Jess Morris, Moses “Clear Rock” Platt, and through some songs, completed by his booklet notes, amazing historical characters as the rodeo champion Bill Pickett the “Bull-dogger”, the fearsome deputy US Marshal Bass Reeves, or the adventurous cowboy turned writer Nat Love.
 |
| Bass Reeves (left) with his deputies in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1908. |
As on “Prospect Hill”, the list of instruments used for this throw-back 18-track journey to the roots of American music is eloquent : 4 and 6-string banjos, 6-string guitar-banjo; 6 and 12-string, resonator and Hawaiian guitars; guitarrón; mandolin; upright bass; fiddle; fife; quills (musical instrument); harmonica; kazoo; marching bass and snare drums; rhythm bones !
Three originals from Flemons (“One Dollar Bill”, “He's A Lone Ranger”, “Steel Pony Blues”), a majority of re-arranged old tunes, and even a poem recitation (“Ol' Proc”)... old square-dance songs, Western ballads, early blues… banjo, fiddle, fife… a superb musical journey into a long-gone world peopled with attaching figures.
Fortunately, Flemons contributes to keep this world alive somehow, from the opening field holler “Black Woman” sung a-Capella, to the final cowboy song “Old Chisholm Trail”, a-Capella also, through the gospel “Going Down The Road Feelin' Bad” enlightened by Brian Farrow's fiddle, the nostalgia for the old frontier swept up by “civilization” on “Home On The Range”, or sorrowful ballads like “Little Joe The Wrangler” or “Goodbye Old Paint”.Not only is this album a thrilling ethno-musical work but it's also a superb opus on a strict musical point of view. ■
The Albums (audio playlists)► “Black Cowboys” : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1NGH2rIYaNhnrftXkOG0mYs-0hyv-zPB
► “Prospect Hill : The American Songster Omnibus”, full 2020 version : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1NGH2rIYaNjyKqYx2P0-2iiwnVKMzqCg
► “The Forgotten Story of America’s Black Cowboys” (the Atlanta Black Star) : https://atlantablackstar.com/2015/07/24/forgotten-story-americas-black-cowboys/► “The Lesser-Known History of African-American Cowboys” (Smithsonian Magazine) : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/
► “Black On the Range: African American Cowboys of the 19th century” : https://www.rancholoscerritos.org/black-on-the-range-african-american-cowboys-of-the-19th-century/
► “Bass Reeves: The Invincible Lawman” : https://truewestmagazine.com/article/bass-reeves-the-invincible-lawman/
► On Bill Pickett : “Black Cowboy Leaps from Horse, Wrestles Steer” : https://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2017/05/black-cowboy-leaps-from-horse-wrestles.html
► On Dom Flemons' album “Black Cowboys” :→ https://folkways.si.edu/artists/dom-flemons
→ https://banjoreserve.com/artist/dom-flemons/
→ https://www.npr.org/2019/01/05/682318409/dom-flemons-presents-a-new-image-of-the-american-cowboy
→ https://www.learningforjustice.org/podcasts/teaching-hard-history/jim-crow-era/music-reconstructed-dom-flemons-black-cowboys-and-the-american-west
► On “Prospect Hill” :→ https://blackgrooves.org/dom-flemons-prospect-hill-the-american-songster-omnibus/
→ https://americanahighways.org/2020/02/28/review-dom-flemons-prospect-hill-the-american-songster-omnibus-is-rich-blend-of-americana-old-time-music/
► DittyTV, Memphis, 2018 :
► Delaware Valley Bluegrass Fest., 2018 : https://youtu.be/kCmM4aTq4M0► Lansing, Michigan, 2018 : https://youtu.be/Gf6NG9ngRro
► Woodsongs, 2015 : https://youtu.be/uGH-qBYcEpM?t=1195
► Hamilton Live, on Voice of America, 2015 : https://youtu.be/C7A5j61aVkc
No comments:
Post a Comment