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News from Mr. Chris:
October 30, 2000
ARHOOLIE is celebrating 40 years of Down Home music this fall and we have just released a 5 CD Box set (Arhoolie CD 491) containing some of the more memorable cuts of authentic raw vernacular music I personally was lucky enough to capture over those 40 years. The 12" X 12" box and the enclosed fat booklet have a goofy picture of me on the cover, but it's an honest one - scoring those Cajun 78s put me in paradise! I hope many of you will pick up a copy of this box set - I guarantee you will enjoy all those masterpieces!
I was invited by the NEA to Washington, D.C. last month together with 12 wonderful folk artists and musicians to receive a National Heritage Fellowship. This year the NEA added a new category, the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship which honors other "keepers of tradition, who through their efforts as organizers, educators, producers, cultural advocates or caretakers of skills and repertoires have had a major beneficial effect on keeping the traditional vernacular arts of the United States vigorous". . It was a great honor to have been selected as the first recipient of this award and I had a wonderful time at the celebration. The musicians who received the award this year were: Felipe Garcia Villamil (Cuban Santaria drummer from Los Angeles), the Dixie Humming Birds, Santiago Jimenez Jr., Genoa Keawe (great Hawiian falsetto singer and yodler), Joe Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, and Don Walser. Also several weavers, a basket maker, an icon carver, a hammock weaver, and the amazing dancer, Frankie Manning. That was 12 artists - so I was #13 and I now consider that my lucky number!
Obviously a lot has changed for the better since 1960 in regard to public recognition and appreciation of authentic vernacular musical traditions. Festivals celebrating the many and varied traditions seem to be thriving everywhere including the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, the centers of Polish culture, the Irish, the Blues fests, the Conjunto fest in San Antonio, the Cajun and Zydeco fests in Louisiana, - it's all out there for the general public as well as the regional communities to enjoy. The other side of the coin however is that most such festivals feature mainly "name" acts and often forget about the local, elderly, or amateur tradition carriers. Also many older artists can no longer make a living in their own communities cause the mass media have saturated the youngsters' ears with their massively promoted and fabricated Hollywood, Nashville, or Miami clones who squeak yeah yeah and shake their booty! Although the power of pop music has always been pretty strong and the folk process pretty cruel, pop music today, except for the internet, is in the hands of fewer and fewer monster corporations and supported by more money than ever before. Vernacular traditions however continue to be exploited or neglected, But what is really sad is that our society is unwilling or unable to deal with the poor conditions of many of our rural and urban folks who created most of these remarkable regional genres. Their plight is today as bad as it was when I first visited the deep South and of course the inner cities are disaster zones with no role models left for young people to grow up with. Although our rural population has sadly decreased dramatically since the 1950s, the people did not just disappear but moved to urban ghettos where, except for the church cultures, most of their rural traditions have been lost and replaced by violent and horrendous street cultures. However what has always made American music so incredibly appealing is the constant interplay between the cultures. Let's hope that the best aspects of the human spirit will prevail and help once again to generate vital, new, and even more appealing traditions.
We hope to have the video production "SACRED STEEL" released via mail order before Christmas but it will be on the market by February. "Sacred Steel" just had its first public showing during our 40th anniversary week here in Berkeley at the Pacific Film Archives on Wednesday October 18. The Campbell Brothers (who are featured in the film) along with Katie Jackson appeared here in person Friday October 20 at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley. We hope to screen the video at various House of God churches and I hope the Campbell Brothers will sell it at the many concerts they have lined up with the Mighty Clouds of Joy this coming January and February. Their schedule is found elsewhere on this web site. In connection with "Sacred Steel", we are working on the CD recorded "live" at the first Sacred Steel Conference held last spring in Florida. Plans are now under way for a second such conference to be held in Sanford, Florida end of March 2001! Stay tuned for details.
ARHOOLIE'S 40th Anniversary:
Not only did the Campbell Brothers and Katie Jackson give a dynamite performance at our 40th anniversary party - but they also did a fine in-store show at Amoeba Records in San Francisco - a remarkable store indeed! The whole bash started on Friday the 13th of October with a fantastic performance by SONNY SIMMONS (alto sax) accompanied by the amazing jazz fiddler, Michael White - he is the hot descendant of Stuff Smith - backed and propelled by pianist Fred Harris, bassist Heshima Mark Williams, and Babatunde Lea on drums! These guys are so in synch it's scary! long live free jazz! From free jazz we went to very traditional Cajun music with the SAVOY-DOUCET CAJUN BAND who played a wonderful dance (with the California Cajun Orchestra opening) at Ashkenaz, Berkeley's best and only dance hall! Sunday night we had Michael and David Doucet start the concert with a fine set by the brothers before Michael returned with the Savoys for a delightful concert set at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House. Mid-week we premiered the SACRED STEEL video which looks better on a big screen than many a film and sounded fantastic. Bob Stone joined us here for the occasion as did Elijah Wald who really helped put the whole box set together. Thanks to all!
Then last week-end we started Friday night with the CAMPBELL BROTHERS and KATIE JACKSON at the Freight & Salvage again - a superb program! The brothers are really tight now and exchange solos casually and in perfect harmony as well as playing duets where one plays bass behind the other's steel solos and Phil keeps the whole thing together with his amazing 15 year old son driving along behind the drums - and Katie was in relaxed and soulful spirits - not just shouting but really delivering the songs! The next night, Saturday was our Mexican show and dance - another huge success - with Los Cenzontles' Dueto opening with strings backing (guitar, requinto, and guitarron) the girls singing in quite a variety of Mexican regional styles including ranchera, huastecan, jarocho, and even Purepecha traditions. The two were then joined by two other girls and put on a fine dance show which they had choreographed themselves. San Francisco's Govea family came next and with their pure NorteŅo polka sound brought dancers to the floor. The dancing intensified with Santiago Jimenez and his conjunto from San Antonio taking the stage and playing at his best - especially when he was joined for a couple of songs by the Dueto who sang their hearts out in this style with Santiago wailing behind them. Then came the Cenzontles Center's BANDA SINALOENSE - again with vocals mainly by the two girls - but now with two clarinets, two trombones, two trumpets, bass drum, tymbales, tuba and drums backing them full blast! To top the evening off Santiago Jimenez returned for a full set mainly featuring the dueto who gave the dancers a full dose of polka-rancheras - my favorite genre! Thanks to all the musicians, our staff, the great press we got, and all you fans who came and helped pay for ARHOOLIE's 40th birthday bash!! P.S. Thanks to the folks who catered our private event: Bobby Gradney of Bobby's Cajun Kitchen supplied one of the very best gumbos I've had, Heather Hafleigh who made a delicious salad, and the chocolate moose cake from the Hopkins Street bakery was also first class.
During the first part of this year I was able to purchase several masters of Tejano and NorteŅo music from FALCON Records of McAllen, Tx. who also operated the BRONCO, ARV, IMPACTO, EL PATO, & BEGO labels. Many LP master tapes of the best and well known names in the NorteŅo field such as Los Alegres de Teran, Chelo Silva, Las NorteŅitas, Lydia Mendoza, Dueto Estrella, Steve Jordan, (among lots of others) were sold to EMI in Mexico. Other master tapes of LPs were sold to Handleman, Tejanoclassics, Ramiro Cavazos, and Terso Cavazos. (I have a complete list of which masters were sold to which company). What Arhoolie purchased were many of the remaining LP masters by several of the women duets, along with tapes by Pedro Ayala, etc. along with the rights to any and all single 78 & 45 rpm items which did not appear on LPs!
Falcon Records, along with IDEAL Records, was one of the main producers of border music and recorded an amazing amount of material since their start in 1948. Marco Ramirez, son of the late Arnaldo Ramirez who founded the label, was in charge of the sale of the remaining masters not sold to EMI. While I happen to be in McAllen, Tx last December working out an agreement with Paulino Bernal, a friend, David Champion, mentioned to me the situation at Falcon and we stopped by their office immediately. Besides several LP nice masters, I was able to buy their remaining stock of 78s, 45s, and LPs as well as the rights to ALL masters which were NOT issued on LPs - primarily the early material released on 78s. I was also happy to find and obtain the original recording ledgers - bound loose-leaf books which in detail list master numbers, titles, who was on the session (often only first names however!), recording date, etc. all meticulously kept by the late Mr. Ramirez whom I had met some years ago when I was working on the Lydia Mendoza discography. I was also lucky to be able to rescue many photos, contracts, and song books! The history of the label is now pretty much documented here at Arhoolie Records.
Arhoolie's first re-issue from Falcon masters has just been released: CD 486 - The Soulful WOMEN DUETS of South Texas: 24 cuts by Hermanas Degollado, Rosita y Aurelia, Hermanas Cantu, Hermanas Mendoza, Hermanas Segovia, & Las Dos Marias . I especially love the sound of the Degollado sisters with the Prado Brothers backing them up with their driving Monterrey sound of accordion with alto sax and driving bajo sexto! I just found the names of Las Dos Marias (I did not have em when I prepared the notes) in the Falcon files: they are sisters, Maria de Jesus and Maria Guadalupe Lopez and they were indeed from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon That makes several of the duets from south of south Texas - oh well, it's all the frontera anyway and the best music just comes from that vast region on both sides of the Rio Bravo!
After all these many years (over 30, I am sure!) of working hard to help distribute Johnny Parth's DOCUMENT label from Austria here in the USA (recently with the help of DNA - Distribution North America) - Johnny has sold the label to a British fan who decided to give US distribution to Allegro . We are trying to get them to supply us at least at retail level for our mail-order customers and the Down Home Music store. However we still have good stock on much of the back-catalog and may soon offer them at drastic discount to our mail order customers. Interested customers should send us their orders at once to receive the SALE list of Documents as soon as we get it ready. We will attempt to continue to be the main source which will have all DOCUMENT titles available at all times -IF the new owner and Allegro Distributors will keep all items in stock!
The really sad scenario that's going down these days is the fact that in Europe, due to their limited copyrights they can legally boot any and all US masters which are 50 years or older while we here in the US where the music and the discs were originally made, can't do it because the originating companies claim to own copyright going back to day one of the record biz!! So we have to pay the Europeans to boot them so we can import them! And guess who gets screwed? The artists of course or their heirs. The European firms do have to pay the publishers of the songs or compositions (if any) - but they are under no obligation to pay the artists anything. Unless the vernacular artists back in the 20s and 30s were lucky enough to record for Ralph Peer who formed Peer International to protect the artists' original songs, I doubt if any of the other blues singers or country artists or their heirs are getting any of the funds collected on their behalf by the various publishing firms. I'm glad I stopped Blues Classics when CDs came in - I guess I was a sucker to pay Memphis Minnie, Blind Boy Fuller, Big Maceo, Joe Falcon, J.E. Mainer, Adolph Hofner, Lydia Mendoza, etc.and/or their heirs but I felt it was the right thing to do since I have always been of the opinion that the music belonged to the artists who created it! It's the same greedy scam in the jazz biz where you can now buy Jelly Roll Morton's records on almost a dozen different labels (yes, the same masters!), flooding and saturating the market. At least you can look for John R. T. Davis' name for assurance that the transfer is superb! In most cases he does a better job from 78s than the major labels do from the original metal parts. But the greedy booters are even copying those and putting their own label on them if they have the marketing clout! John R.T., I hope they pay you something for at least some of these booted transfers!! I also want to mention the fine restoration work done by our Bay Area's own George Morrow who has done most of our re-issues from 78s in the ethnic fields. The public however should be happy since the CDs are getting cheaper and cheaper!
For some time now Arhoolie has been the import agent for the fine world music label, PAN from Holland. If you are having problems finding certain items at your favorite shop, you can always order from us direct (the full catalog will soon be listed on this website!) or from the Down Home Music Store.
Our "Austro-Hungarian Empire room" as we have fondly named the room where we have been stocking the Document label from Austria is now slowly being vacated. We are having a "SALE" on many items on the DOCUMENT label very soon.
In order to sell some of our Arhoolie catalog in Mexico, we have just made a trade arrangement to import the PENTAGRAMA label which has some fine Mexican folk music of both authentic rural regional as well as urban singer/songwriters. As soon as we get the stock in, we will have the Pentagrama catalog on our web site. We will carry much of the catalog although not the full line, but will listen to requests in case we over looked some popular items. The first shipment is due the first week in November - so send us your orders for CDs and videos on that label.
For some years I have been trying to get the city of Opelousas, Louisiana interested in a statue for their native son, the undisputed king of zydeco music, CLIFTON CHENIER but never made any headway. The city council although controlled by creoles, never even got their act together to find a location for such a neat tourist attraction. Well, all good things come when you are patient and when visiting Lafayette, La. late last year I was told that just such a statue was in the final planning stages and a location had been assigned by the city in a brand new four building facility which will house various functions of state and local government and private business - but of course in Lafayette! Originally the complex was to be named Vital Services Center but it has since then been renamed and is now known as the "Centre de Services Communautaires CLIFTON CHENIER."! I just spoke with Phil Lank who is in charge of this statue project and he tells me that the statue will be placed in the plaza connecting the four buildings and that $ 25,000 has been raised towards the goal of $ 100,000. If you know any .com billionaires or other sugar daddies, let them know about this or E-mail Phil Lank at PALPLANS@aol.com - and check out the complete brochure which we are scanning here on our web site! I am also assured the statue will be a good one - showing Clifton from a photo by Philip Gould and not one of those modern atrocities where you can hardly recognize the man as a human being! All that will be missing is CLEVELAND CHENIER who I feel should be next to Clifton - they were a team and deserve to be together as the inventors of zydeco.
I will try and update this space from time to time and will also try and answer any of your queries if they are of general interest to Arhoolie fans.
Please vote! but only if you are a Democrat! Unfortunately the Dictatorship of the Corporations is threatening the entire world and neither party is willing to take them on! I would vote for Ralph Nader except that might help to get a "son of a Bush" into the White House! Cheers!
CHRIS STRACHWITZ, Sunday, October 28, 2000
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