| Friday, January 26, 2007 |
| Liberal folk |
In my ongoing quest to broaden my musical horizons, I went to see Eliza Gilkyson at the Freight & Salvage last night. I wasn't familiar with her music, but Neal highly recommended her, and I always like going to the Freight. Most music venues serve liquor; the Freight, on the other hand, sells an awesome variety of teas as well as cookies and brownies, and really, just about any form of entertainment is enhanced by the addition of brownies.
Eliza is a veteran folk singer who seems to be coming into her own in her 50s; she mentioned in a sly aside that for a long time, she wasn't able to get a booking at the Freight, so it was particularly gratifying to her that she can sell it out now. Eliza's brother Tony, a longtime member of the band X, was supposed to open the show, but he had to cancel due to an unspecified medical problem. So she had to fill the whole 2-hour slot on her own (along with a guitar-playing sideman and, on a few songs, a wonderful young violinist). Many of her songs were stunningly beautiful, like "When You Walk On" and the title track from her latest album, Paradise Hotel, and she has a gorgeous voice, but it would have been nice if her bro had been on hand to offer something a little more rockin'. The closest Eliza came to blowing the roof off the place was when she played "Man of God," a scathing indictment of the Bush administration. Needless to say, the song went over extremely well in the heart of Berkeley; the Freight is always a popular hangout for the town's aging hippie population, and Joe and I even noticed counterculture icon Wavy Gravy in the audience last night.
Anyway, listening to "Man of God," I wondered why there are no Republican folk singers. After all, folk music is protest music, and there are plenty of things for Republicans to protest, especially these days. How about this inspiring anthem, for starters:
Death tax, death tax
Get the government off our backs
You work hard, you scrimp and save
Don't let the IRS rob your grave!
This morning, I Googled "republican folk singers" and found that another blogger had been curious about the same topic back in 2004. (Scroll down to the March 25 entry.) "Based on the responses I got, I guess the answer is that right wing folk music is called 'Country & Western.'" I suppose that makes sense. Toby Keith is the Red State answer to Peter, Paul and Mary! |
posted by 125records @ 9:52 AM  |
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| 2 Comments: |
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I think Bob Roberts might have taken all wind out of any such sails... But seriously: I do think if there's conservative folk music, it's country music (not that all country is conservative). And obviously, we're talking primarily social-values conservatism here: I can't imagine old-school, economic conservatism being embodied by "folk" music...because those people aren't "folks." They'd hire someone to perform it for them (probably undocumented workers they can pay less). Of course, most likely those workers would get back at them...say, by singing in Spanish "my boss's penis is only two inches long" and the like.
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I think Bob Roberts might have taken all wind out of any such sails... But seriously: I do think if there's conservative folk music, it's country music (not that all country is conservative). And obviously, we're talking primarily social-values conservatism here: I can't imagine old-school, economic conservatism being embodied by "folk" music...because those people aren't "folks." They'd hire someone to perform it for them (probably undocumented workers they can pay less). Of course, most likely those workers would get back at them...say, by singing in Spanish "my boss's penis is only two inches long" and the like.