I got a wonderful Christmas present from Stephen Wade in
yesterday’s mail – on Christmas eve no less.
He sent me a copy of his new CD, “Americana Concert: Alan Jabbour and
Stephen Wade at the Library of Congress,” (Patuxent CD-308).
The CD captures
a 1998 noontime concert Stephen and Alan played at the Library of Congress,
Stephen on banjo and Alan on fiddle – both instruments provide a wonderful
centerfold photograph for the CD package, posed together with four of the LOC’s
earliest folk music albums.
Alan commented
on each tune, providing background history on the evolution of the tune, its
origins and its arrival in the U.S., who played the tune. His melodious voice had the same comforting
timber as his fiddling, and his total immersion in the old tunes – as an early
enthusiastic collector, as the steward of some of the most critical Americal
Folklore Center’s old time music projects, as the mentee of the fiddler Henry
Reed – wrapped them and handed them to any and all of his audiences in such
appealing, readily accessible, tantalizing stories and annecdotes. I always thought those made willing accomplices
of all who listened to him, turning those within earshot of his fiddling into
interested, attentive students and committed tune archeologists.
Stephen and
Alan play together enthusiastically.
Alan’s fiddling was always dynamic, strong and penetrating. Stephen’s banjoing works well in an
effortless way, the product of both musicians knowing how to make the fiddle
and the banjo marry up together.
That pairing of
banjo and fiddle can become a note for note competition, where the banjo seeks
to duplicate every piece of sound that tumbles from the fiddler’s bow.
Or it can be a
carefully orchestrated piece of teamwork where the fiddler and the banjoer make
these two diametrically opposed musical machines fit together in a way that
brings out the best of them, without the sonic replication of notes. It strikes me that Alan and Stephen found the
equation that recognized the unique character of these two instruments, and determined
how they need to be gently, carefully paired so that each has a special job
that works to the advantage of the music, amplifying both melody and rhythm in
a division of labor that pushes a tune forward.
My first
“lesson” about playing with a fiddler came from Dwight Diller. Probably about 20 years ago he came to what
was then my home in northern Virginia to teach a workshop at my place. He got to us early, a day before the
workshop, and we had some “quality time” together.
At one point
Dwight arranged two chairs so that we’d be facing each other. He put his banjo down, and took up his
fiddle. He had me sit down armed with my
banjo, and then pulled in tight so that our knees were just touching. Dwight locked eyes with me, told me to keep facing
him, made sure I didn’t drift off to look at my right or left hand, and told me
to follow him in some tunes.
He started off
with Cluck Old Hen, and played that until I could do so without gazing away
from his eyes. He told me that the
hardest thing about playing with a fiddler is listening to the fiddler without
listening to one’s own banjo.
The next
hardest thing is to figure out what to play on the banjo so that one isn’t
getting ahead of the fiddler, which to him meant – as he put it – playing so
that the banjo player is in effect putting his hand at the small of the
fiddler’s back and gently nudging things forward. He called it “playing under the fiddler,” and
of course his percussive playing serves precisely that purpose.
I don’t pretend
to know how to find the key to finding the magical way of combining fiddle and
banjo. I have a sense of when this
happens in such a pairing. I’ve been
able to put my banjo with a fiddler’s music from time to time in a way that, at
least to me, works to find that balance.
And I know when such a duet pairing banjo and fiddle has found that
sweet and satisfying balance, insofar as my musical tastes are concerned.
Alan and
Stephen’s 1998 concert represented the best of that kind of pairing. To say it is “effortless” would underplay the
frenetic, fierce, animated way Alan handled his fiddle – it seemed like a toy
in his hands that was being wrestled with by a tall, unrelenting man. Stephen, too, has a determined, gripping way
of pulling tunes out of his banjo. They
played together, at this LOC concert, in a way that – again, for me – creates
the sonic illusion that emerges from such a pairing, where one can’t quite tell
whether the fiddle is leading the banjo or the banjo is nudging the fiddle
along; where one can’t determine whether one instrument is jumping out and in
front of the other, or hurrying quickly behind to catch up with its
partner. Each instrument asserts itself,
yet also seems to receed in a way that pushes the tune out before the sound of
either the banjo or the fiddle becomes distinct and dicernable to the ear.
This is a live
recording, so it includes the laughter, applause, the shuffling on stage that
constitute the business of moving a concert along. I usually try to tune that stuff out so that
I can focus on the music, but in this instance I found myself invested in all
those live sounds because they pulled me into this performance, and reminded me
why any occasion to hear him play, to listen to him talk through the history of
an archaic tune and tell stories derived from the life of a musical elder was a
wonderful treat.
I suppose this
is the point at which a reviewer might single out a tune or two on an album
under consideration that just stands out – or fall back on the explanation that
each of the recorded tunes are gems in their own way.
I can say I was
mezmerized by “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” I
listened real closely to Alan’s “Washington’s March” which he learned from the
West Virginian Burl Hammons, probably during the LOC family study of the
Hammonses in the early 1970s, when he and Carl Fleischhauer, and Dwight Diller,
delved into the history, the stories, and the tunes of this unique family deep
seated in Pocahontas County. “Paddy’s
Turnpike” is one of those tunes that over time has become a “festival
favorite,” a tune that has been played and played to the point where the unique
ruts these old tunes wore in the minds of people have become muddied and
unmoored from the spirit of the tune.
Alan and Stephen’s playing restored the tune for me.
Alan played
Waltzes, such as the example played on the CD – “”Isom’s Waltz” – in a manner
that made me wish the tune would just go on and on. He also had a way of rendering complex
musical forms, such as Schottisches, understandable. His story of what these were and where they
fit in a musical history made these art forms accessible to me, and far more
easy to understand than some of the laborious dissections of note structures,
bowing patterns, and timing that are guaranteed to be elusive to my mind. Alan’s “Falls of Richmond” is prefaced by a
cogent guess hazarded about how the tune title morphed from the “Fall” - making
it a tune about a Union attack against Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865 - to
the “Falls” of Richmond – making it a tune about the farthest navigable point
on the James River. Either way, it’s a
great Hammons family tune that Alan plays in a manner that brings depth to it.
Stephen’s banjo
playing, especially on tunes such as “Ragged Bill” and “Shooting Creek” and
“Cabin Creek”, has such clarity and precision, and at the same time such a
fluid, flowing aspect to it that wound its way around Alan’s fiddling end up in
such a neat, tight package. He works
both the north and the south end of the banjo’s fingerboard in a way that
solves the mystery of why the five string has both an upper and a lower part to
the neck, combining musical symmetric with the uniqueness of tunes rendered on
the upper and lower registers of the instrument. Their playing on a rousingly syncopated
version of “Liza Jane” unfortunately brings us within one tune of the end of
this great CD that closes out with a medley of “Red Fox” and “Leather
Britches,” prefaced by a sweetly told explanation by Alan of the title of the
second half of the medley, and a reminder of the mystery of these old tunes
whose names often lead to wondering about what the preferred handle has to do
with the music itself.
The liner
notes, as I’ve said elsewhere, are evocative.[1] They offer a great remembrance of Alan
Jabbour, and will be especially treasured for that. The notes also contain some great photos,
including some from the distinguished personal collection of Carl
Fleischhauer’s massive photo archive.
And the CD itself and the package in which it is wrapped pay homage to
the Library of Congress where Alan labored for almost three decades
as the founding director of the American Folklife
Center.
I can’t say enough about this CD, but
I suppose I have. Fine music to wake up to on a Christmas day.
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