folk – Bad Reputation A feminist pop culture adventure Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:00:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.6 37601771 Blueswoman Etta Baker /2011/06/23/blueswoman-etta-baker/ /2011/06/23/blueswoman-etta-baker/#respond Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:00:57 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=5835 Etta Baker, a black woman of slight build in glasses, jeans and a shirt standing in a garden with an acoustic guitarThere’s a fantastic feminist body of work devoted to recognising and celebrating the achievements (and even the existence of) women in blues music, not least the landmark Blues Legacies and Black Feminism by Angela Davis. Thanks to the toil of Davis and others, the songs and performances of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Victoria Spivey and Ma Rainey are finally taking their place in the notoriously masculine and misogynist blues canon. So I won’t reinvent the wheel – go read about them, learn about them, listen to them. Instead I thought I’d introduce a less well-known blueswoman, Etta Baker.

I say ‘less well-known’, what I mean is less familiar to the general public. Since she was ‘discovered’ in the 1950s (she was included on an album of field recordings of folk music, Instrumental Music from the Southern Appalachians , after a chance meeting with folk singer Paul Clayton) there have been plenty of tributes to her musicianship.  Bluesman Taj Mahal said she was the greatest influence on his guitar playing, and Bob Dylan went to visit her in 1962. When you listen to Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right (a rewrite of one of Clayton’s songs) I reckon you can hear Etta Baker’s influence quite clearly.

The album she recorded with her sister Cora Phillips in 2005, Carolina Breakdown, is casually incredible. Her astonishing skill is obvious, even to a cloth-eared listener like me. But it all seems very relaxed. I suppose that kind of confidence is what you get for playing the guitar for 90-odd years (she started learning when she was three…)

Here’s a radio interview with Etta Baker in 2005 and you can listen to some of her songs, see pictures and read more about her life on the Music Maker Relief website. Baker has none of the tragic glamour of Billie Holiday or the stature of Bessie Smith. When you see pictures of her, she’s… well, she’s a little old lady.  She’s usually grinning, wearing ill-fitting sweaters, and with the same owl-like glasses that the Queen wears. The admiration she has won is all down to how she played, and not how she looked.

She is not and never was a star. As well as playing the blues, she raised nine children and worked for 26 years in a local factory. Susan Simone of Music Maker Relief puts this in context:

Listening to Baker’s talent, the first question that comes to mind is why didn’t she get onto the stage earlier. To understand this, you need to understand how life was in the Carolinas for people who were living a hardscrabble life of farming and mill work. Opportunities for music were local not national. Skilled musicians played with family, for local dances, at church, or may be in a nearby town…. “My husband could play piano real well,” Baker reflects. “I believe we could have made it, but as he did not want to leave home, there was nothing I could say.”

Performing on stage or to large audiences is of course no measure of talent, or even of influence. And in interviews Baker herself didn’t seem to have any regrets. But when I hear her and her sister play I can’t help but wonder about all the other ordinary extraordinary women we’ll never know about.

 

Further reading

  • Blog series: Feminist discourse in the lives and works of American blueswomen of the 1920s ]]> /2011/06/23/blueswoman-etta-baker/feed/ 0 5835 With A Brace of Pistols All At Her Side: Kickass Women in Folk Songs /2011/05/12/with-a-brace-of-pistols-all-at-her-side-kickass-women-in-folk-songs/ /2011/05/12/with-a-brace-of-pistols-all-at-her-side-kickass-women-in-folk-songs/#comments Thu, 12 May 2011 08:00:03 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=4868 Black and white illustration/engraving of a head and shoulders portrait of a female highwayman (highwaywoman?) in a feathered hat and maskStruggling as usual to come up with the ‘pop culture’ bit of the feminist pop culture adventure that you and I are embarking on together, I hit upon a brilliant idea: I could write something about the pop culture of the 1800s! So here I am talking about traditional Anglo-American music. Problem solved.

    I was also inspired by a question from @FeministInti to her twitter followers: do you know any folk songs that feature gender-based violence? The answer is yes, AND HOW. In a few moments we had amassed enough for a limited edition CD box set of traditional songs about rape, domestic violence and murdered women.

    It tends to be these songs that a lot of modern folkish artists have picked up on. Yes, I’m looking at you Nick Cave. And you, Decemberists, although I love you. There are also a lot (a LOT) of waiflike folk girls with guitars singing about how love is like a cloud or they’re not sure which handbag matches their heart, as parodied by Bill Bailey.

    As an antidote to the murdery and misogynist on the one hand and the mindlessly insipid and pathetic on the other I thought I would take this opportunity to share and celebrate some traditional songs in which women come out on top.

    Note: Because the songs are hundreds of years old in some cases there’s quite a lot of variety over names and lyrics. I managed to find versions of nearly all of them on Spotify and have made a collaborative playlist so y’all can add any others you find: Kickass women in folk songs.

    Cross-dressing adventurers

    Scanned image of 'The Female Sailor' broadsheet from the National Maritime Museum

    'The Female Sailor' broadsheet from the National Maritime Museum

    Now THIS is what I’m talking about – songs about women dressing as sailors, hunters and highwaymen, whether to find their true love or just for kicks. Some of them sound a little unhinged: like Sovay, who is prepared to blow her lover’s head off if he gives up the love token she has given him. But the heroine in ‘The Golden Glove’ is very endearing as she cleverly arranges matters so that she can marry the man she loves (and “enjoy” him, as she sings gleefully).

    If you’d like more stories of derring-do like this, I recommend Dianne Dugaw’s Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650-1850.

    Sovay

    “Sovay Sovay all on a day
    She dressed herself in man’s array
    With a brace of pistols all at her side
    To meet her true love, to meet her true love, for did she ride”

    Public domain scanned book illustration of a tall shipWhen I Was A Fair Maid

    “When I was a fair maid about seventeen
    I listed in the navy for to serve the queen
    I listed in the navy, a sailor lad to stand
    For to hear the cannons rattling
    and the music so grand”

    The Golden Glove

    “Coat waistcoat and trousers the young girl put on
    And away she went a-hunting with her dog and her gun
    And she hunted around where the farmer he did dwell
    Because in her heart oh she loved him so well”

    Bold William Taylor

    “Then the captain stepped up to her, pleased well at what she’s done;
    He’s gone and made her a bold commander, over a ship and all its men.”

    Cowgirls

    Just a couple of examples – ‘I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart’ is basically about a woman who wants to be a cowboy, the ‘sweetheart’ of the title is purely incidental, and ‘Belle Starr’ is about a real life wild west fugitive who had a number of famous fugitive lovers.

    Public domain engraving of Belle Starr riding a horse

    I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart

    “I wanna pillow my head by the sleeping herd
    while the moon shines down from above
    I wanna strum my guitar, and yodellaheehoo,
    that’s the life that I love!”

    Belle Starr

    “Eight lovers they say combed your waving black hair
    Eight men knew the feel of your dark velvet waist
    Eight men heard the sounds of your tan leather skirt
    Eight men heard the bark of the guns that you wore”

    Bold and crafty women

    The Crafty Maid and Lovely Joan outsmart their arrogant would-be seducers and make off with their horses. Sally Brown kicks the ass of the Cruel Youth, saving her own life and avenging the deaths of the ‘pretty maidens’ who went before her, and the Bonny Lass of Angelsey dances the king and 15 of his knights out of their swag.

    Public domain, old book illustration of a horse

    The Crafty Maid’s Policy

    “But as soon as the maid she saw him a’coming
    She instantly then took her pistol in hand
    Saying “Doubt not my skill, it is you I would kill
    I will have you stand back or you are a dead man.”

    Lovely Joan

    “She’s robbed him of his horse and ring,
    And left him to rage in the meadows green.”

    The Cruel Youth

    “Lie there, lie there, you cruel young man,
    Lie there lie there,” said she
    “Six pretty maidens you’ve drowned here,
    now go keep them company.”

    The Bonny Lass of Angelsey

    “She’s taken all their bucklers and swords
    She’s taken their gold and their bright money
    And back to the mountains she’s away
    The bonnie lass of Anglesey”

    Old illustration of a group of knights looking silly

    Silver Dagger

    The woman in Joan Baez’s version of the Silver Dagger decides not to risk getting her heart broken by keeping clear of love altogether. Whether she’s right or wrong, I like that she makes a choice.

    “My daddy is a handsome devil
    He’s got a chain five miles long
    And on every link a heart does dangle
    Of another maid he’s loved and wronged.”

    Thanks to my main song sources, Mudcat and Creative Folk!

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