>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ^M00:00:05 ^M00:00:17 >> Betsy Peterson: Good evening, everyone. I am Betsy Peterson, the director of the American Folk Life Center here at the Library of Congress. And behalf of all of the staff of the center, I want to welcome you all this evening to our latest offering in the Homegrown Concert series, which is today or tonight I should say. We are going to hear four groups of wonderful musicians interpreting music from the collections in the American Folk Life Center's archives, hence the term the Archives Challenge. As usual, our performance tonight is going to be recorded for later webcast and for inclusion in our collections. So with that said, if you do have a cell phone turned on, please turn it off at this point or forever be immortalized in our archive. The Homegrown series, just a little bit of background for all of you, the Homegrown series is an opportunity for the American Folk Life Center to work with folk arts coordinators, ethno-musicologists, cultural heritage specialists from throughout the country to identify some of the very best artists, musicians, dancers, storytellers, to sharer their art and their tradition with all of you and with all of us. So if you want any more information on the series, just please go to our website which is www.LOC.gov/folklife. A little bit of background now about the Archive Challenge itself. This is our second Archive Challenge. We did one about a year or so ago here in the Coolidge Auditorium. And the idea is that we work with musicians from around the region to identify some of the songs in the archive that they can interpret and learn, arrange and perform for all of you. It's an exciting opportunity for us and an experiment that we very much wish to continue. So now to tell you a little bit more about all of the artists tonight, I'm going to turn things over to Steve Winick, our writer/editor and folklorist here at the Folk Life Center. And actually a musician in his own right. So please welcome Steve Winick. ^M00:02:47 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:55 >> Stephen Winick: Good evening. As Betsy said, I am Steve Winnick. I am the writer and editor in the American Folk Life Center and I'm a folklorist and I'm also a singer in the first group that will be performing tonight. So I should say that one of my jobs here at the Center is to write about the great stuff that we do and the great ways that our archive has been used in the past. And it came to our attention over the years that our archive has been used by -- ^M00:03:24 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:03:30 And from Animals to Feist to Nina Simone, all kinds of people have drawn on the archive. And our thought was, well, how do we encourage artists to continue using the archive? And we came up with the idea of the Archive Challenge. And it was really my colleague Jennifer Cutting whose idea it was. And so I am going to bring out the first group. I'll tell you a little bit more about the Archive Challenge and how it's worked over the course of the evening. But right now I'm going to bring out my colleagues in Ship's Company Chanteymen. ^M00:04:03 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:04:11 Oh. Can we? ^M00:04:14 [ Inaudible ] ^M00:04:19 All right. So as I said, we are Ship's Company Chanteymen, comprising Myron Peterson, if you can all wave when I say your name. ^M00:04:28 [ Applause ] ^M00:04:30 Dallas Valley, Michael Bosworth and myself, Steve Winnick. And I'm wearing several hats this evening. ^M00:04:39 [ Laughter ] ^M00:04:41 And we are going to be joined also by Jennifer Cutting who as I said is the person whose idea the Archive Challenge really was. So we four singers are part of a larger group that is called Ship's Company, and that performs historical reenactments and nautical education. And Ship's Company reenacts several eras of American naval history, especially the war of 1812 which is what these uniforms are associated with. Believe it or not, these hats were worn aboard ships of war while sailing. And what we know from historical records is that sailors went through several of them a year because they would blow off and then they had to buy a new one. So I will be sort of narrating our set and telling you about the songs that we've selected from the archive. Our first song was collected by James Madison Carpenter who was a great American collector of the 1920's and early 1930's, kind of an underrepresented era in folk song collecting. And he collected both in the United States and in the UK. He was American. He was from Mississippi in fact, but he was a Harvard scholar and he was really interested in sea chanteys and nautical music. He actually wrote his dissertation about that. But his advisor was a man named George Lyman Kittredge. And Kittredge had been the assistant of Francis James Child who is such a famous ballad scholar that we have a subgenre of ballads that we refer to as Child ballads. And one of the reasons that Carpenter was very interested in this particular song is that it is a sea chantey and it's a very well-known sea chantey. It's a version of Blow The Man Down, which is possibly the best-known sea chantey there is. But the lyrics are totally different from most other versions of Blow The Man Down, except for the refrains. And the lyrics are in fact one of these Child ballads which is a story about the devil. Carpenter collected this combination of Blow The Man Down and The Devil Ballad twice in New York City at Sailor Snug Harbor in Staten Island which was a retired sailors' home. And once in South Wales in Cardiff. And I kind of combined the verses from these three versions of this song to get the one that we're going to do. So this is called Blow The Man Down. And now this is your interactive part of the evening, because you're going to sing with us. You sing on the refrains. And many of you will know this because it is one of the best-known songs out there. So I'm going to sing, "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" And you're going to sing, "Way-hey blow the man down." "Absorbent and porous and yellow is he." "Give me some time to blow the man down." Except of course those are not the words that Carpenter collected. Carpenter collected these words. Oh, and I will say there's one reference in the song which is to a commercial traveler. That's just an old word for a traveling salesman. And there's a great tradition of traveling salesmen also being folklore performers and folklore collectors. And so it's appropriate that the person in the song meets a commercial traveler who has that occupation as well. So -- [Singing] As I was a-walking one morning in spring, way-hey blow the man down. I found myself next to an old country inn, give me some time to blow the man down. I sat myself down and I ordered some gin, way-hey blow the man down. A commercial traveler was the next to come in, give me some time to blow the man down. We talked of the weather and things of the day, way-hey blow the man down. Says he hears a story I've learned on my way, give me some time to blow the man down. It's of a poor tailor in London did dwell, way-hey blow the man down. The devil he came to him once out of hell, give me some time to blow the man down. Says he my good friend now, I've come a long way, way-hey blow the man down. Especially this visit to you for to pay, give me some time to blow the man down. Not you nor your son nor your daughter I crave, way-hey blow the man down. It's your dirty old wife, she's a drunk old jade, give me some time to blow the man down. So the devil he bundled her into a sack, way-hey blow the man down. And away down to hell with the wife on his back, give me some time to blow the man down. There were three little imps there stood outside the gates, way-hey blow the man down. She pulled off her slipper and stove in their pates, give me some time to blow the man down. Three more little devils were bound down in chains, way-hey blow the man down. She took off the other and bashed in their brains, give me some time to blow the man down. These six little devils for mercy did bawl, way-hey blow the man down. Saying, "Chuck them at daddy, she'll murder us all," give me some time to blow the man down. She can't live in heaven, she's not fit for hell, way-hey blow the man down. I'm thinking that London's a place she could dwell, give me some time to blow the man down. So the devil he bundled her back in the sack, way-hey blow the man down. And back to the tailor with her on his back, give me some time to blow the man down. She went down to hell and she came back again, way-hey blow the man down. Which proves that the women are tougher than men, give me some time to blow the man down. ^M00:11:21 [ Applause ] ^M00:11:24 >> Stephen Winick: Thank you. That was James Madison Carpenter's version of Blow The Man Down, mostly from Dennis O'Connor's in New York City. And now we're going to sing another song that Carpenter collected, and we're going to be helped here on the button accordion by Jennifer Cutting. And this song is a fishing song. So Carpenter actually did his dissertation on nautical songs, and this one he collected from a Captain Charles Snellin in Marblehead, Massachusetts. One interesting thing about this song is that we found the tune in the Carpenter collection which he sold to the American Folk Life Center in the 1970's, to the Library of Congress. So it's in the collection, but we didn't find words in the collection. It turns out that the words he put in his doctoral dissertation and he said it's the same song collected from the same person. So we were able to match the music to the words. And the song tells the story of a fishing voyage from Massachusetts up to Atlantic Canada. And I was familiar with the tune from a Newfoundland song called Feller from Fortune. So it's still in oral tradition today. And this song is going to be sung by Dallas Valley and Jennifer will give us the key and then we'll teach you the words. ^M00:12:41 [ Accordion music ] ^M00:12:42 >> And the chorus goes, the tune is -- ^M00:12:46 [ Accordion music ] ^M00:12:49 >> Stephen Winick: And words are [singing] Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:12:57 [ Music ] ^M00:12:59 >> [Singing] He was sitting in the parlor, thinking over every fan. In comes Palmer in a hurry to ship us on board the Frigid Ann. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:13:15 [ Music ] ^M00:13:20 We went down to see the skipper and finding him a nice young man, we told him we'd go a-fishing all on board the Frigid Ann. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:13:35 [ Music ] ^M00:13:39 If you want to go a-fishing, do your duty like a man. Oil down the shrouds and riggin' all on board the Frigid Ann. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:13:54 [ Music ] ^M00:13:58 Here's the tar now take the bucket, rub it in on every strand. You will stand upon the riggin' all on board the Frigid Ann. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:14:13 [ Music ] ^M00:14:18 We were sitting in the parlor thinking over every fan, in comes Palmer in a hurry to ship us on board the Frigid Ann. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. Shinty sha-long, shallot, hi, low, chilly, sha-long, shallot. ^M00:14:39 [ Applause ] ^M00:14:47 >> Stephen Winick: So our third song, like the first one, is a real sea chantey. And that means that it was performed by sailors as a way of coordinating labor on tall ships. And sometimes on these ships there was a person who was a specialist in singing, and that person was known as the chanteyman, and that's where our group gets the name from, Ship's Company Chanteymen. So the chanteymen had to have a large repertoire of songs and had to have a good voice like our friend Myron here who is also a retired Navy chief. Thank you for your service, sir. And Myron is going to sing a song that is called Rueben Ranzo, which is a well-known sea chantey about a tailor who goes to sea. But we have a version of this in our archive that was recorded in 1942 by William Main Dorflinger from a retired chanteyman in New York City, this one at the Seamen's Church Institute down by the South Street Seaport. And his name was Patrick Taylor. And Patrick Taylor was a real character and there were actually newspaper reports about him at the time because he was such a crazy guy. He did all kinds of cool things like walking from Washington DC to New York and stuff like that that got him in the news. But he also told great stories about his songs. And he told a story about the way that Reuben Ranzo was written and we thought we'd let you hear him tell that story before Myron sings the song. So this is Patrick Taylor >> It was made up on [inaudible] when it was known as Castle Gardens many years ago. It's of two poor fellows sitting together. One was a hobo and the other was a tailor. This man was really a singer and really a poet. So when the boarding master's runner came up, "Hey, feller," he says, "Would you like to go to sea?" "Why hell no," he says, "I'm no sailor. I'm a hobo." He went to the fellow next door and he says, "Say, boy, how would you like to go to sea?" "Well," he says, "I'd love to go to sea, but," he says, "I ain't no sailor. I'm a tailor. And now I'm busted and broke. I'm down here on Castle Gardens living my life out." And the other fellow looked at him and the thoughts ran through his head and he made this song up. >> [Singing] It's poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. It's poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. Now Ranzo was no tailor, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. He was a New York Tailor, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. They gave him lashes 30, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. Because he was so dirty, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. The captain's daughter Susie, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. She begged her pa for mercy, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. She gave him bread and water, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. And a little more than she ought-ter, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. She taught him navigation, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. Which brought him to his station, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. Now Ranzo, he's a sailor, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. And the captain of the squalor, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. He's known wherever the whale-fish blow, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. As the hardest bastard on the gulf, Ranzo, me boys, Ranzo. >> Stephen Winick: Reuben Ranzo. Thank you kindly. ^M00:18:52 [ Applause ] ^M00:18:55 Thank you. And for our final song we're going to have Jennifer Cutting come back up, and she's going to accompany us on a song that's called Jolly Roving Tar. And this is a song that all the nautical groups around know. Everybody sings a version of this song. But what I didn't know until I started doing some research, and particularly until I chatted with Jeff and Garret Warner about this, is that everybody knows this song because of our collections here at the Library of Congress. Because Frank and Anne Warner collected this song in 1940 from a woman named Lena Bourne Fish in East Jaffrey, New Hampshire. And Mrs. Fish was a farmer's widow who lived up there and who had learned this song from a retired whaling sailor. And this song, the Warner's liked it so much that they played it for the Lomax's and the Lomax's published it in one of their books which is the way in which it got out into the folk revival. So now everybody sings this song. But what none of these people knew, not the Lomax's, not the Warner's, not Mrs. Fish, was that this song was actually an old theater song. So it was written in the 1850's in New York City by Ned Harrigan of all people of Harrigan and Heart fame. He was a Broadway composer and he wrote this song and it was so popular among sailors that it went to sea. And that often happened with good songs about sailors. Even though they didn't originate among sailors, sailors appropriated them and took them off to sea. And we actually have the original sheet music of this song on the Library of Congress website, but the title is Get Up Jack, John Sit Down. And the reason that we know that everybody who sings this song got it from Lena Bourne Fish is that her version is the only primary source version to contain the line Jolly Roving Tar which is actually the title of her version of the song. So this is going to be sung for us by Mike Bosworth who among other things is a retired Navy commander, but he still hangs around with us. So thank you for your service, sir. And Jennifer is going to give us the key and we're going to teach you the chorus. ^M00:21:02 [ Music ] ^M00:21:06 >> [Singing] Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. Ships may come and ships may go, as long as the sea doth row. Each sailor lad just like his dad, he loves the flow and bow. A trip ashore he does adore with a girl that's plump and round. But when your money's all gone, it's the same old song. Get up Jack, John sit down. Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. When Jack gets in, it's then he'll steer for some old boarding house. Now welcome him with rum and gin, that'll feed him on pork souse. He'll lend and spend and not offend till he lies drunk on the ground. When your money's all gone, it's the same old song, get up Jack, John sit down. Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. And then he'll steer aboard some ship for India or Japan. In Asia there the ladies fair all love the sailor man. He'll go ashore and on a tear he'll buy some girl a gown. When your money's all gone, it's the same old song, get up Jack, John sit down. Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. And when Jack's old and weatherbeat, too old to rove about, it's then he'll stop in some grog shop till eight bells calls him out. He'll raise his eyes up to the skies, saying, "Boys, we're homeward bound." When your money's all gone, it's the same old song, get up Jack, John sit down. Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. Come along, come along, me jolly brave boys, there's lots of grog in the jar. We'll plow the briny ocean with the jolly roving tar. ^M00:23:38 [ Applause ] ^M00:23:41 >> Stephen Winick: Jolly Roving Tar. We have been The Ship's Company Chanteymen. Once again, Mike Bosworth, Myron Peterson, Dallas Valley and our good friend and AFC colleague Jennifer Cutting. ^M00:23:56 [ Applause ] ^M00:23:59 Now they all get to leave, but I have to stay because I've got to tell you about the next person who's coming out onto our stage. And that will be Jaimeo Brown. And Jaimeo had been a drummer since the age of 16 and has played with some of the top names in music. Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana. And he has become inspired by some of our field recordings in the Library of Congress. Especially originally the Gees Bend recordings from Alabama. And he put those together and sort of sampled them for a project of his called Transcendence. And he's just one in a long line of artists who have sampled AFC material starting back in the '90's with Moby, did a lot of sampling of our work. And most recently Beyonce used some of our work as samples. So it's another way in which people engage with our recordings. And Jaimeo came to the reading room a couple years ago and I got the opportunity to meet him and we hung out and we showed him some work songs. And he's adapted some of those for his project today. So this is the great Jaimeo Brown. Do you want to speak before you play? >> Jaimeo Brown: All right. Thank you. ^M00:25:18 [ Applause ] ^M00:25:23 Wow, it's an honor, honor really being here. As he mentioned, I've been interested in the archives for probably around four or five years now. And of course when I came I didn't know that I would actually be performing here. So it's a great circle kind of for myself. What you're about to hear, you're about to hear something that's probably going to be a little bit different than something you may have heard before. The music that you're going to hear a sample tonight specifically comes from a collection of Lomax recordings called kind of The Parchman Farms Collection, which is actually a prison in Alabama. And some of the work songs that were sung in the prisons were really songs that retained some of the very first concepts and ideas of the very first African American experience in the country. So the music is very important and significant because out of the work songs, out of the earliest spirituals, this is really the roots of so much of what we consider to be American music and American pop music. If we're talking about jazz or talking about the blues, or we're talking about rock or we're talking about funk or we're talking about a lot of forms of electronic music, all of these different modern forms have roots that go back to these really early, early sounds and these early spirituals and work songs. So from these recordings I took some of the ideas of things that I feel came from these. So you're going to hear rhythms that all have roots in these recordings. And it's kind of my interpretation as a drummer here as well as you can see of this material. So thank you guys so much for being here, and have a wonderful night. I'm honored to be here with such diverse artists tonight, scanning all around the world with the sounds that you're hearing. ^M00:27:40 [ Singing ] ^M00:29:06 [ Music ] ^M00:30:22 [ Music and singing ] ^M00:31:17 [ Birds chirping ] ^M00:31:45 [ Bass rumbling ] ^M00:32:08 [ Singing ] ^M00:33:01 [ Birds chirping ] ^M00:33:07 [ Bass rumbling ] ^M00:33:14 [ Drumming ] ^M00:41:34 [ Singing ] ^M00:44:41 [ Music ] ^M00:46:04 [ Singing ] ^M00:47:09 ^M00:47:15 [ Applause ] ^M00:47:31 >> Jaimeo Brown: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, once again, you're hearing really the roots. Some of those voices and some of those songs and some of those prison songs, you're hearing a lot of roots of where the blues actually came from within those voices. So this is very important to me just because it really is like when you look at a tree, a tree that's very old has so many long branches on it, you know. But you don't often see the roots of how deep those roots actually go, deep underneath the ground. And that really is a big purpose of this music, to understand really the deepest roots of this music. It's an honor being here. Thank you guys so much. Thank you Library of Congress. Have a great night. ^M00:48:32 [ Applause ] ^M00:48:35 >> Stephen Winick: Wow. Thank you to Jaimeo Brown. Yeah, and what Jaimeo is saying is so important. This really is the roots of American music and pretty much all genres of American popular music have their roots in traditional musics that you can find in our archive. And I promised I'd tell you a little bit more about the origin of the Archive Challenge later in the evening, and that's what I'm going to do now. So the Archive Challenge, as I said, it came about because for all these years we've been observing all of the great musicians who have found their way to the archive. But often that finding was fortuitous. They found their way here because of a book that was published that had a transcription or someone happened to put out some field recordings on a commercial release and they heard those. The library did a little of that too. We released some of them on LP's back in those days. But we were trying to think of ways that we could encourage this more directly. And as I mentioned, my colleague Jennifer Cutting was the person who kind of had this idea, because Jennifer and I used to attend the Folk Alliance Conference every year. This is sort of an industry conference for folk music, where a lot of groups get together in order to sort of ply their wares essentially to promoters and presenters. And so we thought this would be a great place to actually get the archive challenge going. So Jennifer had this idea of promoting these two bands at the beginning, a few months before the meeting was going to start, get them to learn stuff from the archive. And they work with reference librarians at the American Folk Life Center. And we help them find material that they would like to adapt and adapt that material into something that they can perform. And then at the Folk Alliance itself, there is a showcase and this allows these musicians to put those in front of presenters and other people who might want to put them on. And so that worked really well for several years. But last year we had the idea, "Hey, why not bring this to Washington as well, bring this right here to the stage of the Library of Congress?" And so we engaged in that process. We did essentially the same thing, except it's mostly local artists or regional, we would say, people from around here. And we got three or four artists. Actually last year we got five artists to come and do the archive challenge, and that was a noontime show like many of our programs in the Homegrown Concert series. This year we decided to move it to evening time, and we've got these four artists. So that was sort of the trajectory. And again, it's all about getting this music into the hands of artists, not just listeners, not just people who will appreciate it, but people who will do something with it. And so that's what we've had so far and we're going to continue in that vein. Now, the American Folk Life Center was founded in 1976 and we were founded by Congressional legislation. And that legislation gives us a mandate, and one of the first things that it says about the reason for creating an American Folk Life Center is that the diversity inherent in American folk life is very important to the American people, and that this diversity should be maintained. And so we're actually quite proud and happy to have diversity at the heart of what we do and as the reason for what we do. And that's one of the reasons why the showcase that you're going to see tonight has a lot of diverse artists in it. And the next act that we're going to see is in itself -- there's diversity in the group because it's a Palestinian and Persian music fusion together. So it's Arabic and Persian. And it's Huda and Kamyar. And they are the duo of Huda Asfour and Kamyar Arsani. Huda comes from a musical family and she had formal training in music in Tunis, in Gaza, in Ramala and in Cairo. She's a founder of Jahar Band which is a musical experiment which molded together Arabic, folk and classical Arabic music into reinterpretations that would be relatable for younger Palestinians. And she's the recipient of several prestigious grants and awards for her work. Kamyar is a multi-instrumentalist, a singer and a songwriter, and he was born and raised in Tehran, Iran. Kamyar has spent over 20 years performing and researching the Daf and its roots, the main instrument he'll be playing tonight. And he also plays several other instruments. And he has taught himself how to play melodica ukulele and all kinds of things, but his central instrument is the Daf. And his songs and performances are inspired by the people of Iran and their history of struggle and protest. So next we are going to present Huda and Kamyar. ^M00:53:36 [ Applause ] ^M00:53:55 >> Huda Asfour: And really when we looked into the material that we found in the archives, there were a lot of technical problems in terms of how old the recordings were, how much noise there was in there. Most of these were collected as part of field recordings, parts of dissertations and scholarly work. And many of them were sort of on the way to other places. So passing by this fusion. So we chose three different pieces from different places. The first was inspired by a collection of Coptic hymns. The collection name is the Divine Liturgy of St. Basel with its hymns. And these are recordings that were produced between '64 and '67. So we will start with an improvisation inspired by these Coptic hymns. And the reason I found those fascinating is that sometimes I think in the subconscious -- the social settings that I grew up in, I get surprised when I hear Christian hymns that sound so native to the region with a lot of influence from what could have been had I not known also recitation of Koran. So for me, it's really beautiful to see how the local music plays its role in defining the identity of religious recitations. ^M00:55:50 ^M00:55:53 [ Music ] ^M01:02:06 ^M01:02:10 [ Applause ] ^M01:02:23 ^M01:02:30 >> Kamyar Arsani: All right, this next one, this was a tough one too. We found it and we fixed the recording of [foreign name]. He was a person from the Loreson area of Iran that the song is picked from. This song was written during the Iran/Iraq War and there's a story of a son of the family getting on a bike and wanting to tell his mother that he's going to the war and he's going to the front of the lines. And it is time for war. So the chorus of this song says, "Mother, Mother, it's time for war. And I hope I have all my bullets on me." And I think the part that was amazing to us was the description, the imagery of it and how it wasn't a sad moment. It wasn't that I'm going to war to die. It was more of a, "I am giving my life for my people." So the song wasn't supposed to be a sad song. It actually became a war hymn during the Iran/Iraq War and a lot of soldiers were singing it to keep their spirit up. It's called [foreign name]. ^M01:03:42 [ Music ] ^M01:03:51 [ Singing ] ^M01:04:31 [ Music ] ^M01:04:38 [ Singing ] ^M01:05:17 [ Music ] ^M01:06:19 [ Singing ] ^M01:07:20 [ Music ] ^M01:07:27 [ Applause ] ^M01:07:31 >> Kamyar Arsani: Thank you. ^M01:07:34 [ Applause ] ^M01:07:42 [ Music ] ^M01:08:05 ^M01:08:13 [ Music ] ^M01:14:44 [ Applause ] ^M01:15:08 >> Stephen Winick: The beautiful, beautiful music of Huda and Kamyar, Kamyar and Huda, our great duo of Persian and Arabic music. Thank you guys so much, and another round of applause for Huda and Kamyar. ^M01:15:22 [ Applause ] ^M01:15:27 So in a few minutes we're going to year from our next group, Elena and Los Fulanos. But before we do, I'm going to tell you a little bit about upcoming programs, because the programming team here at the American Folk Life Center never stops working. We have a symposium coming up on Monday about the work of cultural institutions including the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, Apple Shop in Kentucky, and Drum and Spear Bookstore here in Washington DC. And there will be representatives of all those organizations here to talk about the work that their institutions have done for, in some cases, 50 years. We are having a concert on the 26th, that is this coming Wednesday. The National Heritage Fellowship winner Eddie Bond who is a fiddler, and he'll be playing with the New Ballard's Branch Bog Trotters which is a great old-time band. And they'll be here in this room from noon to 1:00. I'll post all of this, which you can see our blog is called Folk Life Today. And so Elena was one of the participants in that program. And then I got to see her last year at Folk Alliance and then when we were thinking of people for this program, we started to hear rumblings from our friends who were promoters in the area that you really have to have Elena and Los Fulanos here on the stage. And we thought, "Hey, that's a great idea. We already love her, so let's get her over here." And that's what we did. So we invited Elena and Los Fulanos to be here for the Archive Challenge. So this is a bilingual folk rock band based right here in Washington DC. They've been performing since 2011 and they've been creating some great music since then. They have won Wammy Awards from the Washington Area Music Association, and great accolades from the Washington Post. So a big warm welcome for Elena and Los Fulanos. ^M01:17:16 [ Applause ] ^M01:17:20 >> Elena: Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here tonight. And we had this awesome opportunity and we were really excited to dig into the archives here. If you have heard of Los Fulanos, we mostly do original music, but we do like to think that we do a little bit of ethno-musicology. And so it was a really cool thing to go into the archives, and one of the most exciting things we found was we found this recording from 1943 -- no, '34. And it was one of the early Lomax recordings. And it was in Spanish and it was in one of the first kind of discs that we found. And no one apparently had really written down the lyrics or translated it. On the recording, I think it's Lomax that sang. It's called Conscripted Soldier. It was recorded in Texas and it is about -- so the first line and the only thing that was written on the little notecard that we found was, [Spanish phrase] which means President Wilson conscripted me. So I was like, "I've got to look into this song. This has got to be something interesting, something political." And something written about an American president but in Spanish. And so we listened to the song, wrote out all the lyrics and it's about draft dodgers in Texas that would go instead of being drafted into the First World War, they decided to go to Mexico which is a very reasonable thing, considering that Mexican Americans and Texans in the US were treated as second-class citizens. So this is kind of a story of -- still a lot of Mexican Americans and Mexicans, Texanos, went to war and did fight and die. But many of them also escaped. And those that did go unfortunately had to come back to a country that didn't see them as full citizens. So we took this song and the new kind of built it out. When we heard it, it was just one guy with a guitar playing probably in a living room. So we built it up a little bit and made it more of a song, more of a complete song. So we're going to see how this goes. Ready? Do you remember? Okay. ^M01:19:45 ^M01:19:48 [ Music ] ^M01:20:12 [ Singing ] ^M01:20:25 [ Music ] ^M01:20:30 [ Singing ] ^M01:20:42 [ Music ] ^M01:20:52 [ Singing ] ^M01:21:04 [ Music ] ^M01:21:08 [ Singing ] ^M01:21:20 [ Music ] ^M01:21:32 [ Singing ] ^M01:21:44 [ Music ] ^M01:21:48 [ Singing ] ^M01:22:00 [ Music ] ^M01:22:07 [ Applause ] ^M01:22:13 >> Elena: Thank you. Thank you so much. This next song -- actually we included a key change for the music people out there. We included a key change in that song because really funnily enough, in the middle of his recording, Jose Villa I think is his name, the original recording, he just kind of changes key kind of in the middle of a phrase. We were like, "Oh, that's kind of an interesting thing." So we included it. This next selection that we picked is from an awesome group called Quetzal which is a group that is based out of LA. And they did actually show here at the Library of Congress in 2011. And this is a selection from that. I kind of looked through it. I really wanted to do a song from this group because they do justice-oriented music that's informed by Son jarocho, which is a traditional music from Baracus, Mexico. And Danny over here is from [Mexican name] and he was raised in Mariachi and Son jarocho traditions. Today he's going to be doing El Sapatial on -- what's it called? Tarima, yeah. Stage name. Tarima. And he also informed us that the dance that he's going to be doing today isn't typically associated with the men's side of the dance. This is a women's dance, but we're okay with breaking gender stereotypes here at Elena and Los Fulanos. ^M01:23:40 [ Applause ] ^M01:23:42 But one of the things that I really loved about this song, it's really a fun song to play. But also the lyrics are really awesome. It's about a mocking bird, a sinsonte. And one of the lines that really grabs me about this song is that it says, [Spanish phrase], dignity is the revenge. But it's not like revenge. It's kind of like dignity is kind of like your comeback. You know, and I think a lot of oppressed communities, especially I feel like it's relevant now, is just like carrying your head high and doing your best and being dignified is the best way to show your own way to fight back. So that's what I really liked about this song, and it's also pretty awesome, so let's see how it goes. ^M01:24:32 ^M01:24:43 [ Music ] ^M01:24:55 [ Singing ] ^M01:25:06 [ Music ] ^M01:25:17 [ Singing ] ^M01:25:31 [ Music ] ^M01:25:40 [ Singing ] ^M01:25:53 [ Music ] ^M01:26:02 [ Singing ] ^M01:26:14 [ Music ] ^M01:26:17 [ Singing ] ^M01:26:22 [ Music ] ^M01:26:24 [ Singing ] ^M01:26:37 [ Music ] ^M01:26:59 [ Singing ] ^M01:27:11 [ Music ] ^M01:27:21 [ Singing ] ^M01:28:20 [ Music ] ^M01:28:31 [ Applause ] ^M01:28:35 >> Elena: Manny Cervantes on the violin. ^M01:28:39 [ Applause ] ^M01:28:42 Kevin de Sousa on bass. ^M01:28:44 [ Applause ] ^M01:28:45 Andrew Northrup on the cajon and various percussion instruments. ^M01:28:53 ^M01:28:55 Sweet. So when we were asked to do this, actually I came to a show here that was very formative for me. Actually, after we did the songwriting workshop, which apparently they're having another one, so you should look that up. It was a really cool experience. But after we had the Corido workshop here at the Library of Congress, I actually came to the Canciones de Mexico concert that evening. And it was really awesome. The songwriting workshop was taught be the lead of Canciones de Mexico. And one of the songs that they did was a bilingual version of This Land is Your Land which has been pretty important for me because there's been so much political activism. I've been asked to play at a lot of protests and rallies. And in particular, I started using This Land is Your Land as a song that could really bring a lot of people together. Everybody knows how the song goes, everybody can sing along. But not everybody knows the justice elements that went into the original writing of This Land is Your Land. Woody Guthrie actually wrote it. He was originally from Oklahoma, but he moved to California during the Dust Bowl, and he faced a lot of discrimination for being from Oklahoma. And he wrote This Land is Your Land kind of in response to some of the nationalistic elements that were coming out. Some of the kind of same things that we see now that are coming out in xenophobia and that kind of stuff. So we're going to do a bilingual version of that. And before we start it, I want to teach you the part in Spanish. It's a little hard, but might as well give it a try. If you guys sing what you can, are you cool with that? Are we good? We're going to do a little performing and build participation. Cool. So it goes like this. Esta tierra es tu tierra. Repeat with me. >> Esta tierra es tu tierra. >> Elena: Esta tierra es mia. >> Esta tierra es mia. >> Elena: Desde horizonte. >> Desde horizonte. >> Elena: Yeah, the horizon. Asta la otro rilla. >> Asta la otro rilla. >> Elena: So la otro rilla is to the other edge. Desde las montanas. >> Desde las montanas. >> Elena: To the mountiains. Costas rillos e vallas. >> Costas rillos e vallas. >> Elena: That one's the hard part. La tierras parte e parame. >> Elena: Yeah, we have some Spanish speakers in here. So yeah, we're going to do this. We hope you sing along, sing along to anything that you'd like or that you know. And the other thing I wanted to say about this is one of my favorite verses of this that doesn't always get sung is, there's a verse about getting to a wall. I actually don't know it in English. "But when I got to a wall, there was a sign there that said no trespassing, and on the other side it didn't say nothing." Which Canciones de Mexico retook and made it about the border, and we'll sing that verse today. So cool. Listos. ^M01:32:02 ^M01:32:04 [ Music ] ^M01:32:24 [ Singing ] ^M01:32:44 In English now. This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York Islands. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me. Eso. ^M01:33:05 [ Music ] ^M01:33:27 [ Singing ] ^M01:34:08 [ Music ] ^M01:34:30 [ Singing ] ^M01:35:09 In English now. This land is your land, this land is my land. From California, to the New York Islands. From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters. This land was made for you and me. ^M01:35:33 [ Applause ] ^M01:35:37 Thank you. ^M01:35:38 [ Applause ] ^M01:36:00 >> Stephen Winick: Another big thank you to Elena and Los Fulanos, and to the other great artists that we've presented tonight, Huda and Kamyar, Jaimeo Brown and the Ship's Company Chanteymen and Jennifer Cutting. I want to also thank -- there's a whole rack of people to thank for this event, including Wiz, Ed and Chris on the sound, John Gold our recording engineer, Roger for helping with the tech of the video. Our multimedia team, Michelle Glymph doing lights. And then on the American Folk Life Center staff, Thea Austen, Jennifer Cutting, John Fen, Michelle Stefano, Maya Lerman, Nancy Gross and of course Betsy Peterson our director who introduce the show. We want to thank you all for coming. Take a look around. There are some of the artists lurking around with CD's that you could buy from them. And we want to ask you to come on back for all those events that I described that we're having next week. So thank you so much for coming. This has been another great archive challenge here at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress. And thanks to you for coming out and seeing the show. Good night, everyone. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov. ^E01:37:19