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Jason Poole's letter
Leslie Berman's comments Howard Glasser's poem rev.11/13/12 Web page problems, broken links, etc: Don Wade |
Aloha Evy, Heather
and Jerry!
I wanted to send a giant MAHALO to you
all for bringing me to the Eisteddfod this year! What a
blast! James and I had a great time attending all of the
workshops and concerts. And eating all of the food!
And we LOVED meeting the
people! Such great folks gathered in one place and for one
reason--their shared love of traditional music. Magic!
It is always an honor to share the music
and stories from Molokai and the other Hawaiian islands. (And the hula,
too!) Thank you for giving me the opportunity. A delight to
share Aloha beyond Hawai'i's shores. I hope it proves to have
been fun/informative for the FMSNY members! to top
And because of the workshops and
concerts, my eyes have been reopened (and my heart reawakened!) to some
of the songs that I remember hearing when I was a little boy.
Songs from my ancestral homelands. I look forward to
exploring those and then taking them back to Hawai'i--a cross-cultural
experience!
Thank you, again. Mahalo nui
loa.
And I look forward to our paths
crossing, again, soon. Would love to have the chance to work
together, again!
With Aloha,
Jason
--
Jason Poole
alohadudenyc(at)gmail.com;
http://www.accidentalhawaiiancrooner.com/
Eclectic Company
Riding Out The Storms With Songs
By Leslie Berman
We Long Islanders came through Superstorm Sandy pretty well,
considering, and thank you all for asking how we’d weathered
it. When I say pretty well, I mean my immediate family’s
losses were relatively few, especially as compared to those of some of
our friends and colleagues. My mom’s apartment building is in
Long Beach, New York, right at the ocean front, and if you saw the
televised coverage from there, with the boardwalk coming apart, and
tons of sand left on the streets after the surge waters receded, if you
heard that they’ve got no potable water, 500 port-a-potties to serve
the town’s needs, a 7:00 p.m. curfew, and no electricity (she lives on
the eighth floor) you can imagine that she won’t be able to go home for
some time. Her rental property in Far Rockaway that produces
her retirement income (and housing for two large low-income families)
was also deluged – water up to the ceiling of the basement – but my
sister Jocelyn is a wonder, and she got in a plumber with a pump along
with her regular handyman Miguel and his brother Edgar, in a couple of
pairs of thigh-high waders, and with a fair amount of elbow grease,
they’ve probably saved two furnaces, two hot water heaters, the
electrical system, and the house itself.
For me personally, apart from the trauma of reliving Rita (and as I
know you all remember too well, the three-week evacuation for that
storm that was followed by nearly three months of personal and business
disruption, bursts of virtually aimless activity alternating with the
frustration of hurrying up to wait for just about everything, paralysis
and the doldrums, anger at the incompetence with which the aftermath
was handled, and finally acceptance that life as we had previously
known it was gone forever), the small abrasions of sibling and parental
demands, and today, the worry that just after we got our electricity
back, the Nor-easter bearing down on us might take it away again, our
losses were bearable and mostly financial.
The POSSLQ and I had planned to enjoy our anniversary the weekend after
Sandy in the Catskill mountains at the Eisteddfod – a festival of
traditional folk music begun in Dartmouth MA in the 1970s and now run
by the Folk Music Society of New York – at which we’d met a year ago,
so after a couple of nights in our light-and-heat-less house, shivering
under the covers and reading by flashlight like a pair of superannuated
summer campers, we upped sticks and went to the resort a couple of days
early to savor electricity, heat and hot water. Ha cha cha
cha!
When I wrote about the Eisteddfod last year, because I’d fallen in love
with the music of Welsh traditional singer and storyteller Christine
Cooper who performed there, I noted that while guest performers were on
the program, much of the music was provided by FMSNY members and the
audience. Last year’s “camper concert” featured 15 attendees
performing at an afternoon open mic, and workshops and mainstage
performers included homegrown acts such as Folksong Society President
Evy Mayer’s group Triboro, featuring close harmonies, hot
guitar-picking, and Hawaiian melodies on ukelele (nicely foreshadowing
this year’s Hawaiian music of Chris Davis, Claudia Kanile’a Goddard and
Jason Poole).
This year the POSSLQ and I were both on the program, him playing and
discussing recordings of campaign songs of yore, and displaying our
collection of campaign buttons, bumper stickers and other bumpf, and me
demystifying copyright rules for amateurs and professionals performing
and recording traditional folk music. Other FMSNY members on
the schedule were Heather Wood who sang her own campaign song “H. Wood
for Dictator” (“Elect me dictator in 1984 . . . I'll make sure that
everybody has enough to eat /
I'll set up soup kitchens on every major
street / Those that disagree with me / they'll provide the meat /
If
you will vote for me”) and led a workshop of spoken poems, stories and
other stuff; Alan Friend, showcasing banjo styles; songwriter John Ziv;
Steve Suffet and Ann Price performing lesser-known and intriguing Woody
Guthrie songs and displaying some photographs of and books by and about
the author of “This Land Is Your Land,” among a gazillion fantastic
songs (and the subject of numerous 100th anniversary events around the
world), and The Johnson Girls, a quartet of sea shanty singers with
bold voices and close harmonies who closed the first night’s mainstage
concert and appeared in numerous workshops throughout the weekend.
Among the non-Society guests on the bill this year was fiddler Kenny
Kosek, who’s played just about every style possible and is my favorite
violinist hands down for clean and effortless transitions from swing to
bluegrass to Swedish Hardanger fiddle styles. Kosek played on
Broadway with the late Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia, and on
Broadway in the musical Big River with actor John Goodman, who,
disguised as a mild-mannered comic, created an off-hours http://www.folkmusicny.org/eisteddfod/Reviews.htmlradio show
with Kosek and Richie “Citizen Kafka” Shulberg on New York City’s WBAI
Pacifica alternative FM station for almost a decade beginning in
1979. Kosek enlisted the members of the Red Hen String Band
to join him onstage for his show, and they returned the favor, making
him the fifth Hen, during their set the following day. Red
Hen is just one of the many projects of prolific old-timey fiddler Jane
Rothfield and her husband, Scottish singer and bassist Alan Carr, who I
met years ago in Edinburgh, when they lived in an apartment in the
shadow of Arthur’s Seat, an amazing giant rock planted in the middle of
a park in the middle of the city by some prehistoric giant.
Or aliens from outer space. The way I remember it, Jane was
always having a musical inspiration, a laugh, or a serious discussion
that nevertheless ended in giggles, and so she still goes these
days. Jane and her sister, Californian Susie Rothfield, a/k/a
Suzy Thompson, well known as a bluegrass and Cajun fiddler,
accordionist and guitarist, will be collaborating on a new album of
Jane’s own old-timey songs before the end of the year. I’ll
clue you in on Jane’s previous and upcoming albums soon.
And for all the great stuff we’ve seen and heard in the last few weeks,
there’ll be more commentary and reviews when we’ve recovered from the
storms some more. You remember how that goes. Keep
us in your good thoughts.
--
Leslie Berman, Esq.
PO Box 706
East Setauket NY 11733
(516) 492-5116 CellPhone
leslie(at)leslieberman.com; http://www.leslieberman.com