Shitting Bull

When painting, artists often mix two colors to create a new color. Red and yellow combine to make orange. Blue with red creates purple. And, of course, yellow and blue make green. Colors found opposite of each other on the color wheel are called complementary colors, because, when put next to each other complements make each other appear brighter. However, when you attempt to mix two complementary colors together you end up with a brown lump of shit.

It is my assertion that "Mother Earth" by Sharon Burch is a brown lump of shit. "Traditional Indian music has virtually no connection in sound, style or aesthetics with the European- and African-based traditions that have dominated music making in this country." (Crawford, page 397) In attempting to combine traditional Indian music and Jewel-inspired-adult-contemporary-singer-songwriter-acoustic-pop music, Burch has attempted to combine two polar opposites. The resulting mutation does a disservice to both musical genres.

The timbral elements of "Mother Earth" include a female voice and a finger-picked acoustic guitar. First off, Native Americans didn’t have acoustic guitars. Native American singing is most usually accompanied by non-tuned rhythmic instruments (such as shakers, rattles, or drums) rather than any melodic instrument such as a guitar. Even the style of playing is less effective than it could be. If the guitar was played chordally, in a percussive manner it may have sounded more authentic Indian rather than the metric finger-picking style that is more reminiscent of either folk-rock or classical guitar playing. Second off, Sharon Burch’s voice is too pretty. Traditional Indian music is functional and therefore there is not the distinction of audience member versus performer. Everyone is a performer. The vocal timbre is much rougher in our samples of the authentic Native American music. Because the singing often accompanies a dance or some other physical activity there is a more muscular quality to the voice, somewhere closer to chanting than singing, as opposed to Burch’s velvety coffeehouse vibe.

The vocal melody is made up of the scale D, E, F#, A, and B – a major pentatonic scale. While this could be considered as a Native American influence it is not strong enough of an influence to define the music as Native American because the pentatonic is used by other cultures and musical genres as diverse as traditional Asian music to American blues music.

Harmonically the song only has three chords: consisting of mostly D major, sometimes E minor, and much less frequently what sounds like an A7 chord which is missing the leading tone of C#. The omission of this leading tone makes the chord more ambiguous as there is no tri-tone generated, and this tri-tone is the most structurally important interval of the dominant chord that makes it want to resolve to its tonic. It seems to me that the leading tone was omitted to conform to the pentatonic scale dictated by the melody, but in doing so the song has suffered a loss of energy due to decreased harmonic movement. On the other hand, the middle chord tone of E minor (G) is a very prevalent harmony and effectively changes the 5-note scale to a 6-note scale.

Native American music lacks time signatures. This does not mean that it is not metric, it is very metric, however because rhythm is such an important element it is sometimes complex in ways foreign to our ears. For example, John Comfort Fillmore’s transcription of the Omaha "Song of Approach" (Crawford, page 401) features something I’ve never seen before – two time signatures written right next to each other at the beginning of the piece. The song alternates between 2/4 and 3/4 time, but not in a predictable manner – with 4 bars of 2/4, followed by 2 bars of 3/4, then 4 bars of 2/4, followed by one bar of 3/4, and so on in a non-repeating manner. "Mother Earth" is in a steady 6/8 time signature. I’m not sure if I could explain why, but this to me sounds like the most UN-Native American time signature possible.

The homophonic texture of "Mother Earth" can be found in both the vocal line during vocal passages and the uppermost voice in the guitar during the instrumental parts. As authentic Native American music is vocally based it would not even contain these extended instrumental sections.

Her record company’s website states that Sharon Burch's music is the contemporary expression of traditional Navajo ways and living. I think it’s crap. "Mother Earth" does not hold any of the rhythmic excitement or complexity of traditional Native American music. Its timbral elements, both voice and guitar, are in no way authentic. Even the five-tone scale system is not strictly adhered to. Just about the only thing that sounds Navajo to me about this song is that the lyrics are in Navajo. And in reference to this: "while words in everyday language are sometimes sung, many songs feature syllables that seem to have no meaning (vocables)." (Crawford, page 398) So in filling her song with Navajo words, Sharon Burch has somehow succeeded in making her song even less Navajo.

Perfection Does Not Equal Emotion

I was rather surprised at the fact that the class seemed to unanimously dislike "Wondrous Love" and the Southern Devotional Style. While the recording may have lacked the soulful chops of a vocalist like Aretha Franklin or James Brown, it was definitely not lacking in raw emotive power. I found the vitality in this music refreshing, and an effective tonic to rid my palate of that awful silliness known as "The Beggar’s Opera."

I guess I have a tendency to embrace performers that flaunt their unique imperfections. I like Bob Dylan’s nasal mumbling. I like Neil Young’s sloppy electric guitar noodling. I like the fact that the band Pavement doesn’t seem to even have the initiative to tune their instruments before they record an album. These qualities give the effect of the performer proclaiming:

HERE I AM; TAKE ME OR LEAVE ME...
I LOVE WHAT I'M DOING...
IF YOU LOVE WHAT I'M DOING, THEN JOIN ME...
IF YOU DON'T LOVE WHAT I'M DOING,
THEN I DON'T NEED YOU AROUND...

The Southern Devotional Style is a group that involves all of the individuals lending their unique voices. It is a choir full of soloists. The Southern Devotional choir does not meld into one giant tone. Its separate pieces maintain their structural integrity. And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

When the grunge movement took hold in the 1990s, it celebrated sloppiness as a culturally relevant aesthetic. The twenty-first century finds a group of alternative bands borrowing the sloppiness of grunge, adding the larger group dynamic, and shifting the attitude from hopelessness and despair to transcendence and celebration. These new bands embrace the mentality of the Southern Devotional Style. They've expanded beyond the traditional rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, and drums and express their uniqueness through the inclusion of non-rock instruments like fiddles, accordions, bugles, and harps. And these additional musicians sing, almost scream, in an attempt to be heard over the myriad of sounds. These bands are sort of ramshackle rock choirs with all of the individual passion and communal fellowship characteristics of the Southern Devotional Style.

Arcade Fire began with six members and on this Conan O'Brien appearance features, uh 8, or 9, or 10 people... they're bouncing up and down so much I can't even count. My favorites are the two keyboardists wearing motorcycle helmets and beating each other with drumsticks.


Broken Social Scene contains as many as eleven people at a time and more electric guitarists than I've ever seen in one band.


The Polyphonic Spree has been described as "less a band than a happening, in the 1960s sense of the word." Its two-dozen members wear white robes and actually look like a church choir... or possibly a fanatic cult.

Folk Song + Parlor Piano + Opera Voice = ??? (or, Oh I Come From Catania With A Piano On My Knee)

* regarding "Oh! Susanna" as performed by Richard Lalli, from the album And The Beat Goes On.

This recording utterly confuses me.

"Oh! Susanna" is a common folk song still popular today, so I came into listening to it with some preconceived notions. I was immediately struck at the odd choice of instrumentation used for this recording. Most people probably think of "Oh, Susanna" these days as a campfire song, accompanied instrumentally by an acoustic guitar and sung by a solo singer or small, informal group.

The instrumental accompaniment on this particular recording is not a guitar, but a piano – and not even a Ragtimey western saloon sort of piano, but a dainty, intricate Mozarty sonata type of piano. The song was most likely originally performed with the traditional minstrel instrumentation of fiddle, banjo, tambourine, and bones.

And then there’s that voice. Ugh. "OH! SUSANNA" IS NOT AN OPERA – SO DON’T SING IT LIKE AN OPERA! I cannot stand singers that overdo the vibrato. Vocal vibrato originated in the opera genre so that a singer could be heard over an entire orchestra. Vibrato is not necessary to be heard over the sound of one lone piano. The song was most likely originally performed in a quite plain and informal vocal manner.

And then we get to the chorus of the song. Arg. Four-part harmonies? Are you kidding me? This is "Oh! Susanna" for Godsakes. Take your four-part harmonies and go sing Handel’s "Messiah" or something. Richard Lalli takes a tune that would fit in a parlor or on a minstrel stage and tries to make it go to a Sunday church service.

May the Lord have mercy on his genre jumping soul.

James Alan Bland – What The Hell Was He Thinking?

James Alan Bland

• born in New York in 1854
• became a page in the U.S. House of Representatives in his teenage years
• graduated from college at age 19 with a Liberal Arts degree
• composed many popular minstrel show tunes, such as "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", "Oh Dem Golden Slippers," and "De Golden Wedding"

oh and did I mention… he was an African-American?

This nation’s most popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth century, and our first truly unique contribution to the world’s musical culture, was minstrel music. Minstrelsy originated when some white racists decided to paint their faces black with burnt cork, greasepaint, or shoe polish and mimic the music and speech of African-Americans.

I’d like to think our society has evolved greatly from this time period – and here’s some proof that we have: October 8, 1993, Ted Danson (best known for his role on the sitcom Cheers) delivered a monologue in blackface at a Friar’s Club roast.

Even though he was romantically involved with Whoopi Goldberg at the time (and she actually wrote his offending monologue) the incident was universally panned by the public as being completely racially insensitive.

But let’s get back on track to James Bland and specifically his song "De Golden Wedding." What the hell is a "golden wedding" anyways? After unsuccessfully Googling the term I came up with a theory by analyzing the lyrics. The last line of the chorus goes "all the high-toned darkies will be at de golden wedding." Since this is a minstrel tune written by an African-American in Abolitionist times, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to guess that "golden" in this context refers to skin tone. Golden seems lie somewhere between the continuum of black and white. The first verse also contains the phrase "yellow gals" which I’m assuming means the same thing. I don’t know if the song just relays the popular consensus at the time or James Bland’s personal opinion, but the lyrics seem to revolve around the idea that lighter skinned African-Americans are more sophisticated, refined, and therefore superior to darker skinned African-Americans. This idea of someone’s "degree of darkness" is still an issue today, although these days sometimes the argument can be that someone is not "black enough." There has been talk in the African-American community expressing concern that Barack Obama (born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white mother) is not "black enough" to effectively represent the African-American community. I think Obama’s answer to this issue is profound. When interviewed by Steve Krofy on 60 Minutes Obama responded by saying that "when he walked down the streets of Chicago, visited a barber shop or tried to hail a cab, everyone knew he was black."

The question I struggled with the most is: what would drive James Bland, an African-American, to get involved with the racially offensive genre of minstrel music in the first place?

I came up with three possible answers.

1. MONEY
Minstrel music was big business. Bland joined his first minstrel group in 1875. Throughout the next several years he toured the United States. By 1881 he was a member of the Callender-Haverly Minstrels who traveled to England and performed for Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. At this point in time (in his mid-twenties) he was making around $10,000 a year – an incredible amount of money in the late 1800s. Unfortunately money has been known to drive many people to do things they would otherwise find morally reprehensible. This may be the case of James Bland. Perhaps due to some cosmic karma he died of tuberculosis in 1911, in obscurity and poverty.

2. MUSIC
Bland was a talented songwriter, able to craft an engaging and memorable tune. Inspired by his inner muse he may have been drawn to pursue music as a career. However the only music that was popular at this time (except of course for classical music written by dead, white Europeans) was minstrel music. While Bland had talent, he was still confined to work within the genre that was popular at this point in American history.

3. EQUALITY
It seems incomprehensible to us today that an African-American would write a song like "De Golden Wedding" which repeatedly uses the racially offensive term "darkies." But can we find a parallel in modern culture?

Remember when "queer" was a derogatory term? By adopting the word "queer" for themselves, the gay community has succeeded in taking the venom out of the term.
And here it is again:

But can we find a closer parallel in modern society? Is there a word that was created by bigots and used as a derogatory term for African-Americans that has been adopted by some in the African-American community in an attempt to rob the word of it’s hateful power.

(sorry I had to post this video featuring a photo of Kanye West rather than the actual video which was shown on television, but the actual video shown on television edits out "the N word" which interferes with my ability to prove a point, and also highlights the fact that this word has not yet entirely outgrown it’s spiteful origins)

"The N Word" is frequently used today, most frequently by African-American comedians and musicians. While there is much controversy about this practice I think that it is done with the admirable intention to rob the word of its power. It is my sincere hope that James Bland was subversively attempting to improve the social status of African-Americans in the Abolitionist era by embracing racist terms and therefore robbing them of their power. It is somewhat perplexing that he was able to gain success in a career path that was initially intended exclusively for whites. As a minstrel, Bland had to navigate the confusing task of being an African-American who mimicked a white person pretending to be an African-American. To this end he may have succeeded in removing some of the bigoted origins of minstrelsy by removing the focus from black and white and placing the focus instead on the music.