Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax’s 1961 release of southern field recordings, Sounds of the South, is an eight-disc extravaganza of delta blues, gospel and southern folk music entrenched in a rich cultural history.
And almost 50 years after its initial release on Atlantic Records, the project has found a new life in the hands of Durham band Megafaun and Richmond jazz collective Fight the Big Bull’s Matt White. With the vocal assistance of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and musician Sharon Van Etten, this supergroup of sorts is reinterpreting Lomax’s recordings, filtered through the present day.
The proper genesis of Sounds of the South dates back almost a year, but truthfully, the project has been percolating for even longer. Most obviously, Vernon and the men of Megafaun have a storied history as friends and bandmates in the North Carolina-based (and defunct) DeYarmond Edison. But after meeting on tour, Megafaun and Fight the Big Bull have also long been seeking an excuse to work together.
That excuse came in October 2009, after Megafaun’s Brad Cook saw Duke Performances’ commissioned piece—The Hallelujah Train with Brian Blade and Daniel Lanois—at the Hayti Heritage Center, a deconsecrated African Methodist Episcopal church in downtown Durham. Cook immediately felt the desire to do a similar collaborative project on southern music in the same space.
“If we could talk someone into letting us do this, we had to,” Cook said.
After speaking with Director of Duke Performances Aaron Greenwald and getting the green light for the piece—which will be recorded and released as an album in 2011—the fantasy became real.
But, if not odd, the reality of the project is certainly disparate. How does Fight the Big Bull, a contemporary, brassy jazz big-band, fit in with so-called indie folk trio Megafaun and two disarmingly beautiful vocalists, Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten? Moreover, how do they come together under the concept of recreating southern field recordings?
For White, the answer is simple.
“In the public point of view, we’re on opposite sides of the spectrum, but we’re informed by a lot of the same things,” he said.
Indeed, what inspires all of these musicians is an incredible awareness of and engagement with historical tradition. What separates them in all of their different form and genre-bending impulses is the trajectory the history takes them on.
“They’re totally willing to experiment. Lots of things sound right to their ears,” Greenwald said. “They’ve listened to an enormous amount of stuff…. There seems to be a totally sincere interest in all sorts of different sounds and all sorts of different ways of thinking about music.”
To be sure, the character of the Sounds of the South performances will be avant-something. But what fuels this impulse is the sense of tradition.
Both Cook and White agree that the project is not interested in objective reproduction but rather interpretation.
“The more exciting approach [to folk music] is in the whole tradition of interpretation,” Cook said. “That’s always what folk music has been about. There’s an ownership that comes with music.... We’re doing our best job with how that tradition comes through our filter.”
Beyond the interest and the localities of the bands is something essential about modern music that comes straight from the South.
“When you’re really looking at the bigger picture of the rock-and-roll world we live in—Weezer, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles—it’s all coming from southern folk music, ultimately,” White said.
If the music seems to depart too much from its origin, there’s always the building to remind audience members of the history. The Hayti Heritage Center played a big role in Cook and Megafaun’s pursuit of this project.
“We’ve played rooms similarly acoustically designed, but you could just feel a particular energy,” Cook said of Hayti after their first rehearsal there. “It feels like it’s the kind of room where it won’t let you fail.”
And though the interweaving relationships of history, tradition and contemporary musical practice frame the academic project, what makes it all come together is the social aspect. Megafaun may be the tie that binds these individuals, but they will converge and create something new in the name of Sounds of the South. And from that, something else—new collaborations or something more—might emerge.
But for now, there’s Sounds of the South and, if the Hayti works its magic, no chance of failure.
Megafaun and Fight the Big Bull’s Sounds of the South, with Justin Vernon and Sharon Van Etten, will be taking place at the Hayti Heritage Center Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. Tickets are $26 general admission, and $5 for Duke and North Carolina Central University students. Tickets are available at the Duke University Box Office or online at www.tickets.duke.edu.
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