Does folk music still matter?
This Friday in Reynolds Industries Theater, Jim White and the South Memphis String Band will answer that question with an emphatic “yes.” The two groups share a bill that highlights roots music’s enduring place in American culture.
Citing channels as diverse as African-American blues and the storytelling traditions of 16th-century Scotch-Irish immigrants, White posits that the foundations of American folk remain highly influential.
“Folk music informs everything,” he said.
Friday’s show is part of Duke Performances’ “Liars, Thieves and Big Shot Ramblers” series, which showcases the ways in which traditional American musical strains are evolving and adapting to the contemporary world. Past artists included folk heavyweight Loudon Wainwright III and emerging indie-folk iconoclast Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Aaron Greenwald, director of Duke Performances, said a key element of the series is the notion that artists can draw from a multitude of influences to create unique musical identities.
“With ‘Liars,’ I was interested in how American artists are able to take on different guises,” he said. “You can become something that’s quite different from who you were born as. You can invent a persona.”
The two groups both conform well to this concept, developing individual styles from a host of sources.
Jim White was born to a Pentecostal family in Pensacola, Fla., a small town that at the time had only one AM radio station. He went on to attend New York University, and worked as a cab driver in New York City for many years before performing for the first time at age 41. His style, he said, incorporates everything from the songs he listened to as a child to the tapes he would exchange with the Haitian and African immigrants he worked with in New York.
“Every kind of music is versed in me,” he said. “I’m a musical collagist with a folk-music base.”
The South Memphis String Band embodies a similarly diverse spirit. Although the group plays an eclectic blend of acoustic blues, country, ragtime and gospel, their origins are in rock and roll. The band consists of notable blues guitar player Alvin “Youngblood” Hart, Jimbo Mathus of Squirrel Nut Zippers and Luther Dickinson of the Black Crowes and the North Mississippi Allstars. All three have worked and played together for years in their respective rock outfits, but it wasn’t until recently that they discovered their shared love of old-time string and jugband music.
“This type of music goes back to early childhood,” Dickinson said. “It took us all this time to find the right like-minded people to do it with.”
With a lively combination of storytelling and performance, tradition and innovation, Friday’s show should affirm folk music’s role as an enduring form.
“You can trace lots of music back to the roots of blues and country,” Dickinson said. “The thing is it’s still contemporary music—it never died off.”
Jim White and the South Memphis String Band will perform at 8 p.m. Friday in Reynolds Theater. Tickets are $5 for students. For more information, visit www.dukeperformances.com.
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