Culture Watch
In this issue:
MUSIC:A century of music by women, give or take a few years, gets the proper Respect on a handsome boxed CD set.
ART:
Millennial expectations and visions are nothing new in America. They
have been an inspiration for folk artists since the 19th century, as can
be seen in a small, pleasurable exhibit in New York City.
AND CONSIDER THIS :
In his memoirs, John Glenn comes across, once again, as everybody's
small-town hero; Anne Sofie Von Otter makes the Christmas season glisten
with a new album.
She Worked Hard for the Money
Respect: A Century of Women in Music
(Wea/Atlantic/Rhino)
Thrushes and songbirds. That's
show-biz slang for female singers. A tad cute, isn't it? But extend
the metaphor a bit and it's possible to say that women singers do
have the characteristics of some avian creatures: the ferocity
of hawks, the cleverness of blue jays, the gentleness of doves
and the soaring independence of eagles. All of these qualities
are in abundance on a sumptuous compendium of more than 110 numbers
The title comes from Aretha Franklin's 1967 soul-shouted anthem,
Respect, and Rhino Records deserves its own full
yell-out-loud respect for assembling a cross-section of works by
some of the women who have influenced the ever-shifting musical
tastes of America during this century.
Because of licensing restrictions or personal choice,
a few superstars are missing: Madonna, Celine Dion, Whitney
Houston and, more important, Joni Mitchell. Without them, can this
be a true representation of women's popular music in the 20th century?
Yes, resoundingly. An 80-page booklet outlining major trends and
artists accompanies the five CDs in the burgundy-velvet boxed set,
starting with a 1909 recording of the old croon-June-spoon standard
By the Light of the Silvery Moon and ending with Liz
Phair's Polyester Bride. In between, come blues and
folk, pop and protest, Broadway and country-western, doo-wop and
hip-hop, swing and rock.
If there's a preponderance
of the latter, it's important to remember that it was an
era when women in large numbers were singing and playing songs they
had written coming into their own as music's creators as well as
interpreters, and demanding, yes, respect from the recording industry.
As Donna Summer sang, on a different subject, they worked hard for
the money so you'd better treat them right. It was also a time when
the range of voices was as wide as the free-wheeling repertory:
Janis Joplin's rasp on Move Over (1971), Joan Baez'
clear-as-spring-water soprano on Diamonds and Rust (1975),
and Gladys Knight with the Pips breaking the speed limit and driving
at top speed on I've Got to Use My Imagination (1973).
From the first years of the microphone,
the industry has accommodated an abundance of styles, giving listeners
from all backgrounds and regions the music they wanted to hear.
In the Twenties, Ma Rainey told the truth about the blues, the Carter
Family performed music of their Appalachian mountains and Helen
Kane cooed about wanting to be loved by you, boop-boop-a-doop.
The song is as mindlessly simplistic about love as Debbie Reynolds'
Tammy, a hit almost 30 years later. Modern mores can
be traced through the song lyrics. We'll be cuddling soon promised
By the Light of the Silvery Moon, while in 1974 Dollie Parton
vowed I Will Always Love You. (Dollie wrote the song; Whitney
Houston later made it the megahit). Compare those simpler urges
to Chrissie Hynde scalding words in 1980 urging "do it, do it on
the pavement.'' Country music segued from Patsy Montana's 1935 exuberance
about being a cowboy's sweetheart ("That's the life I love best'')
to Kitty Wells' 1952 reminder that it wasn't God who made
honky tonk angels, and Loretta Lynn's praise in The Pill
about the pleasures of Mama having sex but no more babies.
Popular music is a good gauge of the times.
Early women's rights echo in the prim admonishment of a 1916 oddity,
She's Good Enough to Be Your Baby's Mother and She's Good
Enough to Vote with You. Years later, Deborah Harry metamorphosed
into punk goddess Blondie and flaunted her sexual freedom;
the Slits pushed it even farther but declared they were Typical
Girls. The evils of racial hatred in the segregated South make
Strange Fruit in Billie Holiday's chilling, hypnotic vision
of a lynching. The album's makers have inserted into each
disc spoken sound bites from famous women to put the music in the
context of its time. It's unnecessary to have Billie Jean
King tell us how she wanted to change tennis or to hear a personal
word from Gloria Steinem, Amelia Earhart or Anita Hill. The music
is enough. It tells us all we need to know.
The End Is Nigh, or Is It?
Millennial Dreams: Vision and Prophecy in American Folk Art
Museum of American Folk Art, New York City
Talk about hype! For the past weeks and months,
the coming calendar change has been the topic of talk, and the conversation
has reached full roar. Fear tempers celebration, and regrets overshadow
optimism for the future. It seems to many that this is a most interesting
time to be living, and it is, but it is not the first time. The
millennium has been much on the mind of folk artists and craft people
since the 19th century, and it is altogether fitting that the Manhattan
Museum of American Folk Art has put together a small, thoroughly
engaging exhibition on the subject.
The biblical Book of Revelation is a wellspring
for people pre-occupied by millennial thoughts. Angels abound throughout
the prophecy, delivering messages, appearing in unexpected guises and triumping
over evil. In this show, an unknown artist around the turn of the
century painted on oilcloth a victorious St. Michael, feathered wings expanded,
holding a chain that binds his captive, the Devil. There is a vitality
and energy in both combatants, as if the battle had just been concluded.
That the end was coming soon was a belief
strongly held in the 19th century, and the Millerites were ready for it.
They assembled in 1843 on the appointed day but when it came and
went, the group foundered. They were often joked about, but since the Heaven's
Gate suicides, they don't seem quite so absurd. A large map on the wall
of one gallery is a history of the world according to the Millerites, and
it is sobering. Ancient Greeks, Medes and people of other ancient days
and contemporary times are on display -- outlined with bold black lines--and
The Apocalypse comes in a mighty conflagration. Not everything in the show
is so violent. A 79-year-old woman living in upstate New York in
1848 stitched her faith into a magnificent quilt. Lines as jagged as lightning
bolts criss-cross a bright red field dotted with home inscriptions. "Love
One Another,'' enjoins one, and "Heaven Is Our Home'' is the pious advice
on another. Our "earthly Eden'' can be achieved, reads a third, by "little
acts of kindness, little acts of love.''
Utopian ideas flourished in America,
and across the continent communities popped up where people
could live out their social and religious beliefs. An 1880
workmanlike map of a Shaker community illustrates the layout, and
it gives a charming view of an innocent and now nearly vanished
era. Frame buildings--separate dwellings and workshops for men and
women, a wood house, infirmary, barn and sheds--are enclosed by
tidy fences. There are no human figures to be seen--they must all
be inside working industriously--and the community seems to float
serenely against pale background of green and blue. Shaker "gift
drawings,'' pieces of religious text copied in meticulous handwriting
and illustrated with spiritual symbols are ephemera with the same
purity and elegance of design as the furniture they made. The Trappist
monk Thomas Merton wrote that "the peculiar grace of a Shaker chair
is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing
that an angel might come and sit on it.'' Here, six Shaker chairs
are suspended from the ceiling in ascending order as if flying straight
to heaven.
Gerard Wertkin, director of the museum
and this show's curator, writes that "the founders of the United
States believed that America had been assigned a special role in
the divine plan. Even secularists envisioned the fulfillment of
millennial dreams in a place blessed by God and nature.''
Artists in the 19th century and in our own time as well took to
heart a prophecy of Isaiah that the natural enemies among animals
should be reconciled to one another and "a little child shall lead
them.'' One of the best-known interpreters of the peaceable
kingdom is Pennsylvanian Edward Hicks, and the exhibit has one of
his several versions, dated 1846-48. A sturdy lion with wide-open
eyes stands next to a placid ox, while a spotted leopard reclines,
staring out at us in bemusement. Both are as amiable as plush toys.
Sheep are dotted around, and a wolf crosses its paws and kindly
regards a little lamb. A child in Grecian costume hails us as he
embraces an animal that looks like a gray tiger. In the background,
settlers and native Americans greet one another amicably on a shore.
The gladsome and harmonious accord got a more somber treatment
by Horace Pippin in 1945. Behind the shepherd with his menagerie
is a darkened line of trees. Within the brooding shadows are ghost-like
figures that Pippin once described as memories from his days as
a soldier serving in an all-black regiment in World War I and from
living in the segregated South.
Folk artist have always worked with whatever
came to hand. Sister Gertrude Morgan, an African-American who was
born in 1900 in New Orleans and died in 1980, painted her panorama
of Revelations on a windowshade. Rows of white-clad angels, most
of them with red hair, look out at us, and her elaborate iconography
with patches of tiny handwritten text and child-like renderings
of St. John's fearsome beasts tell a story that is less about punishments,
fire and brimstone than it is about heaven's bright joy. Howard
Finster, a Baptist preacher from Georgia, puts found objects into
fantastical assemblages as the spirit moves him. In Visions of
Holy Crystal Cities Beyond (1985), he filled a Plexiglas box
with miniature ornaments, plastic jewels and trinkets that might
be found in a Crackerjack box; it's an eccentric alternative to
reality here on earth. Like many Folk Artists, Sister Gertrude and
Finster, both have seen more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of by the rest of us.
Books
John Glenn: A Memoir by John Glenn with Nick Taylor
(Bantam; 422 pages)
It's a Wonderful Life could be the subtitle of John Glenn's memoirs. George Bailey in the Capra classic wanted to leave home and travel the world. Glenn did both, exceeding Bailey's yearnings by flying combat in two wars and seeing the world not once but twice from the distance of space. But like the fictional Bailey, he never really left his hometown. With his childhood sweetheart Annie as his wife at his side, he has remained constant to the values and beliefs instilled in him by his family and by his Ohio small town. The modesty and plainspokenness in his memoir are admirable. So is the man.
Music
Home for Christmas/ Anne Sofie von Otter
(Uni/Deutsche Grammophon)
Maybe it's something about living in a country where Christmas comes with snow and ice, but Sweden's Anne Sofie von Otter knows how to take the freeze off and put a warm glow into the season. She's a rarity in this field: an opera singer who doesn't sound like it. The mezzo's selection of familiar and unfamiliar songs balances the popular and religious and treats both with equal artistry. Apologies to Bing Crosby, but it's been a long time since White Christmas sounded so fresh and new.
sightings
