Found Sounds and Such...

I ranged a little far in this review of The Travelin’ McCourys’ show at Pittsfield’s Colonial Theatre last Saturday, reflecting on the differing emotional palettes that various streams of American popular music are best suited to employ, and how the McCourys’ performance relates to the expectations of their genre. (I should note, also, the version on my website is a little different from the version that ran in print, as an earlier version was mistakenly printed. I do stand by the printed version as my work; the revised version just has some improved language.)

“Instrumental jazz may be the most personal of American musical forms, with its players sublimating emotional drive into the cry of a horn or the maniacally precise rap of a high-hat. Ken Burns can argue that jazz is a metaphor for democracy, but I hear (in the frenzied rush of bebop, particularly) a sort of existential desperation, each player jousting to get his own statement in while he still can.

Is it a coincidence that blues and bluegrass, two forms of folk music born from rural poverty and political impotence, are each preoccupied with, well, feeling bad?

The sharply dressed, amiable group put on a display of top-notch traditional bluegrass, hewing expertly to the genre’s conventions but never seeking to subvert them.”