Customer Reviews

Southern Journey, Vol. 2: Ballads And Breakdowns - Songs From The Southern Mountains

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I am begging any fan of real music with feeling and conviction to please please buy this now. I love the southern journey series and feel that this Cd is one of the best.It is a credit to our nation and I wish more young people would take a listen and play this stuff to keep this wonderful music alive.

I have spent a fair amount of time recently reviewing, individually and on various artist compilations, performers from the 1960's urban folk revival. You know Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave Van Ronk, Eric Von Schmidt and the like. I have also reviewed the earlier performers who influenced them on the more traditional folk side like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. There was, however, another component of that search for roots that entailed heading south to the Mississippi Delta, the Georgia Sea Islands, and the hills and hollows of Southern Appalachia to get `religion' on the rural roots musical scene.

I mentioned in a review of the performers who influenced the 1960's urban folk scene that it did not fall from the sky but had been transmitted by earlier performers. That, my friends, applies as well to the search for roots music. I also mentioned that we all, later when we understood things better, appreciated that John and Allan Lomax (in this series carrying on his father's work in the late 1950's) did yeomen's service to roots music by their travels into the hinterlands in the 1930's and 1940's (and had Pete Seeger tag along for a year and thus serve as a little transmission belt to the latter generation) to find blues, mountain and other types of American traditional music. However, most of us got our roots music infusion second-hand through our addiction to local coffeehouses and the performers who provided us entertainment. They, in turn, learned their material from the masters who populate this CD.

So what sticks out here in this CD that concentrates on the southern mountain regions of Virginia and environs? I would first note the hard Protestant religioud spirit, if not flat-out Calvinism, of much of the music, as this compilation is about rural whites, their trials, tribulations and struggles to eke out an existence on hard-scrabble land. I would also note the fair amount of a cappella work here. And that, when used the instrumentation is simple and clean, especially on the ubiquitous fiddle and the occasional banjo. That said, a nice version of "John Henry" works (a song that I have probably heard in twenty or so versions). As does a great rousing rendition of "Sally Anne" (also known under other names) and yet another variation on "The Banks Of The Ohio" (what doesn't change in the different versions is the murderous assault and the unrequited love of the story line). `The Little Schoolboy" by Hobart Smith, one of the stars of this CD is an interesting take on lost and death, a not infrequent theme is these ballads. If you want to hear fiddling done old style and get a feel for an important, if somewhat neglected part of the American experience then listen here.