>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Betsy Peterson: All right.
We have a jam-packed evening here.
So, I'm just going to dive right in and get started.
So, I am Betsy Peterson.
I'm the director of the American Folklife Center here
at the Library of Congress and I'd like to welcome you
to a very special edition of the Benjamin Botkin lecture series.
This evening, in various ways,
we're going to explore the legacy of a very special person
in the history of the library, in the history
of the American Folklife Center, Alan Jabbour.
Alan passed away on January 13th, 2017, and I'm happy to see
so many familiar faces and also many family members of Alan
and Karen Jabbour are here and I especially want to welcome them
and I will actually probably let you stand
and if I do not get all of your names, please forgive me,
but I want Karen Singer Jabbour and daughter Rebecca and Aaron,
daughters, daughter and son of Alan and Karen, please stand.
And their spouse and children.
I know there are many siblings of Karen
and I think there are family members of Alan here.
So, please stand up.
We would love to say thank you and welcome.
[ Background noise ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Before introducing the speakers,
I want to say as we know, Alan was the founding director
of the American Folklife Center and in that role,
he was a direct successor to Benjamin Botkin,
head of the library's folklore section in the 1940's.
So, it's appropriate that we're presenting this evening event
of talks and music about Alan as part of this series.
This series also allows us to present the, and highlight,
the work of the best in leading scholars,
experts in the disciplines of folklore at the musicology,
oral history, and cultural heritage.
It also allows us to enhance the collections
of the American Folklife Center, and for the center
and the library, the Botkin lectures form an important facet
of our acquisitions activities.
Each lecture is videotaped as you can gather,
with these bright lights, and it becomes part
of the permanent collections of the center.
So, the lectures are going to be posted later as a webcast
on the libraries website where they will be available
to people throughout the world and for generations to come.
So, if you have noisy cellphones on right now or anything
that might ring later, please turn it off at this time.
So, Alan, being the director of the American Folklife Center,
from 1976, I think September of 1976 through June of 1999,
that was only one of many roles
that Alan assumed throughout his lifetime in his efforts
to preserve and carry forward folk cultural traditions.
Alan was a musician, an artist, a native Floridian,
a southern gentleman, a writer, an administrator with a vision,
folklorist, researcher,
president of the American Folklore Society,
a member of numerous boards and so much more.
Our speakers this evening will be addressing many
of these different facets and aspects of Alan's contributions,
but before I introduce them I did want
to mention one dimension of Alan's work
that I think has received very little attention over the years
and that is Alan's work to raise the profile of philanthropy
and giving for the folk and traditional arts.
Alan came to D.C and the federal government in the 1970's
and we know that was a very heaty
and sometimes turbulent time for cultural heritage
and preservation legislation and government support and Alan
and several other folklore luminaries at that time,
Archie Green, Bess Lomax Hawes, and Ralph Rinzler,
among them were right there at the very beginning
and they helped build this foundation
for several public folklore institutions
and perhaps Alan's work at the national endowment for the arts
as an initial head of the folk arts program provided him a
window for him to understand the importance of support.
And not only to provide needed financial resources,
but also to lend legitimacy and validation to the diversity
of folk and traditional culture in the United States and beyond.
But, with so much emphasis on public support, Alan and others,
Joe Wilson, Archie Green,
also recognized the critical importance of galvanizing
and strengthening private and individual support
for the grass roots vernacular culture
that we all hold so dear.
Alan and others helped to find the fund for folk culture
in 1991 and held the planning meetings right here
in the library.
Alan was the first chair of the board of trustees and in
that capacity, helped guide the direction of that fund
to help serve as an advocate and liaison for the field of folk
and traditional arts with private philanthropy.
In that role, over about a 15-year span, they steered over,
well over $10 million dollars of new support
to the folk arts field which is pretty amazing and in his work
at the folklife center,
Alan also established several endowments and gift funds
to support the work of the center and others
and individuals to do their work.
The Ray Virginia Alan fund, the Blant Nolan fund, the Gerald
and Karen Parson's fund and of course,
the Henry Reed fund for folk artists.
On the occasion of Alan's retirement,
Alan and Karen Jabbour, with several other individuals,
established the fund, the Henry Reed fund in 2000.
It honors Alan's musical mentor, West Virginia fiddler Henry Reed
and provides support for folk artists
or to projects benefiting folk artists whether it be a program,
a recording project, a, providing opportunities
for artists to do research and to work with other artists.
Since 2004, the Henry Reed fund has provided awards
to 10 individuals and I know we have several individuals here
tonight, perhaps some Henry Reed recipients,
but I know we also have many individuals who have given
to the Henry Reed fund and I truly want
to thank you for doing that.
I also want to acknowledge Henry Reed's son,
Dean Reed who is here with us tonight
and Henry Reed's grandson, Terry,
if you would stand up we would love to.
[ Background noise ]
>> Betsy Peterson: And I also want to encourage if any
of you are feeling that you want to extend Alan's legacy
and honor Alan's legacy by contributing
to the Henry Reed fund, there is a flier outside the door
that will give you the information
about how to do that.
Please feel free to talk to me or any staff member
and actually, that reminds me while I am up here
to thank all the American Folklife Center staff
for all the incredible work they've done
to put this together.
They all, very much, all of us, very much,
want to honor Alan's legacy.
So, thank you American Folklife Center staff,
but now on with the program.
To tell you more about Alan and the work
that these individuals have done with Alan over the years,
we do have several friends, research partners,
family who are going to share their memories
and observations with us tonight.
We are also going to end with a great old-time music jam
which I think is very fitting.
Many of us have spent time with Alan very late into the night
and early morning listening or playing music with him.
So, I think it's only fitting
that we end this evening with that.
We will be making announcements about that and what to do.
I know Athea already mentioned property passes.
It's very important as I'm sure some of you know.
So, our first speaker is going to be CARL FLEISHHAUER
and Carl was one of the first employees
of the American Folklife Center and one
of Alan's closest collaborators for decades.
He was a field worker on many
of American Folklife Center's documentation projects
in the 1970's and 80's.
In the old-time music world, he was crucial
to documenting the Hammond's family, which was a project
that he worked on with Alan.
He's also knows as a top bluegrass photographer
and has published a book.
Prior to his recent retirement, he worked on various aspects
of digital preservation in the Library of Congress
and that's actually probably putting that very mildly.
He was instrumental to bringing digital preservation
to the library.
He has now returned to the American Folklife Center
as a volunteer, yay, and working on the digital preservation
of American Folklife Center field work projects,
which is a series of projects that Alan
and Carl spearheaded and masterminded.
So, without further ado, please lets welcome CARL FLEISHHAUER.
[ Background noise ]
>> CARL FLEISHHAUER: Thank you Betsy
and I'm pleased to be here.
What I'm going to talk about, as Betsy suggested,
is Alan as the leader of the center from the start.
A little about his thinking, activities at the center
and policy development in federal, cultural sector.
The study and performance of music that Alan did
so well will be the subject of the next presentations.
Let me start with Alan and strategic planning.
This is a bureaucratic exorcise that tends
to repeat at regular intervals.
I should know after 40 years here at the library proceeded
by working a university and on the boards of some non-profits.
All too often, staff or board members are put
through agonizing committee discussions
that eagled impenetrable documents written
in bureaucratese.
Not so with Alan.
Even as the center first took shape, planning moved forward
in semiformal 2-way conversations
with the center staff and the folklife center board.
Alan listened as much
as he imparted insights and information.
He was an inveterate telephone caller,
especially before email was prevalent.
As ideas took shape, Alan had 2 advantages over most
of his conversation partners, solid experience
at the library gained when he was head of the archive
of folksong from 1969 to 1974 and a sense
of the federal context for cultural activities resulting
from his work at the library and as the head
of the new folk arts program at the national endowment
for the arts from 74 to 76.
That work was under the estimable chairman Nancy Hanks
and I remember a conversation from that period.
Here's how it works Carl, Alan said,
if the letter awards a grant, Nancy signs it.
If it says no, we're sorry, then I sign it.
Translating plans into action sometimes required staff members
to read before the lines.
For important matters, of course, Alan conferred
with the center's board and with the library chain of command,
often but not always, aligned with one another, but for staff
like me, some actions just seemed to happen.
You could be surprised.
Of course, usually, they had been heralded
by earlier discussion and marched in step
with the center's mission.
Archie Green's excellent wording embedded
in the center's enabling legislation,
but here's an example.
Alan's academic background was rooted in music
and ballad scholarship and he wanted
to be sure the center's program was as broad
as the term folk life.
Actions to advance this goal popped into view
in Alan's earlier hiring.
Adding Rusty Marshall to the staff.
Rusty had been a student of Henry Glassy and was immersed
in folk architecture and material culture
and Elena [inaudible], a Lithuanian American
with great insights into the evolving expressive culture
of those who came from Europe.
There was also carry over from a project that Alan helped launch
when he was at the archive.
[inaudible] Spots was folk music of America record albums.
Work that flowed into one
of the new center's first public events, symposium and book,
ethnic recording in America.
Speaking of ethnicity, Alan rarely talked
about his own family history, but in 2007, a writer picked
up his remarks about his field work
with the Virginia fiddler Henry Reed.
Reed's father had immigrated
from Ireland while Alan's had come from Syria.
Quote, your family story telling creates a felt connection
between your past and your present life
in America, Alan said.
It's curious that my father was the immigrant and I ended
up being the most attentive person
to certain cultural traditions here.
Regarding communication, Alan's descriptions
of the center's accomplishments showed a real knack
for putting a range of events and activities
into a coherent statement.
The quarterly newsletter was an excellent vehicle for this
and other topics and for about 10 years, Alan made good use
of the director's column.
He once said, the newsletter gives you news and views
and people tell me the views are the most interesting.
On 3 occasions, Alan drafted reviews
of the center's accomplishments.
Short ones at the 5 and 10-year marks in 1981 and 1986
and 17,000 word offering for the 20th in 1996.
Free of bureaucratic jargon, these reports paint a picture
of a successive, successful program, upbeat and affirming
to be sure and here we tip the hat to Jim Hardon
who edited the newsletter through this period.
The center's agenda reflected a range
of advice from multiple voices.
Nevertheless, Alan was the nerve center for the ideas
that were translated into action.
Some were topical like ethnic groups
and material culture while others concerned activities.
For example, exhibitions, publications and concerts.
The first concert was staged within weeks
of the center's establishment.
When Alan wrote about it 20 years later,
he signaled the value of the series not only in terms
of artistic expression and the celebration of community arts,
but also in terms of support for institutional
and congressional relations.
The audience, Alan said, was quote, dominated by library
and capitol hill staffers, making it for years,
the center's public face on the hill.
Alan guided the center to other forms of public communication
such as a CD publishing venture with Rounder Records
and during Alan's first decade as director, the center began
to provide access via the internet.
Finding aids before the immergence of the world wide web
and after 1994,
online multimedia collections accessed via the web.
Exhibitions illuminated subjects ranging from ethnic recording
to Nevada Buckaroos here with the Smithsonian
to folk life in Rhode Island.
A photo display in the U.S senate office building.
Exhibits provided visibility not only for the senate,
but also with the white house.
First lady Rosalynn Carter
and daughter Amy opened an installation on Georgia folk art
and folk life in 1978,
while president Mrs. Regan opened the American Cowboy
Exhibition in 1983.
During the 1980's, the center director Alan attended meetings
of the world intellectual property organization
to discuss intellectual property and folk expression.
His article for UNESCO's copyright bulletin noted
that copyright law focused on the rights of an individual
or incorporated entity in contrast to the way that,
in many tradition communities, creative expression is seen
as belonging to groups.
[ Background noise ]
>> CARL FLEISHHAUER: Protecting folklore, Alan wrote,
means acknowledging an intermediate sphere
of intellectual property rights between individual rights
on the one hand and the national,
international public domain on the other in terms
of legal history and legal frameworks,
this is a radical idea.
Meanwhile, as we look back, our attention is often drawn
to the center's field work projects.
Alan staged more than a dozen from 1977 to 1994,
rural and urban like this New Jersey pair in the pinelands
and in industrial Patterson.
These were team projects
with mostly youthful workers although the 1979 team
in Rhode Island included professor Kenny Goldstein,
wearing the white shirt in this team meeting in a project
that was led by our recently departed college Peter Bardis.
May he rest in peace.
These were generally survey projects lasting a month or 2.
Some cooperatively with the national park service,
some with state arts councils.
Alan often visited and participated.
Field projects were integrated into the center's program
in addition to exhibits,
products included David Taylor's book on Italian Americans
in the west from a multistate survey,
Charles Woolf's double album of Blueridge religious music,
and Mary Huffard's evocative web collections
from West Virginia's coal fields and more.
Meanwhile, for Native American music,
the federal cylinder preservation project came first,
field work came second.
Cylinder recordings of the Omaha Tribe were created
by Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche between 1895 and 1905.
In 1983, Alan visited the Omaha Indian reservation
to share copies with the tribal council and to seek agreement
on selection and publication.
When he played some examples, 2 elderly men were present.
When John Turner began singing, Alan wrote,
I knew we were home free.
Soon, the center published album,
documented 2 Omaha powwows, created a website and co-hosted
by the tribe's cultural representative,
staged a performance at the library.
The field work projects contributed
to policy development, most strikingly in relation
to historic preservation
where the federal legal apparatus expanded
from the 1960's to the 1990's with a fresh interest
in what was called intangible elements of cultural heritage.
In 1977 and 78, national park service director William Wayland
was on the center's board and Alan worked
with park service representatives to frame
up a field project on the Blueridge parkway
to provide material for park interpretive programs.
In later cooperative projects
like the 1983 pinelands folklife project in New Jersey,
the center provided not only support for interpretation,
but also for park service planning efforts including land
use concepts that were sensitive to neighboring communities.
By the 1980's, Alan wrote,
national park service planners quote,
represent a new generation of professionals
who have been gradually abandoning the acquire control
and manage model for national parks and exploring models
for cooperation with local communities operating
on the premise that local people should be enlisted, not evicted.
In 1985, the center joined Utah's Historic Preservation
Agency to carry out a field project in Grouse Creek.
In the 1987 a park service project in Iowa Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, the impact
of the early field projects influenced the center's
recommendations concerning historic preservation policy
in Ormand Loomis's 1983 report, cultural conservation,
the protection of cultural heritage in the United States.
The field projects added to the library's holdings
of archival collections.
Their organization, description,
and preservation received a boost in 1978
when the folk archive was brought into the center.
Founded by Robert Gordan in 1928,
the archive had long been part of the library's music division.
Alan used his skills as a diplomat and negotiator
to find an acceptable arrangement
for that administrative move.
When Alan talked about the field work projects,
he emphasized their debt to New Deal era work,
the federal writer's project,
photography from the foreign security administration
and of course, the work of John and Alan Lomax
and their cohorts, Herbert Halpert,
Sidney Robertson Cowell, Ben Botkin, and Charles Seeger,
a personal favorite of Alan's.
These predecessors, Alan wrote,
modeled quote, a documentary cycle.
Field work, collection building and subsequent public outreach
and as we have seen, Alan pushed the center quoting him again
to recycle documents back into cultural use.
[ Background noise ]
>> CARL FLEISHHAUER: Alan continued to enact this cycle
in his retirement years
in the great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Alan, Ted Coil, and Karen Singer Jabbour documented cemetery
traditions, especially the celebration of Decoration Day.
The work was initially for an environmental impact statement.
A push for the recognition
of non-Native American tradition cultural properties
in the environmental impact process.
Alan's work with Karen Singer Jabbour, his wife of 55 years,
represented documentary recycling of another sort.
Repeating their teamwork from the 1960's when Karen
and Alan visited the Virginia fiddler Henry Reed
and other folk musicians.
Their joint effort in the 2000's yielded their engaging
and thoughtful book, Decoration Day in the Mountains.
I'll close with a paraphrase of Alan's own tribute
to Ben Botkin, the man from whom this lecture series is named.
Adjusting the words, a bit
to celebrate Alan's final phase of life.
His official Washington career was over.
Neither his personal accounts, nor those of others,
suggest any deep unhappiness with the tensions
of administrative life in the federal maw.
He continued to be a public folklorist,
now in a private capacity.
It had been a vigorous period in the American cultural enterprise
and both Alan Jabbour as an individual
and the American Folklife Center as a cultural institution,
were at the very epicenter of the enterprise.
Thank you.
[ Background noise ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Thanks so much Carl.
That was wonderful and it's wonderful
to see all these incredible photographs and the photographs
that we saw earlier during the reception, many of those are
from the field survey projects that Alan and Carl did.
Now, we are on to our next speaker,
a gentleman named DAVID DURCHGOTT
and who I have not personally met,
but I know he is a contributor to the Henry Reed fund
and also runs an organization that Alan served on,
on the board, International Arts and Artists.
Sort of going back to some
of the comments that I made earlier.
So, David, welcome.
[ Background noise ]
>> DAVID DURCHGOTT: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
In 1974, I was working for the South Carolina Arts Commission
and my responsibilities there included coordinating the first
national endowment for the arts funded multistate project.
We were documenting the local folk ways
of the South Carolina low country using methodology
which would be simultaneously used
in Mississippi and Kentucky.
Alan is the director of the nation endowment
for the arts new folk art program flew
to South Carolina to meet me.
I picked him up at the Columbia airport and we drove 2 hours
to Charleston to view the programs.
That drive and conversation was fascinating.
It was my first exposure to Alan
and like practically every other conversation we had throughout
the subsequent 42-year friendship, it was enlightening
in an era prior to the internet and Google,
Alan was not only familiar with music and the material culture
of Charleston, my hometown, but then he also knew
about my family's history and historic connection
to Jacksonville, his hometown.
I never left a conversation with Alan
without learning something new.
His interests were broad and his knowledge was encyclopedic
and thinking back to that 2-hour drive in our original meeting,
I later realized that I could've,
he could've easily flown directly to Charleston
to meet me there, but I'm sure that Alan wanted that car time
to get to know who I was.
Within the context of this tribute to Alan's legacy,
I felt it was very important to mention the breadth
of Alan's impact went far beyond the traditional music
and folklife communities that he loved so dearly.
In his work as the first director
of the folk arts program at the NEA in 1974 to 1976,
Alan helped millions bring the arts to millions and millions
of people and he did it in a way that they could understand,
touching the very fiber of who they were and where they were.
Additionally, Alan personally and directly affected the lives
of 100's of people like me, who were then working across the U.S
as we could to carry that same message.
Here, in D.C., Alan was on the board
and co-chaired the humanities D.C., which was from 1987
to 1988 which is the local affiliate
of the national endowment for the humanities.
Nationally, he also helped organize the alliance
for American Quilts from 2001 to 2007
and he facilitated starting the Quilt Alliance's national
documentation index.
He served on the boards of the Alliance
of the National Heritage Areas, the European Center
for Traditional Cultures, and shared the fun for folk,
fun for folk culture, as Carl mentioned, from 1991 to 1994.
And closest to me, Alan served on the board
of International Arts and Artists for 14 years.
He was our board chair for 7 and a half years, 3 successive years
at the terms May 25th of 2009 until his death last year.
He guided International Arts and Artists, an organization
that focuses on sharing cultures, through the recession
and with, through a lot of organizational growth.
He encouraged the organization to reach
out to the broadest range of cultures from other nations
as well as to all American ethnicities.
We lived around the corner from each other as well for 25 years.
[ Background noise ]
Throughout all of these involvements, in every aspect
of his life, Alan was demanding of himself,
and yet showed tremendous kindness
and patience with others.
He was [inaudible] and yet in the most folksy manner.
He always spoke endearingly and proudly of his children,
his love of Karen, and his appreciation of her intellect.
And her unwavering support was evident throughout their
remarkable half century of marriage.
I wanted to thank him in front of everyone, a dear friend,
who I'll miss greatly.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Thank you, David.
Now I want to call up to the stage Ken Perlman,
who many of you know, and was also a partner of Alan's,
and is considered to be one
of the top claw hammer banjo players in the world.
Known in particular for his skillful adaptations
of Celtic tunes to the style.
And he draws his material from traditional sources,
including the music of Scotland, Ireland, Cape Britain,
Prince Edward Island and the American South.
But his approach to the music is highly innovative.
Also, as an active folklorist, Ken has spent
over 2 decades collecting tunes and oral histories
from traditional fiddle players on Prince Edward Island
and Eastern Canada, which has resulted in 2 books
and a 2 CD anthology of field recordings.
He has toured throughout most of the English speaking world,
sometimes with Alan, and in Western Europe,
both as a soloist, and for over 15 years,
in a duo with Alan Jabbour.
So, oh, you are right behind me.
Okay. I didn't know if I needed to kind of stall, but I don't.
So, without further adieu, Ken Perlman.
[ Applause ]
>> Ken Perlman: Well, thank you, so much.
Before I start, I'd like to thank Karen Jabbour
for the great honor of speaking here to remember Alan in front
of so many wonderful people.
Alan and I toured together, okay, this is the, okay, got it.
Sorry. Technology.
Alan and I toured together for nearly 15 years.
We first encountered each other, musically, in August 2000
at a music camp in the Rockies.
His official accompanist bowed out at the last minuted,
and given that I was the resident old time banjo picker,
he asked me to accompany him in his concert set.
From the moment he touched bow to string,
and we started playing together,
there was a strong musical affinity, an uncanny blend
of fiddle tone with banjo tone, along with a sharing
of sensibilities and tastes.
His approach was strong and powerfully rhythmic,
but fully lyrical and delicately phrased, even charming.
As soon as I heard him interpret a tune, even one I had heard
around the scene for years,
that instantly became the definitive version for me,
and one I wanted to emulate.
He inspired me, not only to learn many dozens
of his tunes note for note, but to develop a whole new way
to accompany them that fit his style like a glove.
This melding of fiddle and banjo can be heard on our first CD,
Southern Summits, and jointed by guitarist Jim Watson, I guess,
who couldn't make it at the last minute,
he as going to be here tonight,on the CD,
You Can't Beat the Classics,
which was completed just a few months before the onset
of Alan's last illness.
I'd like to go back to slide 2 for a minute,
and here's a little sample of the sound
that we developed together, a tune called Waynesboro,
just a little excerpt.
[ Music ]
[ Background noise ]
[ Applause ]
I can still remember our recording it, here,
in Washington, 10 years ago.
After a few visits back and forth,
Alan and I started touring, and until the state
of his health intervened, we toured or worked together
at music camps at least 3 or 4 times a year.
Our travels took us to England, Ireland, Scotland and Shetland,
Western Europe and Canada,
but mostly we toured regionally in the United States.
Depending on the season, our travels took us
to the Northeast, or his native South Land,
the Pacific Coast, or the Midwest.
In what was probably our longest tour, in the fall of 2010,
we started out in Atlanta, curved through Alabama,
Tennessee and Kentucky, on up into Michigan,
headed northwest past Chicago to Madison,
and then back to D.C. via Indiana.
[ Background noise ]
And here's another picture from that era.
Touring with Alan was an eye-opening experience.
He was a much loved and respected figure,
renowned not only in the folk and acoustic music worlds,
but also in the world
of academic folklore, as you've heard.
Even in a world of perfect, and near, strangers,
he had only to walk in to command attention.
And most folks would emerge from any given social occasion,
deeply impressed with his wisdom and charm.
He considered himself to be as much a storyteller as musician,
and his song intros at concerts were often quite elaborate.
Nevertheless,
[ Laughter ]
Do you play, no.
[ Laughter ]
Nevertheless, audiences hung on every word.
When he led jam sessions,
participants would eagerly follow wherever he led,
even if they had never before heard his selected tune
or tune version.
Although Alan was never a full time musician,
he made incalculable contributions
to the music world.
While still a graduate student, he took his reel
to reel recorder off to the Piedmont and Southern Mountains
and preserved the music of several important roots fiddlers
on tape, most notably Henry Reed of Monroe County, West Virginia.
He learned quite a number of those tunes on fiddle,
and began teaching them to a coterie of musicians in
and around Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Along with Bertram Levy, who is here tonight, Bobby Thompson
and Tommy Thompson, he founded the Hollow Rock String Band,
whose recordings and concerts launched the contemporary old
time music revival.
The Hollow Rock band and other products
of the Chapel Hill scene,
such as the Fuzzy Mountain String Band,
you can tell the era, and the Red Clay Ramblers, same,
introduced many, many tunes to the old time scene
that have become beloved classics.
Amongst these tunes are Over the Waterfall, Frosty Morning,
Kitchen Girl, Ebenezer,
which Alan usually called West Virginia Highway,
Magpie and Green Willows.
[ Background noise ]
And, as you've heard, he became the founding director
of the Folklife division, here at the Library
of Congress, in the 70's.
In that capacity, he promoted music, and other folk arts,
and supervised the recordings of many additional roots musicians,
most notably the Hammonds family
of Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
He also had to interact with many notable business leaders,
philanthropists and politicians
of the last quarter of the 20th century.
A fact that led to many interesting conversation during
our long drives between tour destinations.
Thinking back on the many stories and anecdotes
that Alan shared during our travels, I recently go
to thinking that, perhaps, one over arching theme
to describe his life was the notion of the quest.
What brought him to North Carolina in the first place,
was an impulse to study someone else's quest.
The topic of his dissertation was the story of Bear Wolf.
Once there, he became intrigued by the study of folklore
and ballads, and inspired by the search
for child ballad melodies among the singers of Appalachia.
And drawing on his background
as a highly trained classical violinist,
he embarked on a year's long quest to locate
and record Appalachian fiddlers and preserve their tunes.
Alan started with Piedmont players, like John Lewis,
and then headed deeper into the mountains.
He encountered a fiddler named Oscar Wright
and found himself deeply drawn to his tunes.
Wright told him that the source of those tunes was old man,
Henry Reed, who not only was still living,
but could easily be tracked down in Glen Lyn, Virginia.
[ Background noise ]
Alan often told the story, you've seen that picture before,
too, Alan often told the story of how he and Karen drove
up to the Reed residence, for the first time,
late one afternoon, knocked on the door,
and were immediately invited to partake
of a large family dinner, despite, as Alan puts it,
that Reed had no idea who we were or why we were there, too,
and be like his gestures.
In any event, after dinner, the tape recorder came out
and numerous tunes were recorded,
including one called West Virginia Gals,
that Alan said moved him
so deeply his musical life was changed forever.
His next quest was learning the tunes
and translating them effectively to fiddle.
Now you should know that it's not easy
for a classically trained violinist to play fiddle music.
In fact, now a days, we often make fun of such people.
[ Laughter ]
The bowing is completely different, liveliness
and rhythmic attack are far more important than soaring tone
and following a conductor's directions.
Nevertheless, Alan watched and listened
to the old time players he met, and figured out, not only how
to play these tunes effectively, but to play them so compellingly
that they attracted a coterie of collaborators,
entranced a generation of musicians,
and launched a musical revival.
[ Background noise ]
This said, his take on the tunes changed as he went through life.
Judging from the first Hollow Rock LP's,
his early playing was strong and lively, but as the years went
by the quieted delicacy of phrasing and lyricality
that were truly unique in the world
of contemporary folk music performance.
And I was very fortunate to come along right at the moment
that this unique approach
to the music was coming fully into its own.
Alan loved playing with strong innovative banjo pickers.
And working with him served as a great inspiration
to numerous influential banjoists.
Tommy Thompson, there on the right,
developed a highly percussive, semi-melodic picking style
to drive the Hollow Rock String Band sound,
and carried that style into the Red Clay Ramblers.
Many, many banjo pickers that came up during the 70's
and 80's cite Tommy's playing as one
of their main, formative influences.
Bertram Levy eventually put aside the mandolin he played
in his Chapel Hill days, and took up 5 string banjo.
And as he re-explored the Hollow Rock repertoire,
he developed a new approach to claw hammer
that can be heard merge with Alan's fiddling
and James Reed's guitar playing on the CD,
the Henry Reed Reunion.
And that's Bertram on the right.
He's here tonight.
And then, in the 90's, banjoist philosopher, Stephen Wade,
who is also here today, and you'll hear from him in a,
very shortly, was one of Alan's favorite musical collaborators,
and in fact, a CD made from one
of their live performances has just been issued.
Alan used to tell quite a number of stories
about the tunes we played, some of which reflected
on the vicissitudes of collecting a repertory
and then observing from a distance
as individual tunes became disseminated.
He always regretted, for example, that he never thought
to ask fiddler John Lewis about the spelling
of the tune title, Rose Division.
He wrote down r o s e, like the flower, but was later left
to wonder could it actually have been r o w e apostrophe s,
or even r h o d e apostrophe s?
You may remember this musing.
Alan later found out from, he often talked
about a quirky a modal tune, originall recorded by Reed,
with no title, but dubbed Texas by the Hollow Rock crew,
when they put it on an LP,
because of a story that Reed had told.
Can we hear that audio please?
[ Music ]
Okay. So Alan later found out, from Reed, that the real name
of the tune was Newcastle.
But despite years of trying to correct the nomenclature,
people in the old time music revival could simply not
be budged.
As far as they were concerned,
the name of the tune was Texas, and that was that.
Another case that bemused him involved a very sweet lyrical
tune in the key of g, again collected
from Henry Reed with no title.
Can we have the other tune on that slide, please?
[ Music ]
Anyway, Alan included it on a tape he sent
out to the West Coast, positioned right next
to another tune called Lady of the Lake.
Somehow things got conflated,
to use one of Alan's pet expressions,
and the g tune started spreading on the West Coast
under the title Lady of the Lake.
Years later, Alan was able to trace how the tune,
with its newly minted name, moved from fiddler to fiddler,
until its original provenance was forgotten and it got
into the hands of a well known contra dance fiddler
from New Hampshire, named Rodney Miller.
Miller recorded it on an LP called New England Chestnuts.
[ Laughter ]
And from that time on, virtually everyone
in the folk scene has assumed it was an old New England tune.
This said, as it happens, the title Lady of the Lake,
fits the tune perfectly.
And the melody is far better suited for contra dancing
than it is for southern square dancing, so no harm done.
Alan often compared the function of tune collectors
to the workings of an hourglass.
In an earlier era, a given tune might be known
by many musicians, then
as the music culture declines there were fewer
and fewer players, and the number of people
who know the tune shrinks,
sometimes to as few as a single person.
When the collector comes along, hopefully before that last grain
of sand has disappeared, he or she teaches the tune to others.
It then comes back to life and spreads again,
sometimes becoming even better known
than it was in the first place.
[ Background noise ]
No tune is a better case in point, here,
than Over the Waterfall.
It was collected from Henry Reed, a single known source,
and spread so quickly and pervasively
that few people now a days have any idea where it came from.
It first appeared as cut number 7 on the b side
of the first Hollow Rock LP.
Not long afterwards, Alan moved to L.A. and was asked
to judge a fiddle contest at nearby Topanga Canyon.
One of the contestants, not knowing who was judging,
announced that he was going to play a tune
from the Hollow Rock String Band called Over the Waterfall.
As Alan put it, that tune beat me to California.
[ Laughter ]
Flash forward about 15 years, Alan and Karen were
in Hungary attending a music party, Halvic Injunction
with an Academic Conference, a band from Brittany was
on center stage when the word got
out that the tall American played the fiddle,
Alan was 6 6 in his stocking feet.
In Alan's words, I saw the band members talking among
themselves, and I guess they were probably saying,
what song do we know that the tall American might also know?
Finally, a young woman who served as band leader,
turned to Alan and asked brightly,
can you play, Over the Waterfall?
[ Laughter ]
Anyway, here's the version of Over the Waterfall
from the Hollow Rock recording that, on that fateful,
when that fateful cut was made.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
Maybe we'll get a chance to play that in the jam session.
Anyway, I'd like to conclude by playing Billy in the Lowland,
and this is a tune that Alan and I felt was the best vehicle
for capturing the essence of our sound, and the tune
that we almost always used to open our concerts.
Not surprisingly, it was collected from Henry Reed,
who said it was originally from east Virginia, which is the way
that West Virginian's refer
to what is now called the state of Virginia.
[ Laughter ]
[ Background noise ]
I think a tuning would be appropriate here.
It is a banjo, after all.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Thank you, so much.
That was really wonderful.
I also want to say, that there are some CD's in the back
by Ken, both, and by Stephen Wade who we will here
from in just a second.
They are recordings that are with Alan, so if you would
like to hear more, please go back and get a copy.
I'm also looking forward
to hearing more music, very shortly.
It's wonderful to hear the full dimensions
of Alan being talked about here.
For some of us, folklore, as we get sort of mired
in the academic and the words, it's sure nice
to hear words with music.
Our next speaker is Stephen Wade, and many of you know him.
He has spent nearly his entire life in the study
of American folklife, and he's probably best known
for banjo dancing, a theatrical performance
that combines storytelling, traditional music,
and percussive dance, which was one
of the longest running off Broadway shows in the country.
Here, at the Library, we are particularly appreciative
of his book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us, Field Recordings
and the American Experience,
which showcases nearly two decades of research,
during which Wade tracked down the communities, families
and performers connected with the iconic AFC field recordings,
and do, indeed, demonstrate how important research is.
The book received the 2013 ASCAP Deem's Taylor Award,
and the Association of Recorded Sound Collections Award
for Best History.
Wade has released a number of award winning CD's,
of which the latest is Americana Concert, Alan Jabbour
and Stephen Wade at the Library of Congress.
So please, give a warm welcome to Stephen Wade.
[ Applause ]
>> Stephen Wade: Alan and I would always open all
of our shows with this tune here.
We started playing together, I met him in 19 mid 70's,
and we started playing here in DC around 82.
[ Music ]
You're ready there?
All right.
That's Zan McLeod, and he was a good friend of Alan's, too.
[ Applause ]
When my wife and I got married, Zan and Alan played that.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
Thank you, very much.
Well, as I said, Alan and I opened our every concert
with that tune, that he called Stony Point.
But it goes by more names than that.
These include, Old Vad, Wild Horse, Celtin's Reel,
Pig Town Fling, Unfortunate Dog, Buck Creek Girl,
Richmond Ruckus, and when Earl Scruggs recorded it
with Paul Warren, they called it Fiddling Banjo.
Back when we performed it,
Alan noted that there'd always be some accommodating soul,
he said, who would call it the Wild Horse at Stony Point.
I thought of a way of approaching this tune
without Alan here to lead it might reside in that banjo here,
made during the Civil War.
The history that dwells in this instrument, and the past lives
who once held it, calls to mind the remark that Alan often made
about Quince Dillion, a fiddler in fifer from the Mexican War,
who, as an old man, taught young Henry Reed,
who then decades later, guided the youthful Alan Jabbour.
Only one person Alan marveled stood between himself
and that misty figure of Jacksonian America,
that tenacious thread still intact extends
to those here tonight,
who in turn learn their music from Alan.
And thus, ancestries become continuities.
The epigraph of this new album, a concert that Alan and I played
at the Coolidge Auditorium 20 years ago,
comes from something Alan wrote.
He said, how complicated and powerful,
beyond our own imaginings, are the radiations of what we do.
Alan's thought applies not only
to the influences his repertory had upon others,
but within the music itself.
Alan exemplified an approach that Indian fiddler,
John W. Summers, a contemporary of Henry Reed's,
called the originality of the tune.
That is, that each piece possesses a detailed identity.
Dick Summers saw it as the fiddler's obligation
to learn however many parts a tune might have,
and to take no shortcuts in that, in their execution.
Similarly, Buddy Thomas, a Kentucky fiddler committed
to the older styles, felt the need to bow the tune out.
The influential radio fiddler, Georgia Slim Rutland,
likewise spoke of his mother's council,
when he first started playing.
She said, don't ever detract from a tune.
Add to it all you want, but don't take away.
These musicians shared, in common, a view of fiddle tunes
as complex, self-contained works.
And that's how Alan crafted his pieces.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
[ Background noise ]
Tonight's invitation also asks us to also consider Alan
in relation to his legacy in folk life.
When Alan began his graduate studies at Duke,
his classroom professor sometimes played selections
from the folk music albums issued
by the Library of Congress.
These performances, many recorded in domestic settings,
did not scrub away the sounds of those places.
In the background, sometimes, a dog barks,
a kitchen clock ticks, roosters crow, a truck drives by,
these records alerted Alan to the kind
of first person collecting he soon undertook himself,
nor in the ensuring years, as head of the folk archive
and later as director of the American Folklife Center,
did he divorce cultural expression
from lived experience.
Art is not a thing apart, he once told me,
it can't be set aside from life.
One song emblematic of that fusion, and included
on those albums that Alan heard, comes from Vera Hall, a singer
and domestic worker from Livingston, Alabama.
In October, 1940, she recorded for the Library,
Another Man Done Gone, a blues she learned
from her husband recently returned from prison.
Well, the well known number most often appears
as a lover's plaint.
In her rendition, she largely sang spirituals,
it seemingly becomes a civil rights anthem.
In what could serve as a mission statement
for the American Folklife Center, Vera Hall later said,
any song that we sing have reference
to the life that we live.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
[ Background noise ]
Well, he closed with a medley.
The first recalls a tune that Alan played as Patty
on the turnpike, though it, too, goes by other names.
We follow with Kitchen Girl, that Alan learned
from Henry Reed and then transmitted to the world,
and we end with Sheep Shell Corn by the Rattling of His Horn,
a piece recorded in 1941 for the Library of Congress
by Fiddler Emmett Lundy.
Lundy, born in southwest Virginia in 1864,
learned from a much older fiddler named Green Leonard.
He said of Green Leonard, quote, he didn't teach them tunes
to me, but I catched them from him.
And in his last days, he told me that I was the only one
that tracked him down, and he wanted
to learn me some old pieces before he died,
he didn't want them to be buried,
and live after he was done.
Sheep Shell Corn lives on through Emmett Lundy.
He played it majestically, a description that applies as much
to Alan Jabbour, this tall swan of a man, musician, folklorist,
administrator, author and inspiration to so many.
I hear,
[ Applause ]
I hear now, since he left us, Alan's courtly words resound,
how complicated and powerful, beyond our own imaginings,
are the radiations of what we do.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
That's Zan McLeod.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Betsy Peterson: Thank you, Stephen.
Thank you, Zan.
[ Background noise ]
And we are coming down to our last speaker.
I think the Jabbour family should always have the last
word, before we start hearing some music, and playing music.
So please do not go away.
But to come down to the, you know, the practical universe,
if you do need to leave, there are staff at the back
and will guide you to the elevators,
and make sure you get on your way.
And for those of you who stick around, and play an instrument,
and have an instrument with you, please don't forget
about those property passes.
We want to make sure you get out.
So, and then finally, thank you, Stephen, again, thank you Zan,
thank you, Ken, and thank you Carl, and thank you, Alan.
Our last speaker is Karen Jabbour, she's Alan's wife,
love and lifelong research partner throughout his career.
Their work together includes rich documentation
of the tradition of Decoration Day, which was published
in the book, Decoration Day in the Mountains,
and I think she need no other introduction.
Karen.
[ Applause ]
>> Karen Jabbour: Good evening, family and many friends.
Welcoming all of you here has reminded me
of a generous reflection
that Alan's first administrative assistant,
here at the American Folklife Center, made.
Eleanor Sreb said that her late husband didn't leave her a lot
of money, but he left her very rich in friends.
And I certainly feel rich in friends tonight.
My thanks to the Folklife Center staff for their dedication
in bringing about this tribute to Alan's legacy.
And my heartfelt appreciation to Carl Fleishhauer,
to David Furchgott, to Ken Perlman, and Stephen Wade,
and Zan McLeod for their devotion to portraying for all
of us, in words, photographs and music,
and their long creative interaction with Alan.
Finally, thanks to you musicians who will continue the legacy
in your tribute in the jam later tonight.
As many of you know, when Alan retired in 1999,
he took on a project offered to him
by the National Parks Service to create a study
of the cultural tradition
of holding cemetery decoration events
for the environmental impact statement for a major road
in Great Smokey Mountains National Park
to the graveyards left behind by the people
who were moved off the land.
Without Carl to rely on for documentation, Alan drafted me
as his field collaborator and photographer.
I can take a picture, this is my photograph of Alan,
which has been very hard for me to look in the eye tonight,
because I know he's looking right at me.
So after 2 years of attending these cemetery events,
we submitted the study for the EIS volume.
With so much enthusiasm and documentation left over,
that we went on to publish a book in 2010 with University
of North Carolina Press, called Decoration Day in the Mountains,
which has been mentioned tonight.
This only wet Alan's appetite to continue surveying cemeteries
with me, throughout the entire rural south.
And he completed, before his death, a second book,
now awaiting my editing, at the University Press of Mississippi.
In the course of studying cemetery traditions,
we researched illusions in the literature, in literature art
and song to cemetery events.
Alan had a special place in his heart for slow airs,
called hens, played by southern fiddlers.
When we were doing research at Boreal College Library,
he heard a solo version of the 19th century hymn,
the Old Church Yard, played by Sanford Kelly.
And he recalled an illusion in John C. Campbell's book,
the Appalachian Highlander in His Home,
to a congregation singing this hymn
in a processional to the cemetery.
Alan noted in Kelly's playing, the slow, monophonic style
and irregular pulse of the old unaccompanied singing style.
I'd like to conclude by playing, for you, Alan's fiddling
of the Old Church Yard, the final track on his last album,
You Can't Beat the Classics.
The words to the first verse are, Oh come, come with me
to the old grave yard, I well know the path
through the soft green sward, friends slumber we would want
to regard, we'll trace out their names in the old grave yard.
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
Thank you, folks, and Ken will now organize the jam.
[ Applause ]
>> Okay. So here's a moment a lot
of you have been looking forward to.
What we're going to do is everybody whose brought
instruments, this is your time to go get them.
And we'd like to clear, make a clearing, kind of here,
a big circle space that people can come
and join once you've got your instruments, and others can sit
around and listen or participate.
But we'd like to clear some chairs right here,
and make an opening that people can sit around.
>> The first tune we're going to play is often called Ebenezer.
And this is collected from Henry Reed and was
on the first Hollow Rock album, and Alan said
that Henry Reed often called it West Virginia Highway.
And if anyone else has any memories to share.
So we're going to start this tune.
Do you want to kick it off?
This is Bertram Levy, by the way, an original Hollow Rocker.
[ Applause ]
>> I should say, right off the bat, that this is Alan's fiddle.
[ Cheering ]
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
[ Applause ]
>> Bertram, do you want to pick a tune?
[ Background noise ]
Yeah, for a little while.
Yeah. So, you know Alan and I, we were like brothers,
we grew up together with this music.
I mean, Alan was kind of, I mean he was the inspiration,
but we were the, 3 or 4 of us were the people that really kind
of put it all together and made it come alive
and we shared the tunes and we shared the whiskey
and the camels and we shared being bad boys and we.
It was a great experience and I'll just relate one,
one memory which is once we visited Henry.
I was his sidekick and I would go with him to visit some
of these folks and we visited Henry and took him
down to Narrows and we sat under a tent and Alan was sitting here
and Bobby Thompson was sitting here and I was sitting there
and Tommy Thompson was sitting there
and Henry was sitting there and he hadn't been out of his house
in many years and people would all come up
and offer him something to drink and they'd all go,
they'd point it out and they say Henry,
that's you when you were young.
So, that was, we knew then that Alan had the right stuff.
So, this is a beautiful tune which is John Brown's March.
Remember the 4, begins with a 4 chord on the second part.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
>> Hey. That wasn't a Henry V. tune, was it?
It was? Marcie do you have a tune that you'd like us to play?
[ Background noise ]
>> Well, okay.
Okay, we're going to do Sheers and Stockings.
Do you have any stories about that other
than it's a Henry V. tune?
>> I think we actually named this tune.
I don't think Henry had a name for it, did he?
Yeah, the title.
There were many tunes that Henry didn't remember the title
or sometimes we'd play them with the one title
and then he'd write back to Alan
and he'd say I think that's a different title, but now that I,
you know, when I, last time I talked to Alan,
last time I talked to Alan, he, we were musing about the facts
that during our working we always wondered while the old
guys never played the fiddle when they were working.
When they were young men and only took it up again
when they were older and then Alan and I were musing
about 6 months before he passed away and we realized
that we also picked up the fiddle again
after we stopped working and I said Alan, we were those guys
and we didn't know it.
We thought we were maybe documentarians or something,
but we were just fiddlers just like them
and you probably are the same.
So, this is Sheers and Stockings.
[ Music ]
>> Okay. Do you have a tune you'd like to suggest?
>> Green Willis.
>> Green Willis, you want to do to d?
Banjo players mind going to d?
Okay, but that's all right we're in the territory.
Okay, so we're going to D
and we're going to play Green Willis.
[ Background noise ]
>> Okay, we're going to play Green Willis
and this originated actually as a jig called the New Rig Ship,
a Scottish tune and during the late 19th century became a
fifing tune played as a march or quickstep
in the south called Chapel Hill Serenade and then it got sped
up into a reel and that's how we play it now.
So, let's start, you'd be interested in knowing that.
>> Once Alan and I were sitting around with Libba Cotton
and she said, I know that tune, we used to call
that Chapel Hill Serenade when I lived there.
We used to hear the fife and drum march
down the street playing that tune and.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
>> Okay. So, going around in this end
of the circle, a detune.
How could we not?
So, you've already heard the story of this one.
Do you know anything more
about Over the Waterfalls and what I say?
David, you had a story you wanted to tell about?
>> DAVID DURCHGOTT: All,
all I know about Over the Waterfall is it comes
from an old English ballad in which she tried, the,
she wanted to get rid of her husband
and so she gave him some wine and blinded him and sat him
by the cliff and then he said, she said just stand there
and she got back and she ran to push him over,
but he was a crafty old guy and he just stepped out of the way
and she went over the waterfall.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
>> Okay, kind of in this end of the circle, anyone have a tune?
Rocking the Babies to Sleep, cool.
Can you play that?
All right, you want to lead it?
Okay.
>> You know this [inaudible] over here, he's the one
who taught it to Alan didn't you rock,
or you at least Rocking the Babies to Sleep.
[ Background noise ]
[ Music ]
[ Background noise ]
>> Let's finish up with Frosty Morning.
Everyone knows Frosty Morning.
[ Music ]
[ Background noise ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
For more infomation >> Jyen - OK [Gaming Music #1] - Duration: 3:24. 
For more infomation >> Abang Nak Tegur - Aliff Syukri feat Sajat & Shahida [Music & Lyric Video] - Duration: 4:25. 
For more infomation >> Hope Group's 'Come to Church' (Lyric Video) from 'EMO the Musical' Official Soundtrack. - Duration: 2:26. 
For more infomation >> Brian Music - Sexy Dance | Dancehall | Video Official - Duration: 2:30. 
For more infomation >> Zakaria Rhilmane - Had Lila (Exclusive Music Video) | 2018 | (زكرياء غيلمان - هاد الليلة (فيديو كليب - Duration: 3:10. 
For more infomation >> 8D Music--Cùng Anh Ngọc Dolil (Nhớ Đeo Tai Nghe Để Cảm Nhận) - Duration: 2:34. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét