December daily: Favorite music

[resonant]

nestra prompts: You seem to have unusual taste in music (which I mean as a compliment). Where did you pick up some of the stuff you like? Where do you find new music?



I grew up listening to basically four things:

Top 40 radio. I listen to some newer popular music, but my pop-music imprinting period begins with Abba's "Mama Mia" and ends with the Ten Thousand Maniacs album "In My Tribe." It's heavy on shaggy leftish seventies pop and ping-ping eighties dance music, pretty much like anybody else my age.

Mama Mia by Abba

Like the Weather by Ten Thousand Maniacs

Late '50s and early '60s R&B, or, as Southerners call it, beach music. I hated beach music when I lived in the South because it was wrapped up in a certain class of blonde, slender, wealthy, Ocean-Isle-Beach-condo-owning, pastel-cable-sweater-wearing, Camp Seafarer-going, add-a-bead-collecting Southern girls, and, damn it, I was going to stick a safety pin through my earlobe and listen to Gang of Four and sneer at them doing the shag to the strains of "Sixty Minute Man."

And then I left the South, and once I separated myself from the real estate developers' daughters, I discovered that I adored the songs.

One Mint Julep by the Clovers

Anthrax by Gang of Four

Bluegrass and acoustic string music, or all that Brother, Where Art Thou stuff. I don't know if North Carolina is still like this, but when I lived there, even if you worked in a law office there was somebody at your workplace who could play the banjo. The first autographed album I ever bought was signed by acoustic string virtuoso Mike Cross in a Record Bar store in Cameron Village. My college roommate used to say that she could tell when I was making cookies in the dorm kitchen because when she opened the front door she could hear the banjos.

Note that I perceived a significant gap between listening to Gang of Four and listening to the Clovers, but I saw no inconsistency in listening to Gang of Four and listening to Mike Cross. Go figure.

Whisky 'Fore Breakfast/Sailor's Bonnet by Mike Cross

The good old Episcopal hymnal. My religion is probably more rooted in hymns than in the Bible. I love the great big Anglican chestnuts and I love the late Victorian schmalz and I love the eeriness of the Sacred Harp songs. I even have a pitying sort of affection for congregations of affluent white people gamely attempting to sing spirituals.

The Lord's My Shepherd (Brother James' Air) by the King's College Choir

So those are my formative influences. But once I began thinking about nestra's question, it occurred to me that everything else I like -- Renaissance music, Mexican baroque, trad-folk -- can all be traced back to Christmas music! I would get a Christmas CD from the library, love it, and go looking for more of the same stuff. Even my affection for African pop music started out with Paul Simon's "Graceland" but was really solidified by an excellent CD called "Kwanzaa Music," which I wouldn't have bought if it hadn't been connected to Christmas.

Renaissance: Now Is the Month of Maying by the Toronto Consort

Mexican baroque: Sol-fa de Pedro by Chanticleer

Trad-folk: Sorry the Day I Was Married by Maddy Prior & Tim Hart

African pop: Thokozile by Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens

How do I find new music? Mostly I find it here, actually. A really significant percentage of my non-Christmas music is recommended by tao, who introduced me to Cathy Davey, among many others, and keeps me supplied with June Tabor.

Little Red by Cathy Davey

The Heather Down the Moor by June Tabor

I'm also very fond of the Cover Lay Down folk music blog, which introduced me to Elizabeth Mitchell and Laura Cortese, among others.

Ladybug Picnic by Elizabeth Mitchell

My Little Words by Laura Cortese, a Magnetic Fields cover.

Comments

[akacat]

I've lived in NC for nearly 17 years, and I'm not sure any of my coworkers has a firm grasp on what a banjo looks like, much less how to play one. Then again, roughly 98% of us are decidedly not native to NC, or even the south.

I have a local friend who works in a law office; I'll have to ask her if anyone there can play the banjo.

(Cameron Village is definitely still a thing, though.)

[resonant]

My parents still live near CV, though my mother says, "You could buy a handmade lawn ornament or a gold-plated fountain pen or coffee beans from an island you've never heard of, but it's impossible to buy anything that anyone needs."

Ask your friend, as a follow-up question, if any of them can clog.

I miss NC terribly sometimes, but I don't know if I'd be able to handle Southern summers any more.

[akacat]

Oh, I forgot! One of my coworkers does shag. He and his wife aren't native, but they've been here for over 30 years.

Is there still a grocery store at the edge of CV? (I haven't been there in nearly a decade, I hate the parking.)

The summers are ghastly, I wouldn't survive without AC.

[vickita]

Okay, if you haven't already, go listen to my kid.