History on Display–From Senegal to Seeger: Stories of the American Banjo
Wade Ward of Bog Trotters Band, Galax, Virginia. 1937
Recently My Own True Love and I had the chance to see Michael Miles’ most recent one-man musical documentary, From Senegal to Seeger: Stories of the American Banjo. It was a last-minute addition to a long-planned small-scale road trip. It turned out to be one of the highlights.
We both love the banjo. We’d seen Miles work his music-cum-history magic before. It was a no-brainer.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Miles played music from across a 300-year period on seven different banjos, interspersing the music with poetry, historical vignettes, personal anecdotes, and opportunities to sing along.* The result is an impressionistic portrait of American history seen through the lens of the banjo.
My takeaways?
- A renewed sense of the banjo as America’s instrument of social change (or perhaps just subversion), from slaves dancing in New Orleans’ Congo Square on Sundays to the folk music movement of the 1960s.
- The courage and clarity of Pete Seegher’s testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, in which he invoked his First Amendment rights to perform for audiences that had ranged from hobo jungles to the Rockefellers.
- The poetry of Walt Whitman and Wallace Steven is much easier to understand when recited by someone who does it well.
Miles is an extraordinary musician and performer. (Not always the same thing.) If you get a chance to hear him, go for it! In the meantime, check out the clips on his website.
And if you can’t wait to learn more about the history of the banjo, or perhaps the banjo’s role in history, I strongly recommend Karen Linn’s That Half Barbaric Twang: The Banjo in American Popular Culture.
*The audience in South Bend, Indiana, did not sing along with the gusto that we’re used to hearing at the Old Town School of Folk Music but they made up for it with wild applause and multiple standing ovations.
And we have winners!
As always when I have books to give away, I’m glad that I don’t have to choose the winners based on merit. As always, you responded with book suggestions,* thoughtful commentary, suggestions for future blog posts, and history-nerd humor--both in comments on the blog post itself and in wonderful e-mails. **
I think I’m the real winner here, but some of you get books. (Drumroll please.)
And the winners are:
Big History: Viriam Khalsa
Divine Fury: Scottie Kersta-Wilson
Exile’s Return: Diana Holdsworth
The Profligate Son: HJ and Jane S. Poole
Voyagers of the Titanic: Robert Rhine
Send me your addresses by e-mail and I’ll get the books in the mail.
Thanks for reading, whether you just discovered History in the Margins or have been reading it for years. More historical bits are on the way.
* Because I clearly don’t have enough Big Fat History Books to read.
**Actually, some of you respond with book suggestions, thoughtful commentary, etc even without a book giveaway. I know bloggers who hesitate to include their e-mail address on their blog because they fear spam. They don’t know what they’re missing!
Big History and Big Buts
Several years ago, when I was working on a Big Project, I stumbled across the concept of Big History.*
It’s basically the opposite of the academic mantra “not my field.” Proponents of Big History integrate many scholarly disciplines in order to look at human history as a tiny part of the history of the cosmos. One of their favorite ways of illustrating how new we are is to compress the timeline of the universe from 13 billion years to 13 years. In this scenario, homo sapiens would have been around for 53 minutes. The entire recorded history of civilization would have existed for three minutes. “Modern” industrial society has been mucking up the environment for roughly six seconds. In short, we are a blink in the eye of the universe.**
This TED talk by Big History promoter David Christian sums up the basic principles:
[Reminder: if you receive this post by email you may need to go to the History in the Margins website to see the video. Just click the headline or the link.]
It’s fascinating stuff. My introduction to Big History has inspired me to ask slightly different questions than I used to ask. Not just how the salt trade functioned, but why our bodies need salt. Not just when did farming start, but how grain was domesticated. Not just the role of fire in making tools, but the role of fire in making man. But, and for me this is a Big But,*** stories about people are what pulled me into history. Here on the Margins I often focus on the smallest stories. When I think about writing books, I gravitate toward big sweeping themes. But whether the scale of my story is tiny or grand, my subject is people, not great flaming balls in the sky. I’m interested in what happened in that last three minutes, or maybe just a little bit before.
Which means I’m not quite sure what to do with Big History other than admire the intellectual audacity behind it. Any ideas?
*Or more accurately, someone beat me over the head with the idea.
**Or maybe a piece of grit.
***And as my best friend from graduate school will tell you, I love Big Buts. (Sorry, sometimes I can’t resist.)