Beginning at the headwaters of the Mississippi and traveling its length out to the Gulf, the River of Song project sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution – a four-part care video documentary being shown on PBS this month as well as a seven part radio program, 350-page book, and this two-CD set, accompanied by a 50-page booklet – provides us with a living-room view of indigenous American music makers that will restore anyone’s faith in the unpredictable diversity that is this country’s lifeblood.
Ojibwe singers and drummers followed immediately by the punked up, “riot grrrl” band, Babes in Toyland? A Laotian hill-dweller blowing crazy on a banana leaf in St. Paul, Minnesota? The son of Mexican immigrants playing “le jazz hot” on Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet in Davenport, Iowa.
River of Song sticks mostly to intimate performances and in doing so offers a peoples’ eye view of the musical landscape. In Memphis, accomplished R&B chanteuse Ann Peebles (“I Can’t Stand the Rain”) belts out a delicious version of “St. Louis Blues” accompanied only by piano and the two Memphis Horns, Andrew Love on tenor and Wayne Jackson on trumpet.
Choice of repertoire also is illuminating Irma Thomas and her band at The Lion’s Den smokes a take of “Time Is On My Side,” the liner notes telling us how she lost the early hit to The Rolling Stones and how Bonnie Raitt convinced her to sing it again.
Other Louisiana cuts include David and Roselyn singing “Marie Laveau” on the streets of the French Quarter, Henry Butler at The Funky Butt, Eddie Bo with Henry Butler and his band doing “Check Your Bucket” in Congo Square, The Soul Rebels with “Let Your Mind Be Free” at Joe’s Cozy Corner, Geno Delafose at Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki, D.L. Menard in his Erath backyard, country billy rocker Kenny Bill Stinson at the Wharf Master’s House in Natchez, and Irvan Perez, an Isleno singer from Delacroix Island crooning in Spanish ‘on a small boat near the mouth of the Mississippi” a tragicomic ballad about crabbing composed by his father.
Gathering a surprising amount of grassroots vitality in this over-marketed, increasingly generic age, River of Song not only lets us hear the music of America’s many constituents, but also gives us a rare opportunity to experience the essential connection of music and place.
