September 28, 2006
Two Albums Worth Buying Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 09:30 PM EST It’s been an exciting year for American folk music. Since the waning days of the postwar urban folk revival, which gave rise to such groups as the Weavers, Peter, Paul and Mary, and the New Lost City Ramblers, and to such
influential solo performers as Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan, folk’s definition has been blurred, and its following somewhat dispersed. The singer-songwriter movement of the mid-1960s and after helped stretch the definitional limits of folk music such that the term no longer really means anything terribly specific. If it’s acoustic, the local record store is likely to shelve it in the folk section. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess what folk music is or isn’t. Earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an album of songs popularized over the past six decades by Pete Seeger. Ironically, though he intended the album as a tribute to Seeger, who is an accomplished songwriter as well as a performer of traditional material, most of the songs on the album claim roots as slave spirituals, minstrel numbers, trans-Atlantic transplants, or otherwise organic inventions that took shape over many centuries. Technically, Seeger didn’t write any of the album’s songs. I know that American Heritage Magazine will have more to say about Springsteen’s album in an upcoming issue, so I’ll withhold comment other than to give the album two thumbs up. It’s truly exciting to hear a performer of Springsteen’s stature reclaim traditional material and give it a modern twist. Today I discovered another such album: Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys. This priceless collection of old sea songs boasts performers as diverse as Lucinda Williams, Lou Reed, Bono, and Sting, and it brings to seafaring music the same blend of innovation and respect for tradition that Springsteen lent to Seeger’s catalog. I’ve just started listening to the album on my iPod and would already recommend it to American Heritage readers.
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