On Demand
Summer Music Memories
By David Garland
May 23, 2008
WNYC’s annual American Music Festival begins this Sunday. We started the Festival way back around 1940 to celebrate the vitality and variety of American music, displaying our pride partly to refute the Nazi’s condemnation of America’s music as “degenerate.” Musicians ranging from Benny Goodman to Aaron Copland to Miles Davis to Woody Guthrie have participated in past Festivals, and I’ve always found it an exciting time at WNYC, both as listener and as programmer/host.
Sunday evening I’ll air a wide range of wonderful pieces that show American ingenuity and style applied to some of the traditional classical forms and formats. I love this music. Sometimes hybrids offer the best of both worlds. See more about the Festival here.
Photo: David Garland
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This weekend is significant for other reasons, too. There’ll be a lot of festivities here in downtown Manhattan because it’s the 125th anniversary of the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge. Here are some more photos I recently took below (click on them to see a full-sized version).
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And it’s Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. I imagine we each have strong musical associations with summer, ranging from a symphony or opera we saw performed in Central Park, to a Beach Boys song heard on a car radio, or maybe a summer jazz festival performance. Personally, whenever I hear the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” I’m transported back to summer camp in 1967. That song represented to me the wider, freer world I wanted to experience (no, I didn’t associate it with drugs!).
What are your summer music memories? Maybe I can work some of them into my Sunday evening programming.
Comments
Comment from Richard Spiegel
Date: May 23, 2008, 7:57 pm
Do you know whether Crane’s poem about the Brooklyn Bridge has been set to music? I did a Google search and came up with… http://tinyurl.com/5fwvx5 Are you familiar with that?
Comment from Tom Bartchak
Date: May 23, 2008, 8:48 pm
DAvid
I was listening to the Ravi Shankar piece and it reminded me of a great Indian raga which I think is called Chala Nata Maynard Ferguson recorded a great Indian /Jazz fusion of that raga on the Maynard Ferguson Album MF Horn around 1971.
I don’t remember you playing much big band , but check it out sometime.
Faublous as is your show!
Comment from Fred McElderry
Date: May 24, 2008, 6:13 pm
Love your show and the music. One of my favorite summer music memories came some years ago (12, 13?). I know it wasn’t in the city, but I hope you’ll indulge me. My wife and I, along with my friend Brian (Lehrer–you may know him) and his wife attended a Town of Hempstead Concert at Lido Beach to hear The Roches, one of our favorite groups. Their performance was wonderful, but the evening was stolen by “warm up act” Roger McGuinn, who came out and did a solo performance of great old Byrds songs and other pieces. He and his 12-string Rickenbacker blew us away. Needless to say, the Town of Hempstead has never had anything like that concert since.
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Comment from Timotato
Date: May 24, 2008, 10:15 pm
I really enjoyed the Asian music you played earlier this evening, especially through headphones. I worked in S.E. Asia for 10 years and traveled extensively throughout the region to visit ethnic tribes and island villages. Your music took me back to those wonderful days.
A few weeks ago, for your “Whatcha Doin’?” request, I mentioned I’d been designing a skyscraper. It’s been a weekend project of mine for the last month, totally inspired by your radio show. Thank you for that. Here’s an overview of “your” project: http://tsoup.com/steel/
Comment from Dan
Date: May 24, 2008, 10:52 pm
One summer was so much like another that I can never remember whether it rained for six days and nights when I was twelve or for twelve days and nights when I was six (apologies to Dylan Thomas).
Sorry to say that I’ve only VERY recently discovered your program. I can’t explain this; I can only mourn my loss.
One summer, I discovered Trane’s “Transition.” A month later, I discovered Beausoleil (& Beaujolais).
I have, not only great lapses in judgment, but also in my knowledge of what you might call “serious” American music. I like Stravinsky, Messaien, Monteverdi, Chopin, Bach, Scarlatti, Shostakovich–and then Cream, the Stones, Zappa, assorted punk, and Springsteen. But let’s be honest: Even most of these aren’t Americans, and Frank wasn’t always being serious (though the modern day composer refuses to die).
I grew up listening to my father playing Artie Shaw’s Nightmare and Stan Kenton’s Artistry in Rhythm–a pretentious composition, and yet somehow perfect. And for years, I thought I had discovered Roy Eldridge. Seriously.
But one summer night, at an outdoor concert in my twenties,I saw Bill Monroe play Blue Moon Over Kentucky, and I realized that I didn’t know American music at all.
Usually, I prefer dissonance–though the piece you played–”Asian-sounding” name of composer–was magnificent.
I would be most interested, I think, in hearing one or two pieces of American electronic music you consider the best of that genre–about which I know almost nothing.
Sorry about the length–an odd way of saying Thanks, I know.
Comment from Joe Corrao
Date: May 25, 2008, 9:01 pm
wow…I’ve been looking for that Jo Stafford CD everywhere but no luck…can u give the full title again..or if u know where I can pick it up lemme know!
Comment from Joe Corrao
Date: May 25, 2008, 9:13 pm
thanks kindly…
Comment from Gunilla
Date: May 25, 2008, 9:18 pm
I heard your response to Joe Corrao on the air, but I agree – I don’t manage to find it, either! I am looking at Amazon and get lots of hits for Jo Stafford, however not for anything close to “American Folksongs” which I believe is what you said the album was called. Maybe you could post here what the actual title is, including the name of the song?! Thanks for pointing me to this artist, whom I did not previously know! And thanks for a great show.
Comment from Bill Amstutz
Date: May 25, 2008, 10:01 pm
I am enjoying the John Fahey and American Primitive tunes tonight. I want to point you towards a contemporary musician called M. Ward who is influenced by Fahey which is most evident on his album Transfiguration Of Vincent .
Great stuff tonight.
BILL
Comment from Jo
Date: May 25, 2008, 10:31 pm
American Folk Songs: http://www.amazon.com/American-Folk-Songs-Jo-Stafford/dp/B0000010KK
Comment from David Garland
Date: May 25, 2008, 10:36 pm
Thanks for your comments! The following lengthy link should bring you to Jo Satfford’s CD on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Folk-Songs-Jo-Stafford/dp/B0000010KK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1211768277&sr=1-1
If that doesn’t work just put these words in Amazon’s search engine: Jo Stafford American Folk Songs
And Bill, thanks for pointing out the Fahey/M. Ward connection. Here’s a link to the archive of M. Ward’s appearance on my WNYC show Spinning On Air:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/episodes/2005/05/20
That was a two-hour show, and M. Ward is heard in the second hour. Click on “listen now,” scroll through the first hour, and the second hour will load automatically.
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