What draws a Green Man into the desert? Melodies, bones, and ghosts, I’d say. We go on these pilgrimages from time to time, searching for our heart’s home, and often it’s the border country of the American West that calls. Coyote? Well, yes she’s here, but more often than not, it’s that little man with the flute that lures us into a world that borders our own simply because the ghosts linger longer in arid land. — Kim in her ‘What Draws a Green Man into the Desert?’ essay
Iain, your usual host here, begged off this week as he’s got the applications for potential incoming Several Annies, his Library apprentices who start in late Summer, to go over. He’s got his first applicant from one of the First Nations and another who’s Maori.
Now it’s indeed quite true much of fiction here is grounded firmly in the English, Celtic and European mythologies such as Midori Snyder’s The Flight of Michael Macbride or Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm’s The Gypsy (although I’ll readily admit, the latter makes use of a less familiar European tradition), but a number of books reviewed by us have been rooted instead in the much different lore of the Southwestern USA, where Catholic beliefs merge easily (mostly) into the much older beliefs of the First Folk who have been here much longer than the later European settlers.
Likewise the music, food and other aspects of the culture reflect the mergers of disparate elements into something uniquely new, say Tex-Mex music with Celtic as in the case of The Mollys, a band that once existed here, or perhaps in Bad Wolf, the band that exists in The Wood Wife, the novel by Terri Windling, that merges these disparate elements too.
Though most of Charles de Lint’s more recent work, both novels and shorter pieces, is set in his invented city, Newford, and its environs, some of his work is set in the Southwestern USA. One of these is a splendid novel called Medicine Road which features the two of the Dillard sisters from Seven Wild Sisters, now folk musicians on tour in that region.
Grey says of Medicine Road that ‘I suppose it’s fitting, for a story about twos, that the creators are two Charleses. Charles Vess’s illustrations make this not-so-simple fable deeper and richer. Vess combines line drawing and painting in a way that makes his pictures simultaneously vividly life-like and fairy tale-remote.’
There’s a bar in Medicine Road where the sisters play called A Hole in The Wall which de Lint borrowed from Terri Windling’s The Wood Wife (with permission). It’s possible that The Wood Wife is the first modern fantasy to take full advantage of the myths of this region. Grey says of the latter novel that it is ‘not only an expertly-crafted tale of suspense. It also stands squarely within the realm of modern fantasy. Windling’s Arizona desert comes alive with fey beings, shapeshifters small and great that are as mysterious and amoral as any European Fair Folk, yet practical and earthy and distinctively Native American in their coloration.’
Though not actually set here, de Lint’s Forests of The Heart novel starts off here and draws in part on the myths of this region, so I highly recommend it for your reading pleasure.
I shall finish this section off with Smoking Mirror Blues, a novel by Ernest Hogan. Cat says of it that ‘In the very near future, the citizens of Los Angeles are preparing to celebrate Dead Daze, a bacchanalian rave of a holiday that’s an over-the-top merging of All Hallows Eve, the Mexican Day of the Dead, and Mardi Gras. The reawakened Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, riding the body of a human, is feeling quite well, thank you! And let’s not forget that the Day of the Dead, which forms part of Dead Daze, is at its heart a time when the barriers between the dead and the still-living are all but completely erased. So maybe the gods do walk again … And this holiday, not dissimilar to the one in the Strange Days movie, needs National Guard troops to prevent rioting!’
Robert brings us a look at a graphic novel series set (pretty much) in the Southwest, but the traditions it draws on — well, we can’t really call them “native.” See what we mean in his review of Preacher: Gone to Texas. Just to warn you: ‘It turns into a bit more than the story of one man’s search for God, however literally Ennis may have decided to portray it. This first volume shows every sign of a series that is turning into a look at America’s underbelly. It’s rough, it’s crude, it’s violent, but if the assholes win, it’s usually short-term …’ Oh, and one more warning: there are six reviews; just click on the link at the bottom of each one to be magically transported to the next.
Jack has a look at a album of an unusual nature: ‘Let me start this review off by saying that most of what the musician who created Jackalope, R. Carlos Nakai, plays leaves me terribly bored. Yes, bored. Bored quite stiff. Even the other Jackalope albums that I’ve heard over the years were not very interesting for me. But Dances with Rabbits has had more playings in this household that I can count as it simply has not a less than stellar cut on it.’
Kim in her review of Trouble says ‘Disclosure: I’m a long time Molly’s fan! Live, recorded, whatever, I’m there. There’s something about the world-weary defiance, the determination to feel joy — or at least pleasure — in The Mollys’ music, that warms the soul. For the unitiated, The Mollys have always combined Celtic and Tex Mex influences in a heady blend that seems almost, but not quite, like the Appalachia meets Cowboy influenced-music that made alt-country popular.’
Gary says Calexico’s Feast of Wire is one of his so-called desert-island discs. He liked it a lot when he originally reviewed it in 2003, too. ‘The elements all fit together into a unified whole, its disparate parts forming a pleasing if somewhat disorienting picture that perfectly reflects the jumble of cultures and landscapes in which the music is set.’
Singing Bones was the first album Brett and Rennie Sparks (The Handsome Family) released after they moved from Chicago to Albuquerque, Gary notes. He finds it appealing if a bit transitional in feel. ‘That the songs are often equally sad and funny is part of the appeal; the rest comes from Brett’s deft melodies and his deadpan deep-voiced delivery of Rennie’s lyrics.’
Musicians in northern Mexico have a long tradition of ballads called ‘corridos’ that tell stories of everyday occurrences and the exploits of heroes and crooks. Gary reviews a release from Smithsonian Folkways called Heroes & Horses: Corridos from the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands. ‘The songs themselves are a capsule history of northern Mexico, from the exploits of the bandit Joaquin Murrieta to the 1994 Zapatista uprising, as well as tragic duels over women, mining disasters, train explosions and famous horse races. All were recorded between 1995 and 1999.’
No overview of contemporary Southwestern Americana music would be complete, Gary says, without a mention of Howe Gelb. He reviewed two releases from Gelb, one under his own name and the other as The Band of Blacky Ranchette — neither under the moniker of his main project Giant Sand. He notes, ‘The Listener is the more accessible of these two discs, but both are fine examples of thoughtful, independent Americana.’
Befitting the theme this week of the roots and branches of the southwest USA, I’m going to leave you with music by Joni Mitchell and Calexico.
Yes Joni Mitchell. It’s her take on the coyote myth that de Lint uses in his fiction. So here’s ‘No Regrets Coyote’ performed in concert by her at the Sydney Opera House Sydney, New South Wales, Australia on the 3rd of March 1983. If the song sounds familar to you, it might well be because she performs it in The Last Waltz, the Martin Scorsese film of The Band’s last concert.
Our second song comes from the genius that’s the band called Calexico in the form of Sunken Waltz, a song that starts off telling the story of American corporate greed along the Border before veering into… Well just go listen to it.
What’s New for the 5th of May: family friendly rootsy music, a look at queer comics, offbeat Columbian music, Peanut butter cups, Folkmanis’ Narwhal puppet, ‘City Of New Orleans’ and other stories
All stories including our reviews are never the whole story as every story is made neat, made more understandable, or sometimes deliberately less, in its telling. And everything has a story behind it including that novel you’re reading out on this stone paved patio at Kinrowan Hall on this nicely warm Summer afternoon enjoying our Special Reserve pear cider. Most times neither you nor I know the whole story of a story but if we’re lucky the author tells us in a preface about how the story came to be. And if she doesn’t, rest assumered that an academic will be glad to do so.
Our book reviews this outing have a few of the latter books including some academic looks at the works of Robert Holdstock and Diane Wynne Jones, and, well, you’ll just have to see. And I’m sure that the new reviews this Edition will be be interesting to you as well. If not, please do remember that everything’s just a story…
Kelly looks at a classic work of SF: ‘Poul Anderson, who died in 2001, was one of the grand old voices of science fiction right up until his death, winning the Hugo Award seven times, the Nebula Award three times, and being named in 1997 as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America. His was a long and prolific career. In the middle of that career, he created a character named Dominic Flandry, whose adventures had eluded me as a reader until my review copy of Ensign Flandry arrived on my desk. Now I’m wondering why.’
Farah Mendlesohn’s Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature gets a review by Kestrell: ‘Diana Wynne Jones (DWJ to her fans) is one of those writers who, despite the fact that she is frequently referred to as a “children’s author,” has a significant following of adult readers. Although there are an increasing number of literary critics addressing the subject of children’s and young adult fantasy, there is still a lack of literary criticism addressing why those books often shelved in the children’s sections of bookstores and libraries hold such a strong appeal for so many adult readers. Despite the title of this book (a title chosen by the publisher, not the author), its subject is a sophisticated exploration of Diana Wynne Jones’s complex approach to writing and storytelling.’
Richard looks at Donald E. Morese and Kalman Matolcsy’s The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays on the Fiction: ‘The myth-infested landscape of Robert Holdstock’s Ryhope Wood would seem to be fertile ground, not only for walking legends and “mythagos”, but also for literary criticism. After all, in the sequence Holdstock tackles not the structures of mythic fiction – dark lords, questing heroes, magical macguffins and so forth – but rather the concept of myth itself, and how the same core stories have echoed down through the millennia, amplified and distorted and reflected by centuries of human experience.‘
Robert has a somewhat unusual book for us this week — a werewolf story, in verse: ‘I’ve had one previous experience with fantasy in verse (well, unless one counts the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the like), and it wasn’t a happy one. Nevertheless, when Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth crossed my desk, I screwed my courage to the sticking point, as they say, and I’m happy to report that my valor was justly rewarded.’
Robert brings us a film developed from a game. Don’t groan — it’s not bad. It’s not bad at all. It’s Battleship, and it takes place in Hawai’i: ‘There’s a lot in this film that’s thoroughly predictable, but it’s a lot of fun, the effects are effective, and the action sequences are real edge-of-the-seat sorts of things. It’s tight and focused and the pacing is excellent. Perfect if you want to spend a couple of hours cheering on the good guys.’
Denise does something she never thought she’d do; review a confection made with – GASP! – milk chocolate. The dark-chocolate-or-bust member of GMR dug into Justin’s Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups, and didn’t mind them in the least. ‘The combination of smooth milk chocolate and that gritty, chewy, substantial peanut butter makes me reconsider my ennui over milk chocolate in general.’ Read her review for more!
Robert has a look at a very special book of and about graphic literature, Justin Hall’s No Straight Lines: ‘It’s tempting to say that comics underwent a radical transformation in the 1960s and ’70s. They didn’t. What did happen was that comics as a medium, with the rise of underground comics through the agency of R. Crumb and his peers, underwent a radical expansion of style, genre, and subject matter as an addition to the “mainstream.” Part of that was the advent of what Justin Hall, in No Straight Lines, has termed “queer” comics.’
Cat R. tells us about a couple of rootsy albums that she calls ‘family friendly’. She says both Why Why Why and Old Barn qualify as ‘… music I can share with my godkids, ages 6 and 8, on roadtrips without anyone’s sanity or boredom being threatened.’
Epilogue, a tribute to mandolinist and singer John Duffey, got Gary’s toes tapping. ‘Duffey was a founding member of both The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene, two of the most important groups in the history of modern bluegrass.’
He found something new in Bienaventuranza, the latest release by the Argentinian musician who goes by Chancha via Circuito. It’s called digital cumbia. ‘This musical style combines Colombia’s highly popular folkloric music, cumbia, one of the most popular in Latin America, with electronic beats and other modern touches.’
We finish off our music reviews with Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham’s Spring The Summer Long which solicits this lead-in by Jack: ‘Yawn, another bloody brilliant album from a duo, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, who can do no wrong. So why should you get excited? Are you completely daft, man? This is Aly Bain on fiddles and Phil Cunningham on damn near everything else (accordion, whistles, cittern, piano, keyboards, mandolin) with more than capable assistance from Malcolm Stitton acoustic guitar, and bouzouki and Stuart Nisbet on acoustic guitar, dobro and pedal steel. How can you not like it? Do you ‘ave not a touch of magic in your soul?’
Puppetry is our What Not theme this time. In his review of Figures of Speech Theatre’s Anerca, Chris writes of a puppet theater that owes as much to Japanese drama and American-Indian Mythology as it does to Jim Henson and Sherri Lewis. ‘Among the complex issues they set out to explore with Anerca are cross-cultural interactions, the misunderstandings of language, and direct emotional communication. Rather than putting Western words into another language, they focus on the emotional tone, physical world and spiritual quest of the characters.’
Speaking of puppets, Denise dives back into our stock to review Folkmanis’ Narwhal puppet. She was smitten with the sea creature, and took to him right away. ‘I soon had him tootlin’ around while I sang “Octopus’s Garden”. He seemed to be the type that’d like that song.’ Read her review for more about this puppet!
All songs are stories and Arlo Guthrie’s ‘City of New Orleans’ is certainly one of the better told ones. Recorded at a Stanhope, NJ performance on the eighth of August, twenty nine years ago, it tells the melancholy story of a train as it’s headed to New Orleans one night. Arlo, son of Woody as you most likely know, is in particularly fine voice here.