art and agricultural pests

Recently I've revived my love of Talking Heads, thanks in part to seeing my neighbors' TH tribute band, Houses in Motion. They do all the songs quite faithfully, and their frontman is amazingly David Byrne-esque.

Speaking of the dude, he has a nifty journal where he pontificates quite lucidly on various topics. For a music geek, even more fascinating is his web radio. He puts together a 3-hour playlist every month, which then loops continuously.

This dude keeps on top of music and is always listening to new artists, so his playlists are pretty educational. He has his old favorites, like the Brazilian strange-ass old dude Tom Ze, who keeps making great music, like last year's Estudando O Pagode, an operetta(!) about women and feminism, in the vein of the samba/hip-hop amalgam called Pagode. It's pretty stunning.

But back to David Byrne Radio: one of the songs I heard there was Boll Weevil by Greg Hale Jones. I had no idea until I read up about it, but it was a vocal taken from an old field recording of folk tunes (maybe Alan Lomax?) that sits in the Library of Congress. This modern poducer then added instruments to a digitized and processed voice from 60 years ago to create a words-fail-me beautiful tune about devastation from boll weevil invasion ("I see boll weevil, he's sittin' on the square, next time I see him, he got his family there"). Even an agrarian blog added some commentary about the veracity of the old folk tune's description of the biological reality. If you can't wait until the song comes up on the playlist, there's an mp3 still available here, but it cuts off the end of the song.

This made me think again about context in art. Somebody, likely a sharecropper with no education, performed this tremendous tune, and then it's dressed up with modern studio trickery, but has the essence really changed? Or was it just put in prettier frame?

Finally, for old time's sake, here's Talking Heads in all their geeky and funky glory from 1983: