Music Masters and Rhythm Kings Essay

It is a rare opportunity to witness masters of the aged tradition relishing in their element sweat on their foreheads as beats and strings pulsate the story of a past nearly forgotten. It is a gift if one is fortunate enough to see them live, simply seeing them and hearing their symphony on the limited capacity of burgeon forth is lock in a treasure, much like watching some of the stovepipe keepers of old time Southern practice of medicine in Peggy Bulger and Melissa Shepard Sykes use up Music Masters and Rhythm Kings.We review role players Eddie Kirkland, Neal Pattman, Homer Pappy Sherill and the Hired Hands, and Florencio Baro as they recount the origins of their music and how they have come to imbibe it. Southern music is essenti in all(a)y an amalgam of two musical cultures combined despite a clash of ideals and beliefs, and despite centuries of oppression and dispute. As Charles Joyner, a Southern refining historian mentions in the film, it is impossible for the South ern peoples not to be influenced by the culture of another race, especially if they are so ingrained in their society.Though these people might argue once against these relations, there is no denying the consid geological erable influence of African culture in the nomenclature, the mannerisms, and especially, the music of the South. History dictates that conventional South American music finds its roots in the harsh functional fields. Pappy Sherill phrases this perfectly when he says that these farmers do as a trend of putt joy to themselves sic while theyre working. At the same time, Southern music also represented the subversive culture of the African slaves.Their music became their way of expression because they k stark naked that the white man can have no deem. Bringing their own kind of musical tradition from their homeland, they created a new one that came to represent and signal the changing dynamics of the American South. In the film, we see Pappy Sherill and the Hir ed Hands, one of the few old-time string bands that present actively in the South. Their music embodies the respite that Southern farmers crave afterward a day of toiling under the hot sun.It is a fast-paced jig that consists of music from a fiddle, a guitar, a banjo, and a cello, all coming together in an energetic symphony of strings. Pulling it all together is Sherill, who at a very ripe age still remains as one of the best fiddle players in the country. Folklorist Glenn Hinson defines his ac nominateg as propelled by advanced technique that harkens back to the days when fiddlers do their instruments cry and sing. Playing professionally since he was thirteen years old, Sherill was a prodigy who created music despite financial setbacks.He only owned a proper wooden fiddle when he managed to save cash from a side job, and only after using a tin fiddle for some time. In 1976, Sherill won the award for Best fashionable Fiddler in the National Fiddlers Championship, opening doo rs for him to play in legion(predicate) road show and concerts. But, when Pappy sang and compete out of joy, Eddie Kirkland and Neal Pattman sang the sonorous, super emotional tunes of the blues. Eddie Kirkland grew up harvesting cotton, and during the production of the film had once again stepped foot in the cotton fields.Drawing back to memories of those hardships, Eddie remembers doing this grinding, back-breaking work as a child. It was only the field hollers, work songs and phantasmals of the African-American people that pushed them to go on. Arising from this work songs were the blues, a uniquely Southern music that Kirkland loves so dear. As we can hear from the film, Kirklands music is derived from years of toil and work, utter a time of inequality and hardship. He describes it as heart-wrenching Blues. And so it is, with the soft, poignant, just irregular riffs of his guitar accompanied by his soulful voice, we feel sadness and desperation. But, he goes beyond this b y also singing songs of love following the Blues format. It is a rare opportunity to hear the Blues as it couldve been played at the beginning of the 19th century, in the backwaters of the rural South. Also reverberative of Kirkland is Neal Pattman, a maestro of the blues harp, who also rose from the working fields. His music, as any Blues music would be, touches the heart and with his harp he creates an as yet more wrenching elegy.We follow the flow of his music as it rises and stops, as he accompanies it with his voice. We listen and we are transplanted back into the days of old when the artlessness of the cotton fields is an unwanted sight. Hailing from further South is Cuban musician Florencio Baro. A singer and percussionist, his music remains a pure agency of his African heritage. His songs are sung in his ancestors native African language that as a child he has learned to understand and to appreciate. much(prenominal) like South American music, his music as a confederacy of two cultures brought together despite odds. Historically, his music arises from the spiritual cult of Santoria, a religion established by African slaves brought to Cuba. What started out as spiritual hymns as a way to once again reconnect with their distant land, is at a time heard as Afro-Cuban music. It is played with an energetic combination of African percussions and Cuban guitars. In Baros hands, the music achieves a life of its own.The beats smart as Baros voice sing of the woes of the African slave, weaving itself in and out of the notes, all in a way that is dramatically hypnotic. And fascinate the audience were as they glimpse at this fragment of the past that, unfortunately, seldom reaches the majoritys ears. These men represent a bygone era of music that is formed when culture clash and are forced to combine. But, in retrospect, what we are singing of now and what our music is today, all boils down to the fadeless pursuit of expression that these men have achieved .