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Wednesday, June 09, 2004

aaaaargh! 

Last summer, way back when my arm was broken and i was dreaming of escaping the 9 to 5 I was delighted when my abstract was accepted by Georgetown university for chapter in an anthology on women and alt. country - me, doing something proper, for a real book, fancy that! a chance to indulge my scholarly fantasies and write about things i love.... over the months i've has sporadic contact from the publishers but nothing as tangible as a word limit or deadline or owt and thus i assumed nothing was happening. i now know different and there was some kind of fuck up. I now have 6 days to write 5000 words - more or less from scratch and with limited resources, no computer* and no access to the key text books. Fuck. I feel i owe it to myself to give it a go, but to be honest even my legendary optimism feels stretched by this.

If anyone has any thoughts, please share. I'm especially looking for songs to write about. *I mean of my own obviously. I've just bought a week pass for homes4u - £6 gets unlimited access but it shuts at 6pm and plays horrible music all the time. but at least it works.



Whither the Knoxville Girl?
Women and Murder Ballads in Alt. Country


The central themes of country music may be summarized
as love, whiskey and death; I would suggest the latter
subject raises many interesting challenges when viewed
in the post feminist era. The country and blue grass
cannon is littered with corpses and many of them are
women. This work will explore the multiple
interpretations and evolution of murder ballads
produced by women within the genre of alt.country.

One of alt. country’s defining characteristics has
been the notion of authenticity above
commercialisation; there is a desire to reclaim the
rawness of country music and to reinterpret its
traditions with a contemporary edge. Thus many
performers revive traditional songs or adopt their
idioms when producing new work. This can be seen as
part of an ongoing process of development which many
traditional songs have undergone over the years, for
example many ballads developed from vernacular songs
from the UK and the debt owed to spirituals has been
well documented.

The murder ballad has been a popular and recurring
motif in country since the birth of the art form. It’s
true they are not exclusively about killing women and
that they are often performed alongside tales of
natural death and destruction; however I would suggest
the majority of the best loved songs, such as The
Knoxville Girl, The Banks of the Ohio et al, tell
blood thirsty tales about the murder of women.

Murder ballads may stir compassion for the victim but
rarely shock; they provide a climate where violence
against women is normalised and their horrible demise
is to be expected. The songs are often cautionary,
providing a warning to women who stray from acceptable
behaviour or who stand out from the norm through their
beauty or innocence.

Women’s deaths are often associated with sexual or
romantic transgression; the victim is simply too
attractive to be allowed to live; she was asking for
it. Sometimes justice is done and the victim is
avenged but this is by no means certain. What
pervades them all is an underlying sense of women as
natural victims. Far from being outsider or rebel
music these songs are horribly familiar in a cultural
climate often saturated with violence, much of which
is sexualised to an uncomfortable degree.

This work will examine the dilemmas inherent in women
singing about killing women. What happens when
contemporary female performers update or reinterpret
traditional murder ballads? What new songs are they
producing and how do murder ballads written by women
today illustrate the evolution of alt. country? What
place does satire and humour have in their work?

This work will particularly focus on three major
figures in alt. country: Gillian Welch, Rennie Sparks
and Neko Case, all of whom perform their own and
traditional murder ballads. It will place their work
in a historical perspective but will especially
concentrate on their original works and how they may
be viewed as part of the evolution of the art form.
Their work will be compared and contrasted with a
range of traditional songs and there most popular
interpreters.

A variety of primary and secondary research methods
will be utilised. These will include lyrical
analysis, interviews, archive material and previous
research into historical and contemporary murder
ballads. More information is available on request.


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Wednesday, June 02, 2004

i like you 

I got home 3 weeks ago yesterday; america feels further than 21 days away but also very close. I met so many inspiring people and saw some amazing things....I've been waiting for a post holiday crash, but thus far it hasn't happened, truth be told i feel deliciously happy and quite delirious with possibilities.

highlights since i got back:
week one. sleeping. that's pretty much all i did. Oh, and drink belated birthday kava. Then i slept even more

week two. wandered around grinning a lot. perhaps its delayed adolescence but i have such a crush on life and i've even fallen back in love with manchester. i could hear piccadilly gardens calling me like a siren. I was going to say its beautiful but that isn't strictly true. if you sit with yer back to the horrible wall and watch the world go by it is quite captivating. i haven't had a chance to talk to everyone i want to yet but i have had some fun - and now i'm trying to detox.

I went to a helpyerselfmanchester gig at the britons protection, some amazing electronica and the music made my hands tingle, which was curious and lovely. can anyone explain how this can happen? i want to make music that makes people tingle. Oh! and i saw morrissey which requires a proper review; suffice to say it was a triumph and i cried during every day is like sunday

week 3. I've been in eastbourne. Nan is well and i think she's happy, but she's shrinking and her world is too; but i'm glad to be here and its always a treat to see her, its been far too long. I soothed my soul on the south downs way and sat on the beach with kitty which was a treat. she wanted to look for stones that looked like damaged hearts and then, inevitably, i took her to the pub. eastbourne is, as ever, beautiful and melancholic and fucked up and dying. there's been some rebranding going on - an attempt to attract trendy young clubbers - it seems to me woefully misguided. but what would i know. and the long man of wilmington has been given a sunflower to hold. i know its fer charidee but it makes me feel slightly queasy.

i'm about to embark on the epic train journey back to manc (8 bloody hours) because - oh joy! - i have to sign on tomorrow. I know i should look for a job but i'm being rather half hearted about it at the moment. I've got some really exciting creative ideas - I'm a little scared of jinxing them by saying too much - but i want to devote myself to them for a wee bit (probably until the rent is due)

i had planned to tell you about new york and lancaster and finally post some gig reviews but i've left my journal at home (i'm using my parents computer) i will post them sometime - i plan to keep on blogging but more about music and politics and mischief and stuff - but it will be erratic because 105 isn't online - actually i have a favour to ask some kid soul out there in the ether: can i come round and use your computer for a couple of afternoons so that i can format twang and thus get the damn thing out? it's all written and everything i just need to make it look good...print it out...proof read it...and then the damn thing printed. I'd be ever so grateful. pretty please with a cherry on top. anyone? i'll bake you cake. and erm give you a stack of twangs

i have an irresistable urge to go dancing. if anyone wants to join me, please holler



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