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Not the last words from Kentucky

In the ashes of Kentucky's presidential primary, it has been difficult to make sense of this place I now call home. Surely to goodness I cannot and should not feel so comfortable among a population in which, what was it? twenty percent? of the voters felt race was an issue. Voted against Barack Obama because he was black?

Now, I never have spent the time to see how the question was formulated, which makes a difference. Depending on how it was written, for example, some may have voted against Obama because they believe his race makes him a target for violence, and they would prefer not to see that happen in these turbulent, divisive times. But that's probably wishful thinking. Probably Kentucky voters were just a bit more honest and a bit less...evolved is the word which wishes to be typed, despite the presence of a huge museum to the creationism movement up Covington way.

All of which is relevant here, in a place where we talk mostly and peripherally and at least occasionally about music, in this way.

Last week, before we decamped for the beach, downtown Morehead hosted the Clack Mountain Festival. And let me digress just one moment further to note that everything you've heard on album or heard about Chris Stapleton's vocals, Stapleton being the Kentucky-bred lead singer of this particular Nashville bluegrass super group (and I'd forgotten Tammy Rogers played fiddle and sung harmonies, but she was terrific, as always), everything you've heard is true. His is one of the great voices of our generation, and I do not succumb to hyperbole. He's just that good. Rumor has it their next album might not be bluegrass, or that Stapleton himself wants to make a southern rock record, or whatever. Rumor being rumor, I don't care. Whatever he wants to sing, I want to listen to.

Not what I came here to type, though.

The Clack Mountain festival had booked the Carolina Chocolate Drops in the slot before Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, and, especially after the primary, some of us had some concerns that they would be too warmly received by some of our less evolved neighbors.

First song, the cloggers came out. Not just at stage left, where they had been keeping themselves, but stage center. First song, all the older men and (and few women) who seem mostly to be the only people keeping this tradition alive, who dance mostly by themselves and in some veiled competition with each other (if only, now, to see who can keep going longest), all the folks who one might caricature all kinds of ways in a racially charged environment, they came right out to dance and had a big time the whole set.

Now, surely somebody will note that African-American performers have always been enjoyed by a racist society, and maybe that's part of it. But I prefer to think the music did the talking, and the music won out.

At one point Rhiannon Giddens introduced a song with the notation that it was one she'd known for a long time, but recent events had made it reasonable to sing. And I thought, ah, she's going to obliquely comment on Obama, and sat back expecting, I don't know, "A Change Is Gonna Come" or some such. Instead, she cut loose with a version of "Single Girl, Married Girl" that I hadn't heard before.

A good time was had by all, and I took that for a good sign.

A postscript. At the end of the day I happened to notice Mike Farris's Salvation In Lights sitting on my desk, because I'd been talking about him with a friend and had played a song or two. So I tossed it into the CD player, that being easier than, y'know, filing the thing. There it was: "Change Is Gonna Come." Now, the Chocolate Drops surely don't need me making repertoire suggestions, but, that said, it would have been the right song to hear that night, at least for me. And I think Mrs. Giddens could nail it. Of course she could.

Posted by grant on June 16, 2008 7:24 AM | Permalink