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The artists obviously understand the culture and bring it to the public with their heartfelt renditions. I highly recommend this album if you like the primitive music of the mountaineers. As a child of the East Tennessee mountains I loved the movie, Songcatcher, and ordered this soundtrack after watching it. It reminds me of the mountain music I raised on and came to appreciate.
Listen and you wil hear the wind in the trees and the old folks talking beside a wood fired stove I seldom buy CDs but after watching the movie (another must do)I imediately ordered this one. This is a must have for anyone who likes any music. The clarity and quality of the songs from the mountains are great.
Everyone who has heard it loves it, too. I ordered this CD immediately after seeing the movie Songcatcher. I wish there were more CD's like this available on the market. In a short time it has become one of our all time favorite CD's. We particularly like the variety of performing artists, which makes it more interesting. The songs are all pure and beautiful, and we play the CD for everyone who comes to visit.
and would recommend this to anyone who likes old time music i think you would have to like music from the ozarks back in the day when music was simple. we like all kinds of music.
Throw in a few upbeat tunes reflecting the love of "corn" liquor, women and the sometimes funny side of coping with life's trials and tribulations and you have the mountain version of the folk experience. I also noted there that the CD and film were worthy of a separate review of their own. The movie deserves a separate review, however, this CD can stand on its own as a very nice cross section of "mountain music", some familiar most not so.Without straining credulity "mountain music" is the music of the simple folk of Appalachia, those who worked hard in the coal mines, on the hard scrabble farms and in the isolated mills of the region. If you have to choose though, get the CD. Thus, naturally, one of the representatives from that extended clan, Roseanne Cash, is a welcome addition here doing the old traditional "Fair And Tender Ladies" (a version of which that I first heard way back in the early 1960's done by Dave Van Ronk).
Sound familiar. From the copyright date here (and on Ralph Stanley's "Clinch Mountain Sweethearts" where she also does a couple of tracks) that is now incorrect. The songs "speak" of hard and lonely lives, the beauty of the then pristine countryside, the usual vagaries of love and lost and the mysterious ways of a very personal, if arbitrary, god. For starters, apparently, I knew the work of Iris Dement long before I consciously knew her work.
Other themes touched upon, although in some cases obliquely, are the isolation of rural life, that just- mentioned conflict between rural and city values, religious fundamentalism and the, seemingly obligatory, nod to same sex issues (here, in a dramatically compelling way, lesbianism and the local reaction to it) that feature in many modern movies. This was their Saturday night entertainment and with the advent of radio was a unifying cultural experience. Needless to say no country music/folk music/ folk rock music presentation of any kind is complete these days without a contribution form Emmylou Harris. In the case of the revival several years ago of what is called "mountain music" it was the films "The Song Catcher" and, more importantly, the very popular movie starring George Clooney, "O Brother, Where Art Thou.". This review is being used to comment on both the soundtrack CD and movie DVD.
What is not wrong is that her lyrics and vocal range have led me to dub her my "Internet Sweetheart" (Sorry, Greg). The plot line revolves around an English woman's search for authentic American music from the mountains (naturally enough as much of the music crossed over from the British Isles). In that case it was to provide a format for the "glad tidings" that a new political and social movement was a-bornin'. And she does not fail here on the traditional "Pretty Saro". Sound familiar.
In a recent CD review of the music from the now mountain music movie classic, George Clooney's "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou.", I mentioned in passing that the movie from which the CD under review is taken was also a contributing factor to the revival of interest in the mountain music genre. I make amends here and I think that this settles all debts. So listen up to a genuine piece of Americana. Of course, when one talks of mountain music in its 20th century incarnation then the name The Carter Family is front and center. Here she does a split version of the traditional Child Ballad "Barbara Allen". Note: Although I am mainly interested in the `Songcatcher" film for its soundtrack the movie itself is worth seeing.
Put the music and those themes together and you have a passable couple of hours. Naturally, in such a commercial effort there s a little love interest thrown in with a real live mountain man musician wary of "city ways" from his own earlier experiences.
Along the way she learns, perhaps more than she wants to know, about this milieu as she collects her music. That said, the following excerpt from that above-mentioned review can be used here to set the tone for a look at this "Songcatcher" (and a couple of words on the movie, as postscript) here: "Sometimes a revival of a musical form, like the "talking blues", that highlighted the urban folk revival of the early 1960's is driven by a social need. Finally, of necessity again, no "hard" mountain music themed production can be complete without a piece from Hazel Dickens who, as a woman of those mountains, has probably done more to popularize this art form than anyone else.
I have mentioned in reviews of her work that I had become enamored of her music through her rendition of "Jimmy Rodgers Going Home" on a Greg Brown (now her husband) tribute CD. The CD under review is a compilation of music from that movie, a not unnatural tie-in in the modern entertainment business. Sure it does, except, it is done with simple guitar, a blazing fiddle and, hopefully, a full-bodied mandolin."With that in mind there only remains the need to highlight some of the better efforts here.
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