So, the obvious question, which I finally ask about halfway into our recent interview: C.W. Stoneking, are you a white guy trying to sound black? Or at least, are you trying to make songs that sound like black songs? “Well, yeah, most of the music I listen to was made by black people,” he explains. “[That’s] not really the reasoning, though. It’s just the sound I favor. I [have] a textural palette that tends to fall into that category, but I don’t categorize it as that, generally, or think of it in that way.” The relationship, as far as he’s concerned, is purely aesthetic....
November 24, 2024
Playing very old music, Spotify snuck in something that only sounded old and tricked us.
Now, we keep listening, amused by how this fooled us... and how much we like it.
ADDED: Here's a Village Voice article from 2016: "Down Under Blues: Australia’s C.W. Stoneking Is a Roots Music Disciple":
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16 comments:
Can soul be mimicked?!
The Squirrel Nut Zippers were doing something similar back in the 1990's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8DXgk4-CcU
Leon Redbone did this back in the 70's.
It's a production style, nothing more. Just because you have the latest wizbang technology at your fingertips doesn't make the music better. Look at half of the crap that passes as popular music today. Technically superior, but it's still crap.
"Old-Timey" music goes back to at least the 20's and is featured prominently (including the phrase "old-timey") in Brother Where Art Thou. Musicians have been trying to sound old-timey for a long time. The Carter Family were trying to sound more "old-timey" than they actually were (I have always thought).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_music
Here's another one: an album by Doc Watson in the 70's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-Timey_Concert
The new old-timey music doesn't hold a candle to the older old-timey music if you ask me.
Dude has an album titled "Gon' Boogaloo." Does that mean he is a Trump supporter?
"Leon Redbone did this back in the 70's."
Stoneking is writing new songs in an old style as well as singing and playing them in an old style.
We were listening to a whole lot of old-timey sounding music on Spotify, and most of it was quite old (100 years or so). That's why we assumed when we heard "The Love Me or Die" that it was just another old recording. I looked it up and saw that the artist was born in 1974. We were amused by how it fit in.
As mindnumbrobot points out, Stoneking is using old recording technology to mimic old music, which most of the examples I mentioned don't do, so that's different. Which was probably the whole reason for the post, so maybe I missed the boat a bit, but I would argue that the heart of old-timey music is to take the listener back one way or another.
Also, the Beatles started out playing skiffle, which intentionally used crude, out-of-date instruments like the washboard to sound old-timey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiffle
"Dude has an album titled "Gon' Boogaloo"..."
He's using "boogaloo" in its older slang meaning (I think I read somewhere), and not as a 70s disco term or as that recent "Boogaloo movement" (which I'd forgotten about)(see "'Boogaloo' Is The New Far-Right Slang For Civil War").
Stoneking is writing new songs in an old style as well as singing and playing them in an old style.
He is recording them to sound like the old time "race records" of the 20's and 30's. I actually like the songs and am okay with someone (white or black, American or foreign) doing this, but I suspect someone will be offended.
I love the topic of adopting an old style and what degree of originality is best. Meade and I had a long conversation on the subject and it was not limited to music. A lot of it was about pottery and some of it was about poetry.
I was being tongue in cheek about the "Boogaloo" title - given that he is Australian, I suspect he isn't writing songs about obscure, hypothetical white-supremacy groups in the US. I would note, however, that he appears on the album cover in what appears to be aboriginal back-face.
Sirius FM is free till 12/2/2024. Have no account? Sirius in car? No Problemo!
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