Cow on the Roof O Brother Where Art Thou

Lawd, lawd, bring him expressionless or alive

Open on a chain gang. Low warbling voices begin to rise over the sound of pick-axes and splitting rocks. With this sequence of sounds, I'm dorsum, twelve years old in my den watching the sepia-toned Mississippi fields of the Coen Brothers' finest film (in my personal opinion, anyway…though the Dude does abide…) fade into view on the screen.

The beginning of O Brother, Where Fine art Thousand? is one of my favorite film openings, and I think about the openings of films more than than the boilerplate man. Sometimes I even put on my headphones and walk out the door to a specifically timed playlist to make my commute "montage worthy." The point is that the quality of the opening is hugely dependent on the music chosen. When I hear the low voices of those prisoners, something stirs, and I know this motion-picture show is special.

Ane evening as the lord's day went downward, and the jungle fires were burning

Fade abroad from the chain gang and we meet our unlikely heroes, scurrying through a field every bit a new song, much less ominous, accompanies their escape. The swift tonal change establishes these three every bit different from the haunting men of the chain gang. Their outlook is brighter, skipping guitar to the prisoners' solemn gospel chorus. The original Odyssey has a lot going for it, but what that hero's journeying was missing was the perfect soundtrack. In O Brother, this is remedied.

The Coen Brothers transform the many adventures of Odysseus into a modernistic ballsy tied together with song. The moving-picture show weaves music in with the dialogue and uses it to guide the story — tying together a narrative of politics, race, and a single man's search for redemption. More than than only background, though, the Coens establish the soundtrack itself as an important grapheme in the story. (I find myself attached to movies that practise this, and to musical theater for the same reason.) O Brother is entertaining, to be certain. It's funny and tragic and rich, full of complex characters and historical themes. But the music in this picture show likewise dipped securely into my personal narrative, introducing me to a function of my heritage that I'yard non sure I would have come to love equally much without this flick.

Who shall habiliment the starry crown, good Lord testify me the way

I never had conventional musical tastes. My early childhood was peppered with Motown, Sinatra, and 90s land music. Of course I had my run-ins with the music that makes a millennial a millennial (you know — male child bands, the Spice Girls, that foray into alternative rock, and of course Taylor Swift), just I was always that person digging through my parents' old vinyl and CD's begging to listen to a certain album that I loved for no explainable reason. For me, music is always most memory, with sure sounds tangled up in certain events or periods of my life. Peradventure that's why I was drawn to songs of the past. As I listened to them for the first fourth dimension, I was imprinting my ain retentiveness on them, while also connecting with the memories of those who came and loved them before me.

I bid farewell to one-time Kentucky, the place where I was born and raised

Run across that was the strange matter near the music in O Brother. Even as I heard information technology for what I knew was the first time, information technology didn't experience like a new discovery: I felt similar I was supposed to know it, that it was part of my identity, already in my bones. And perhaps I'm getting melodramatic, merely my deep connection with this moving-picture show, even at a immature age, moved something inside me. The blend of traditional folk and bluegrass music was something I didn't know that I loved, and O Blood brother, Where Art M? delivered it to me in a convenient package of George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson lit upwards in warm greens and browns, trekking the backroads of Mississippi during the Great Depression.

O Brother is a story of the power of music to movement people and bring them together. Information technology's the story of a hero learning who he truly is through the power of i song. And equally I got swept up in the epic, it brought me together, filled a hole, slotted a puzzle piece I didn't know was missing. When I heard the fiddles, the banjos, the mandolin riffs that accompany this slice of cinema, I experienced a strange sort of nostalgia, a déjà vu for events that had never happened. A feeling overwhelmed me, a yearning for a place — for unpaved roads that wound up the Appalachian Mountains, for the smell of freshly broiled sourdough bread, for the laughter of my mother and grandmother stringing green beans into a plastic bag on the deck of an erstwhile houseboat. I recognized myself in this music, and I knew it was part of me, of import to my soul.

Come lay your bones on the alabaster stones, and be my ever-loving babe

O Blood brother and its soundtrack opened upwards a brave new world to me: bluegrass and traditional American folk music. I wasn't satisfied with but ane CD: It had kindled a spark, and I wanted more than. When I was 12, I went with my mother to the Down From the Mount concert when it came through Louisville. I may accept been the youngest person in that location by a couple decades, but I loved every minute of it. My mother also gave me Patty Loveless's Mountain Soul, which would prove to be the second missing piece of my musical heart. After a foray into the state pop so prevalent in the nineties, Patty returned to her Pikeville roots on this album, and it came to define a certain era of my life.

The songs spoke to me. "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" is hauntingly beautiful, and every mention of the places my mother had talked about growing upward brought my heritage, what it was and what information technology wasn't, into clearer focus for me. "Pretty Petty Miss" takes me dorsum to my starting time car and driving back roads with the windows down.

And and then there was "Soul of Constant Sorrow." I had already learned to love Dan Tyminski'south vocals in theO Brother organisation of this traditional song. Only in Patty I discovered something new. The bones of the vocal were the aforementioned, but she made it her own, adding her ain unique link to the chain of people who had loved and arranged and sung those words. I loved that. I loved that the same vocal could be passed down for so long, changing keys and voices but never losing its cadre. This concept is a huge role of the Bluegrass tradition, a musical heritage evolving from generation to generation. People may sing the same words, but they make them mean such different things.

Some glad morning when this life is over, I'll wing away

Once I found Bluegrass, I couldn't escape it. Luckily for me, the popular music industry was similarly enamored, and the early aughts brought a plethora of New Americana options to my eager ears. Perhaps I was in the right identify at the right time, but I don't think it's a coincidence that and so much of my favorite contemporary music — bands like the Avett Brothers and Mumford & Sons — is clearly linked to the music of my ancestors. They are Appalachia'southward musical progeny, no less a child of the mountains than I am.

I have a theory virtually the O Brother soundtrack. In my opinion, the anthology is mode more than important to the direction of popular music than people give information technology credit for. In fact, I'd argue that information technology is direct responsible for the Americana revival that has dominated and so much of popular music for the past decade and a one-half. Now some people may disagree with me (Zelda has her qualms). But the fact of the affair is no album did so much to bring Bluegrass into the homes and ears of and then many. It was named Album of the Year for a reason. And maybe that reason is that, like me, people recognized something of themselves in the guitars and banjos, the twanging vocals and gospel harmonies. This is the lullaby of America, the music this country grew upwards on. No other music is so wholly ours (with the possible exception of dejection and jazz, but even they have roots tangled up in this tree).

From the start notes, I knew this was my music. Information technology was my mother's music, and my grandmother's, and my great-grandmother's earlier that. And in making this motion-picture show, the Coens did and so much more than create an entertaining couple hours of film or a creative twist on a classic tale. They took me home.

My latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run…

bankerprouggers.blogspot.com

Source: https://zeldaandscout.com/2015/01/23/a-cow-on-the-roof-of-a-cottonhouse-or-how-i-learned-to-love-bluegrass/

Share this post