All My CDs, pt 16: Bound to Go

Bound to Go - Andrew Calhoun & Campground

Folk music is music that’s more fun to sing than to just listen to. It was the first kind of music: made not by a performer for a silent, receptive audience, but by a group collaborating to create an experience that would tie them together as a community and make life that much more bearable during times of hardship. During the times in my life when I’ve attended religious services, I always named singing as my favorite aspect of worship, and cannot imagine a communal spiritual experience without some collective music-making involved.

I sometimes fear that this kind of music is dying, as more people think of songs as something that creative writers and skilled performers produce for a consuming majority rather than something all people can participate in on some level. But I think enough non-professionals are making music - whether by performing live on street corners or remixing popular tunes on the internet - that the folk song as a cultural institution isn’t quite dead yet.

Bound to Go is a collection of spirituals and folk music of black Americans from the time of slavery and after. Many are clearly work songs, sung to stave off the fatigue and pain of being forced to labor under unhappy conditions (“Them ol’ black gnats, they so bad / they bites and stings and drives me mad”). Others are more sublime, sweetly describing heaven and the coming of a more perfect future (“Weep like a willow, moan like a dove / if you wanna go to heaven, gotta go by love”). Like any piece of art from another time or culture - or even contemporary art - some background knowledge of history helps to understand the context. But the songs are enjoyable even without such knowledge, because the feelings they express are universal.

Albums like this one are important for preserving the songs from cultures and subcultures of the past, but the songs really come alive when you take the time to learn them and sing them, especially in groups. For this reason, I have found more enjoyment from singing along to these songs than from just sitting back and listening to them. They are not difficult, even for people with very little musical ability or training. A few of the tracks on the album - such as Run Mary Run or Blow Your Trumpet Gabriel - that are produced and arranged such that they are enjoyable as much as a passively-received performance as they are fun to sing. The trumpet solo that concludes the last track, Tree of Life, is especially appreciable.  But most of them are short, simple, and minimally arranged.

So, if you choose to listen to this album, my advice is this: Sing along. Learn the tunes. Sing them when you’re working or bored or suffering or celebrating. Encourage others to sing with you. I don’t care if you actually believe in Satan or Jesus or heaven or hell, or whether you feel any personal connection to black American culture and history; these are damn good songs and should be remembered.

Next: Barricades & Brickwalls