Tag: music

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Arts & Entertainment folk guitar folk music music

The Beauty of the Bells


Have you heard of Steve Gillette? If you were alive in the 1960s and liked folk music, there’s a chance the name rings a bell. Gillette never reached the top of the charts, but he’s a very talented singer/songwriter. Many of his songs have been performed by artists you have heard of including John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian and Sylvia, Nanci Griffith, and Linda Ronstadt.

The Bells in the Evening appears on Gillette’s debut album released in 1967. The album, simply titled “Steve Gillette,” stands as one of Steve’s finest recordings. “The Bells” is a bittersweet (actually sweet bitter) song of love blossoming in the spring and fading away in the fall. It’s a song full of immense joy and sorrow that combine in a mixture of incredible beauty. The song is also replete with imagery. When you listen, what images come to your mind?

I’ve revisited “The Bells in the Evening” adding some embellishments and the sound of my new guitar. Here’s my cover.

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acoustic guitar Arts & Entertainment children music parenting

Rise and Shine


Singer and songwriter Raffi has conveyed a central message of respect for children and people of all races during his forty-year career of entertaining children’s audiences around the world. The Washington Post has called him “the most popular children’s singer in the English-speaking world.” Raffi has recorded dozens of albums and sold more than fifteen million records. He has also written books for children and adults.

Raffi Cavoukian was born to Armenian parents in Cairo, Egypt. In 1958, the family fled genocide in Turkey and immigrated to Toronto, Canada. Raffi began his musical career singing to children and parents in libraries and eventually in concerts. He says about those early years:

“I thought about who these children were as people. My audience was full of children ranging in age from three to seven years. I wanted to learn about these young people, and the more I learned, the more I was fascinated by how intelligent, spontaneous, and delightful young children are. I was full of admiration for who I call humanity’s ‘primary learners.’ By observing and interacting with these children, I learned something profound: Play is an intelligence that we’re not supposed to lose in our lives. I came to admire and respect the young child as a whole person. That value of respect has guided my whole career.”

Like many parents, I became aware of Raffi’s music when my daughter was a child. Perhaps having a child is a secret door through which only parents and children can pass to hear Raffi’s music.

Raffi has toured the world with his Rise and Shine Band beguiling children and parents alike with his joyful and magical music. His song, “Rise and Shine” quickly became one of my favorites. I played and sang it for my daughter, Danielle when she was a child. Now, it’s my pleasure to play it for my granddaughter, Ashley.

True love does not need or expect reciprocation.

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Arts & Entertainment folk guitar music Videos

Going Gone In Love


Folk Music, Acoustic Guitar, Singers, Performers, Pop Music, Concerts, Country Music

“Deep in the waters of love I’m falling…Goin’ once–Goin’ twice–Goin’ gone.”

Nanci Griffith

“Goin’ Gone” is one of my favorite Nanci Griffith songs. She wrote it. She performs it. I should probably leave it at that.

At the risk of sounding sexist, I’ll say that only a woman could write this song. And, it’s probably appropriate that only a woman should sing it. At least in public.

So, why am I sitting here singing it for you?

Because it’s just so damn beautiful. I can’t freaking help it. Here’s my cover of the song.

As life is interrelated, the effort to cut oneself off from the other has the impact of cutting oneself off from oneself and life itself. We deny part of ourselves when we deny the other, as the other is indeed a part of us.

John A. Powell

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music Videos

From a Texas Town to the World Stage


Nanci Griffith is a popular singer/songwriter who came to prominence in the 1980’s. I bought one of her albums recorded in 1988 and then tracked back to discover more and more of her music. She wrote and performed her first song at the age of twelve.

Griffith was the daughter of musical parents, and she spent her childhood involved with theater and literature as well as music. She began playing clubs around Austin at the tender age of 14 and continued to perform during her college years at the University of Texas, as well as during her stint as a kindergarten teacher in the mid-’70s. Nanci finally decided to make music her full-time ambition in 1977.

One observer said of Nanci, “She found it easier to deal with the cowboys in bars at night than she did with her kindergarten students during the day.”

Nanci Griffith’s world tours are now the stuff of memories and Youtube videos, but her heart and soul will endure for years to come. She recorded and released more than twenty albums during her brilliant career. The video above features me playing one of Nanci’s rousing  songs titled “Say It Isn’t So.”

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing. He plays guitar as a hobby.

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profiles

A Tribute to Kate Wolf


Who is Kate Wolf? If you’re like most people, you probably have no idea. I’m a huge folk music fan, and I’d never heard of Kate until last year, but I’m happy to have discovered her. Better late than never.  Her music pierces my heart, and the simple beauty of her voice, melodies, and guitar-playing transport me to transcendent realms.

There’s a story that a fan at a live concert once complimented Kate on her earrings.  Without hesitation, she removed the earrings and handed them to the fan.  I believe the beauty of Kate’s music emanated from the beautiful being that she surely was.

Kate Wolf came to prominence during a ten year period from 1975 to 1985.  Tragically, Leukemia brought Kate’s life and singer/songwriting career to a premature end at the age of forty-four.  Despite her foreshortened life span, Kate managed, in her gentle way, to become a major influence on the folk scene with songs like, “Give Yourself to Love,” “Across the Great Divide,” “Green Eyes,” “September Song,” and many more.  In all, she produced seven albums including a “live” in-concert album recorded at a music festival in Mendocino, California.

The appeal of Wolf’s music is the same today as it was when she released her first album on her Owl Records label more than 30 years ago. Her music is plainspoken with powerful natural imagery woven into poignant portrayals of the longings, joys, and sorrows of the heart that transcend romantic stereotypes.

Singing in a plain, pure voice, Wolf never indulged in vocal ornamentation for the sake of effect, and she avoided saccharine sentimentality with her natural sweetness.

As an acoustic guitar-based folk artist, she distinguished herself from such forebears as Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor, and from her more self-consciously naturalist and mystical contemporaries in “women’s music.”

Now, when cynicism and irony seem to be second nature to pop music, Wolf’s directness rings truer than ever.

“Kate was unique,” says Berkeley-based guitarist Nina Gerber, who was inspired to become a professional musician after seeing Wolf perform in a pizza parlor in Sevastopol, a small town north of San Francisco.  Gerber became Wolf’s key accompanist from 1978 to 1986. Gerber produced the memorial album, Treasures Left Behind, and she has helped organize and produce all four Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festivals.

“She had her own style,” Gerber says. “There was nobody to compare her to. Nowadays, you listen to somebody and they either sound like Shawn [Colvin] or Nanci [Griffith] or Emmylou [Harris] or whomever.

“Kate really took on the environment she was in, so when she wrote about it, it wasn’t contrived. She didn’t go out of her way to try to be flowery and poetic. She pretty much said things the way they were.”

Yet, while Wolf’s songs seem inimitably personal when she sings them, they lend themselves surprisingly well to interpretation.  As a prime example, Nanci Griffith, an unpretentious young woman who once described her music as “rockabilly” and eventually gained an international audience, lends a soul-searing depth and beauty to her interpretations of wolf’s songs.

When Wolf sang of a woman who “rises like the dolphin,” or an “owl calling softly as the night was falling,” it felt true. She brought the listener into her unpretentious realm while prodding him or her to see the natural world anew — always with love as the bottom line.

Wolf, born Kathryn Louise Allen in San Francisco on January 27, 1942, cultivated her approach after moving to Sonoma County in the early 1970’s. She sang songs like “Across The Great Divide,” “Safe At Anchor,” “The Wind Blows Wild,” “Poet’s Heart” and “Give Yourself To Love” in a pure voice, as unaffected, comforting and honest as you want to hear from your lover in the middle of the night. At the height of her popularity, Kate appeared at The Austin City Limits Music Festival and Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.

“I live for a sense of a feeling of purposefulness in this world, you know, that I could stop my life at any point and feel that my life has been worthwhile; that the people I’ve loved and my children have all reached a point where their lives are now going to come to fruit. And as far as something I live by, it’s to try to be as alive as possible and feel free to make my mistakes and try to be as honest as I can with myself.”

Kate Wolf, 1942 to 1986

 

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current events Essays inspiration issues memories profiles

Wasn’t That a Time?


“Wasn’t that a time?  Wasn’t that a time to try the souls of men?  Wasn’t that a terrible time?”

The lyrics from a sixties folk song made popular by Peter Paul and Mary reverberate through the decades and remain relevant today.

Unfortunately.

The lyrics to the folk song hearken back to the war for American independence and major conflagrations waged since including World Wars I and II.

I recently bought an album by Tom Paxton.  Listening to his music on YouTube brought me back to the turbulent sixties and my love for the folk artists who became popular then.  Listening to these songs of social conscience and satire, love ballads, Children’s songs and others that reflect beautifully, poignantly and heart fully on our human experience, I am struck by the purity of this music.  It moves me deeply.  It penetrates my soul.  It inspires me to pick up my guitar and sing.

Looking back, I realize that these artists, these wandering troubadours, were great men and women.  Some of them are still alive and singing.  What a time the sixties were.  What noble visions for a better world, given voice by these passionate musicians, arose from the struggle.

Some of these visions have been realized.  We live in a better world today in some respects.  Yet we haven’t yet learned our lessons.  We live in a world where human beings still murder other human beings in the name of God.  We live in a world where a Russian President is intent upon restoring Russia to its Cold War boundaries by invading autonomous neighbor states.  We live in a world where hatred and intolerance still threaten our very existence.

“When will they ever learn,” Mary Travers sings plaintively.  When, indeed, will we ever learn?

David Gittlin has written three feature length screenplays, produced two short films, and published three novels. Before quitting his day job, he spent more than thirty years as a marketing director building expertise in advertising, copy writing, corporate communications, collateral sales materials, website content/design and online marketing.