Hymns?

I received an early Father’s Day present yesterday. One of my sons surprised me with plans to visit a small town in New Hampshire for a concert. It was a great day for a drive through rural New England to the small Town Hall where the concert would be hosted. And it was a wonderful venue to be introduced to the Folksinger Lui Collins. ****

The concert swept me back to the sixties. If you haven’t heard Lui Collins, I can’t endorse her more than to say that she pulls the audience in with a joyful warmth that makes you smile and ache for more. She partnered with the very talented Anand Nayak. Anand’s incredible guitar work made an ideal pairing with Lui’s voice and repertoire.

BACK STORY

Lui’s last song before the set break was a tune someone else had written based on the melody from an old hymn. It was lovely. But by the end, the inkling of memory was pulling me back to a night at Cafe Rienzi in New York’s Greenwich Village.

I had been sitting around with a group of my usual friends, talking about music. There was my somewhat girlfriend Sue. The Harmonica sensation Louie Lefkowitz, and someone named Tom, whom we did not know well. The topic of conversation was tunes and where to find them. I said that I usually just noodled around on the axe ( meaning the guitar) until I found something to develop. The others chimed in with their methods. Tom scoffed at me. He then opened a leather valise at his feet. From it, he pulled a worn copy of an old hymnal.

“This is the mother lode,” he exclaimed. We were skeptical. ” Isn’t that, like, stealing from other artists?” Louie exclaimed. Opening the hymnal to a well-worn page, Tom smiled and pointed to the fine print, which read, “based on a traditional melody.” He proclaimed to us it was just the “Folk Process” in operation.

THE FOLK PROCESS

The Folk Process was a concept that I believe was first expounded by Pete Seeger. It’s the process of continual reinvention, reuse, and evolution of material in a community. Old songs never die; they are adapted, changed, and grow in tradition through the process. Tom certainly knew his Folkie’s chapter and verse, and while we remained skeptics, there was no doubt that Tom had a whole flock of interesting tunes.

Upon hearing the tune at the concert, this memory came flooding back. Additionally, there came a reminder of the Folk Process. And today, as I write this post, I am reminded that it’s a part of the Folk Process too – the recollection, the passing on of the story, and the recycling of ideas.

****I almost forgot, here is a link to Lui Collin’s website. An incredible artist worth getting to know more about: https://www.luicollins.net