The Surrogate Grounding From Urban Folk Music

One of the fondest memories that I have from my years as a young man was my participation in the resurgence of American folk music that occurred in the sixties.  Folk music served as a form of surrogate organic grounding for urban young people who were surrounded by the experiential vacuum created by modern technological society and who needed a source of flowing blendable continual organic stimulation in order to be able to pull out of their numbness and, particularly for many American young people during this period of history, to give them the energy to effectively fight the twin injustices of the repression of blacks in the South as well as the seemingly endless Vietnam War through civil disobedience.  Injustice seemed to be the major impetus for many young Americans to get immersed in folk music.  They needed a situation that was in their faces to propel them into getting involved in the folk idiom.  However, there were also some who like myself focused on using folk music as a way of finding roots and thus organic grounding through becoming a part of an organic musical culture.  Or even several organic musical cultures.  So, it wasn’t just a matter of finding our American roots, but also the roots from where our family ancestors came.

In my case, the perfect musical source for my family ancestors was Theodore Bikel.  Theodore Bikel was an Austrian Jewish actor and folk singer known for his performance of three different types of ethnic music: Yiddish music from Eastern Europe, Israeli music and Russian Gypsy music.  The Yiddish music was from my real roots, and the Israeli music and the Russian Gypsy music were each from my idealized roots.  Like many Jews of my generation, Israel represented for me a young exciting country that permitted a rush of creative Jewish energy, free from the repressive influences of the European ghetto and free from the admixture of the non-Jewish enlightenment cultural influences that Jews were exposed to in Western Europe and North America.  And Russian gypsy music with its balalaika instrumentation represented a nostalgic view of what my Russian-speaking grandparents must have listened to in the highly Russian-influenced culture that was so much a part of Odessa where they lived until they immigrated.

Now my surrogate cultural organic grounding includes other cultural roots apart from those connected with my family.  There are the roots to which I feel connected which relate to the United States of America.  Here, the folk singer with whom I feel the most connected is Pete Seeger.  Apart from being a superb musician, Pete was like a cultural musical glue who brought people together through music, and thus, worked to achieve the transcendent purpose of a peaceful melting pot society.  After all, he was the person who first sang “Kumbaya” publicly.

There came a time when I decided to explore the roots of my American musical roots, namely, the music of England, Scotland, and Ireland.  For England and Scotland, I immersed myself in the music of Ewan McColl. Ewan, was until his death, Scotland’s most famous folk singer.  Much of the time, he sang without the musical grounding of an instrumental accompanist, but in truth, he didn’t need it.  His voice was lyrical and powerful and absolutely haunting.  It was complete unto itself.  Somehow, it provided its own grounding.  His repertoire included songs from Scotland, England, Ireland, Canada and Australia.

My musical explorations in other cultures ultimately led to my adopted roots, my adopted grounding.  In the U.S., one had the freedom to be whoever one wanted to be within certain parameters.  This meant it was possible to adopt a culture or, at least, aspects of a culture with which one had no natural connection.  After studying American folk guitar during my 9^th and 10^th grade high school years, I then switched to studying flamenco guitar for a while and then ultimately classical guitar, both of which had a strong Spanish connection.  I felt an instant rapport with both of these kinds of music, although, particularly with classical guitar.  After high school, I almost went to Spain for a summer to study with the great classical guitarist Andres Segovia, but that is another story.

Nevertheless, my love of Spanish classical music had an important influence on my decision to move to Mexico where I developed adopted roots, an adopted organic grounding in Latin American folk music through a group called the Folkloristas.  This group consisted of five men and two women, and between them they played more than one hundred instruments.

I guess I could say that I am a good example of a young urban person who, in his search for organic grounding through music, ended up with many rich layers of surrogate grounding.  It’s not the same as real grounding in a traditional natural living environment, but it’s a reasonably good substitute.

© 2024 Laurence Mesirow