Courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum
Folk music is like a plate of meatloaf with mashed potatoes. It is nourishing to the body (and mind) and soothing to the soul. Deceptively complex melodies played without amplification and sung by unenhanced voices are the trademarks of folk music. Unlike a Lady GaGa concert, there is very little standing between the performer and the listener; no electronic voice-overs, no backup dancers, and no pyrotechnics. Just the purity of a singer with a song. This Friday evening, like every Friday evening, the American Folk Art Museum is presenting a live concert of folk music. Beginning at 5:30 pm, tonight the Museum will be featuring the music of Annie Dinerman, David Massengill and Greg Cornell.
Annie Dinerman is an award-winning Contemporary Folk Singer-Songwriter whose lyrics reveal a funny, frank and very female point of view. Annie wrote the title tune of her second independent CD of the same name, “Broken Cookies” with producer Steve Addabbo. Addabbo plays lead guitar and bass on nearly all 12 songs. Other players include Denny McDermott (drums), Rex Benincasa (percussion), George Wurzbach (piano) and Tom Welsch (bass). Unemployment, Romance during the Recession, and saving our Environment are some of the themes Dinerman tackles with humor and without frills.
David Massengill is as distinctive a performer as he is a writer. He accompanies himself mainly on the Appalachian dulcimer, which he slings over his shoulder like an electric guitar. The sound of the dulcimer has an intimate, detailed quality that complements the easy graciousness of Massengill’s stage presence. He has achieved virtuosity on the traditional instrument that enables him to wring from its few strings music of a complexity and richness far beyond anything it was ever meant to produce, drawing the listener in to his lyrical imagery and the close-up focus on human foibles and experience that is the substance of his best songs.
Jesus escapes from a mental hospital, history’s greatest villains gather for a dinner party, a New York restaurant kitchen crew saves an illegal alien cook from the immigration man, a young woman and a bandit fall in love as he robs her … these are just some of the vividly imagined scenes and characters with which David Massengill captivates audiences wherever he performs. Massengill’s songs are rich with insight and poetic imagery, they’re upbeat and engaging but full of subtle complexities; this Appalachian dulcimer player with the soft-edged vocal style and offhand stage presence is acknowledged to be one of America’s finest songwriters.
Granny’s Boys with Greg Cornell. The multi-talented Greg Cornell plays guitar, fiddle, harmonica and sings. He has teamed up with two other fine musicians, David Bryan and Danny Rose, and together the three of them perform as Granny’s Boys. Rose plays mandolin and guitar, Bryan plays a genuine washtub bass, together the three sing a tight three-part harmony. Granny’s Boys are best known for the songs “Star of David, Star of Bethlehem,” a song about the 12th Century Knights Templar, and “O Captain, My Captain,” the Walt Whitman poem about the death of Abraham Lincoln that the group has set to music.
Courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum
If folk music is the comfort food of music, then Folk Art is certainly the comfort food of the art world. Encompassing a broad range of media from textiles, to furniture, painting and decorative arts, folk art provides us with an authentic look at American native culture. It harkens back to a simpler time – when women formed quilting circles, craftsmen built and carved furniture by hand and painters captured a landscape or likeness in two dimensions.
Folk art was created for practical purposes not for grand salons, and the preeminent venue to see American folk art is at the American Folk Art Museum. As you are enjoying the live music in the stunning atrium of the Museum, explore the wonderful galleries of the museum free of charge.
While at the Museum, visit the special exhibit, Thomas Chambers (1808- 1869) American Marine and Landscape Painter. Obscure in his own lifetime, Thomas Chambers found fame in the twentieth century with the discovery of The “Constitution” and the “Guerriere,” a rare signed painting of his that unlocked the identity of the artist behind a singularly flamboyant group of mid-nineteenth-century American marine and landscape paintings (shown above). Chambers’s expressive style and bold decorative sensibility appealed to avant-garde taste, and he was hailed as a spunky native original, “America’s first modern.” Although almost nothing was known about his life, his work rapidly earned a place in the growing collections and anthologies of American folk art.
The museum’s permanent collection is an unabashed song of praise to the nation, for the simple reason that American folk art is essentially patriotic, whether celebrating national events, decrying the nation’s dark days, or describing personal moments. Refuge, freedom, ingenuity, land of opportunity—these are phrases identified with the mythology of America, and they are ideas indelibly imbedded in America’s vernacular arts.
Free Music Fridays are held at the American Folk Art Museum, 45 West 53rd Street from 5:30-7:30pm. For more information about Free Music Fridays at the American Folk Art Museum call 212-265-1040 or visit www.folkartmuseum.org. Text courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum.
