Kin

Philly's Magic Gardens

Goddard residency concluded last week.  As students drifted back to their four corners of the globe to begin their studies & create a few passed through Casa Cooper (what Kevin & I dubbed our home).  Gailanne flew from New Hampshire into Philly last Saturday.  We happily scooped her up, ate yummy food at Sabrina's, wandered the Italian Market, & then headed north to the Magic Gardens.

Gailanne is a beautiful person but she's also an extraordinary musician.  She & her brothers formed the band, Jubal's Kin, which has received a ton of acclaim, including being short-listed for a Grammy.  Over dinner Kevin pulled out his guitar & Gailanne hers.  They flipped through dog-eared song books refinding lyrics, tunes, half-written, & whole.  One of my favorites was a song reworked from Romans 7:

"For we know the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold to slavery under sin.  For I do what I do not want & what I want don't do.  Flesh of man I do not understand.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what's right & stand that Lucifer is waiting in sin to drag me in.  Evil lies close at hand.  So my mind is bound in chains under Him with my flesh still under sin.  What a wretched man I am."

The tension of knowing there lies within a highest Self, but we're constantly turned towards sin or bound within it.  This is part of what I love of Old Time music.  It's completely rooted in Americana culture.  It's of this soil, this earth, traditions that have shaped it for the last few hundred years.  It's equally wrought with the complexity of this place over that course of time.  I love the history & study of it all-- Gailanne is becoming a song catcher in the tradition of Alan Lomax.  She traces songs, where they've appeared, how they've changed, who has performed & shared them.

We three sat around the table, catching songs & snippets, eating cookies.  Flesh of man I do not understand.