Hello, Babylon!
Last week I stumbled across the amazing little Dust-to-digital label courtesy of an intriguing track that wandered by on Pandora. I immediately fell completely in love and couldn’t get my credit card out fast enough. It was their Fonotone retrospective that initially brought me there from Pandora, but it was their amazing collection of early religious music, Goodbye, Babylon that stole my heart when I got there. The order was completed in but moments, and the last few days have been spent trying to focus on getting ready for classes (which started today) and not thinking too much about that (hopefully) wondrous thing that was headed my way.
Today it came.
Ohhhhhhhh, man.
These ancient voices are whispering and shouting out of my speakers, carrying their history and culture and lives out from those dusty grooves and into my dimly lit room. I may not be able to touch them, but they can sure touch me.
(Yeah, I realize that “ancient” here means my grandparents’ and, sometimes, my parents’ lifetimes, but in the world of pre-fab pop radio most of this music is as alien as Nepalese herding songs.)
I’m only part way through the second of the five CDs of songs (plus an entire sixth disc of recorded sermons!), and I can tell that this is an absolute winner, destined to have a pride of place with great collections like Harry Smith’s Anthology of American folk music and Alan Lomax’s Sounds of the south. There are some beloved old treasures (”Present joys”, Blind Willie Johnson’s devastating “Lord, I just can’t keep from crying”, and Carter Family gems) as well as tons of great stuff I’ve never heard before. One of the most impressive things about it is the sheer diversity and scope of the collection. Most collections tend to be fairly focussed, but here Mahalia rubs shoulders with the Louvins (literally - one her songs immediately follows one of theirs) and the Stonemans share space with the Holy Ghost Sanctified Singers (an African-American gospel jug band!). I become incoherent in the face of all this wonderful music…
And the book is equally spifferific. Over 200 pages of essays and quality notes on every track on all six CDs, complete with the lyrics and the relevant biblical passages. “Present joys” has been a favorite of mine for nearly a decade since I first heard it on Harry Smith’s Anthology, but I’ve never really had a clue what they were singing; I just loved the sound of it. The booklet here not only provides the words, it reproduces the sheet music (for this song) with all four parts, so I can finally untangle the harmonies and actually follow along. Purrrrrrr…
If I had time I’d take some pictures of the set and post them, but I’ve got too much else on my plate, so I’ll content myself with the Amazon shot at the top. It comes in a true wood box, with raw cotton padding. The design and typography of the whole thing is just super cool, riffing on the idiosyncratic writing styles of the time of the recordings:
The best arranged music and hymns
yet published.By authors of wide reputation.
In fairness it’s a lot more cool than practical. The CDs (which are in these cool card sleeves) tend to slide around in the box, and bits of the cotton end up all over the place. I’ll rip the whole set ASAP, and I’ll probably end up mostly listening to it on the computer, with the book close to hand at the beginning.
Truly wondrous stuff. Not cheap, but I think absolutely worth it. It’s sets like this that make clear the powerful distinction between music as culture and life, and music as disposable, consumable fluff. This is music you could live on. (Even if, like me, you’re not a religious person.)
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