Through his soundtrack to the film O Brother, Where Art Thou and the subsequent Down From The Mountain concert and film, T. Bone Burnett has played apart in a resurgence of interest in the country and bluegrass music of the American South.
One tradition that he has highlighted has been the Appalachian country death songs; gothic backwoods ballads of mortality and disaster. The Violent Femmes are one band that have taken this tradition and who have used it to confront their audience with the reality of sin. In the words of Flannery O’Connor: “to the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
At one point in his career, T. Bone Burnett found that his songs critiquing society were being misunderstood by people who thought he was simply pointing the finger at others. Because he believed that any discussion of morality has to begin with oneself he switched many of his songs from the second to the first person. So, instead of singing, “He couldn’t help but notice her,” he would now sing, “I couldn’t help but notice her.” To reinforce the point he later wrote a song entitled The Criminal Under My Own Hat. David Eugene Edwards, lead singer with Sixteen Horsepower, sums up this approach when he says that his songs are all about the fact that we are all in trouble, that we all need a Saviour.
In her novels Flannery O’Connor also wrote about the way in which the holy interpenetrates this world and affects it and the group of musicians we are considering has also made use of this way of communicating faith. In her song Holy Spirit, Victoria Williams writes about experiencing the Holy Spirit in very ordinary situations and through very ordinary people. For Victoria Williams, the Holy Spirit is what makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes your heart go ping and it can be found anywhere - on a mountain top, ‘neath the stars, in a churchyard and even in some bars. Another band finding the Spirit or face of Jesus in a bar are Over The Rhine.
You never know just what on earth you'll find in the faces of a stranger or in the dark and weary corners of a mind because, here and there, when you least expect it you can see the Saviour's face. The holy interpenetrates our world and affects it but often we are not looking all that close and cannot see, so artists like Victoria Williams, Over The Rhine and Flannery O’Connor create little epiphanies that reveal Christ for us in the ordinary experiences of life.
How do you think non-Christians hearing these songs from mainstream bands on mainstream record labels would respond to them?
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Mark Olson & the Creekdippers - Poor G.W.
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