Muser Wins Award

Lumpenprofessoriat has bestowed upon Poet's Musings one of several curmudgeonly awards. The bar was set high: I had to appear to be a poet. My old bones appreciate it when the high-jump bar is placed on the ground. With the award comes a grave responsibility--to bestow other awards on other bloggers. I think you see where this is headed and why Lumpenprofessoriat suspected poets, among others, might like it. The idea is not necessarily to subvert awards, awarding, and awardification, but--well, actually, I think that may be the idea, or one of them.

Here, then, are my awards, which bring with them the image above, although I may have copied the wrong image (sigh, I am a poet), but a giant squid embracing (?) a whale is better than an Oscar, if you ask me.

1. The What's Not To Like Award goes to the Hyperborean, who writes smartly about a range of political and economic topics: what's not to like about that?

2. The Get Off Your Duff and Blog On the Road award goes to KCugno , known as ms. cugno to some, and also the blogger formerly known as Island Musings. Spanning the globe from Hawaii to New Zealand and points in between, this blogger does much more than sit in the chair and blog, and this is but one reason her blog is interesting.

3. In the grand tradition of award-giving, I give an award to the awarder, Lumpenprofessoriat ,
for inventing this ironic award-scheme, and for exhibiting the correct mixture of befuddlement and grumpiness in blogging. As many of us know, befuddlement is often a mask that is as polite as a grump can be, and grumpiness often springs from not being able to understand that which is too outrageous to understand, such as the utterance, "I'm the Decider." A Decider does not say "I'm the Decider"; thus befuddled grumpiness ensues.

4. The Scrap Irony award goes to The Scrapper Poet, for writing poetry, teaching, blogging, and driving in snow--almost simultaneously! --And for just publishing a scrappy chapbook. And because I couldn't summon the discipline to resist the pun, scrap irony.

5. The e.e. cummings/Ansel Adams award goes to Waking Jonas for deployment of the lower case and wry humor, and for photo-management on a blog. If I were to receive some training, my photo-management skills might eventually reach the level of rudimentary.

6. The Poetry Diaspora Award goes to Poefrika, a blogger who posts great poetry early and often, and who also alerts readers to new books of poetry and other literature recently published. Poefrika is among the hardest working bloggers in the blog-business.

I urge you to let the award-games continue. Play anthems of your choice.

Carolina Chocolate Drops

Thanks to one of the blogs I follow, the Hyperborean, I was able to read another blog, the Lumpenprofessoriat:

http://lumpenprofessoriat.blogspot.com/

A post there mentioned the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a three-person African American string-band, which the blogger likes. Co-incidentally, I had just seen a recording of their performing on, of all places, the Grand Old Opry, which I almost never watch but which I channel-changed to for some reason the other day. I wrote "of all places" because I don't know whether any African American performer except Charlie Pride has been on the Grand Old Opry.

Of course, traditional rural American folk and "country" music and African American folk and blues music share some complicated roots, but once such music became commercialized in the early 20th century, it became segregated. This circumstance is well satirized in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, when the convicts and Robert Johnson go into the radio station operated by a blind person. At some point in the 1960s, I think corporate Nashville decided it needed at least one Black performer, so Charlie Pride's career was allowed to flourish. The control exerted by corporate Nashville on its product is notorious; hence the hostility that Johnny Cash often showed and the indifference Willie Nelson still shows toward the establishment there.

On the Opry, speaking for the group, the banjo player and singer, a woman, said the group had studied with an older Black folk musician in the Carolinas. The other two performers, both male, play fiddle and guitar, and the guitar-player also plays the big brown jug.

It was an interesting cultural moment to observe. The all-white Opry audience was polite and even joined in a sing-along, but they were restrained, somehow. Cool. Marty Stewart, who hosts the Opry now and is probably trying to bring it into the modern age, came out and joined the band for the last song. He also tried to get the crowd to stand up when it applauded, but no one would get up. I had to wonder how much the rise of Obama's political fortunes had to do with the appearance of the Carolina Chocolate Drops on the Opry. Maybe nothing.

At any rate, I love the music they make--at once fresh and authentic, definitely Old School, injected with three young persons' zest for refurbishing old music. So here's a shout out to the group, to Marty Stewart (for showing some class), to the Hyperborean, and to the Lumpenprofessoriat. The internet works in mysterious ways.

And here's a link to the group's site (from which I got the photo):

http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/

The group will be in Seattle, in May, for about a week, at the Seattle Children's festival.