Introduction Those of you who follow us on Facebook know that we often recognize artistsâ birthdays. Thatâs mostly my work. With plenty of thinking about mortality in our blog posts, itâs worth celebrating the musicians that help us find our way … Continue reading →
Murder Ballades I attended eighth blackbirdâs performance of Bryce Dessnerâs Murder Ballades few weeks ago, on Good Friday, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Matthew Duvall, eighth blackbirdâs percussionist, had mentioned the performance on our Facebook page, and … Continue reading →
“Those songs are gifts” On warm, humid evenings in Pahokee, Florida in 1947, teenager Mel Tillis would hear the neighbors arguing. Through open windows, broadcasting across the space between their home and his, their recurring shouting match of distrust and acrimony … Continue reading →
The cool room “The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me … is to prolong the moment of contemplation … by hushing it with an alluring monotony.” — William Butler Yeats, The Symbolism of Poetry “Oh Lord” — … Continue reading →
Ghosts, Orchards, and Borders Last November, in a post about Bruce Springsteenâs âHighway Patrolman,â I wrote of Nebraskaâs palliative effects. I listened to that album without moderation during a hard time in high school. Years later, I listened to another … Continue reading →
Carrie & Lowell by Sufjan StevensI first fell in love with Sufjan Stevensâ music in 2004; I was fifteen and a friend put âRomulusâ on a mix cd. In the song, a young boy, growing up in Romulus, Michigan, tells … Continue reading →
We return today with the second part of our interview with Anna Shternshis and Psoy Korolenko about their rediscovery and redevelopment of songs written by Jewish Holocaust survivors in 1940s Ukraine. Read Part One here. With this post, we’ll feature two … Continue reading →
Introduction We have rarely strayed far from English language sources at Murder Ballad Monday. Whether the songs we explore pull from the British Isles or from African-American or Maritime traditions, for example, our idiom has typically been English, and our … Continue reading →
Introduction – “The Cruel Ship’s Captain” Today’s ballad is notable both for its brevity and for the depravity it depicts.  The brevity is mostly a product of the Anglophone seamen and laborers who worked the song over time to a fine edge like a … Continue reading →
Murder ballads made for dancing The Corries’ performance of “The Massacre of Glencoe” on our Facebook page several days ago prompted one reader to comment that older songs like it differed with more recent “hardcore” music in that the tenderness of … Continue reading →
