Echt American
"...The French critics were the ones who read abstract expressionism as being echt American. They were the ones who insisted on Pollock, for example, as a lariat-swinging son of Wyoming, whereas at home Clement Greenberg and later William Rubin were insisting on Pollock's links to Picasso and Braque and analytic cubism of 1911 and 1912."
My music is both echt American ("lariat-swinging" through the use of acoustic guitars, dobros, etc.) and echt European (through avant-garde and experimental procedures).
Americans with a European heritage (almost all) usually have to go to other countries or continents (in a figurative sense) to access some of the roots of “echt American” music because in some cases a more popular version of it was already Europeanized, Led Zeppelin for example. Their early fans were exposed to blues as a foreign fusion, then returned to the U.S. to explore the sources. For me, it was the Blues Breakers album, then a little deeper with Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and so on. It was cool to have this kind of curiosity about the influences of your favorite artists, to the point of actually wanting to play the instruments.
The guitar is sometimes a symbol of roots Americana in the south and west, but its parentage is in Europe (the lute), in Africa (the kora), and in the Middle East (the oud). And yet the followers of "authentic" American music seem to disregard that history, or perhaps are unaware of it.
I see traditional instruments as being containers for musical styles and genres for a more regional sound (for example delta blues) but can also hold all the sounds from the Nile Delta, and from regions in the Sahara through the similarities as stringed instruments--as well as the various differences in the music itself (melody, harmony, and rhythm), and the ways in which the music is embellished. Synths are containers as well but everything is inside one container, and when you play the container it is more "global" in nature and not "regional". If synths were associated with specific places, such as a synth from Lagos, then it would always have an African vibe.
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I was thinking about all the songs that I wrote since the early 1990s and I realized that even though I don't like country music per se, the influence has crept into my work. As a native Chicagoan, blues has been there since the late 70s. The first riffs I learned on a guitar (and bass) were blues and boogie-woogie riffs. Then I found myself using a 12/8 blues shuffle in a piece of ambient space music I wrote titled Miles From Mars 20 years later in 1999 when I went on a foray into ambient and electronic music.
In retrospect, I realize my interest in [old school] country music started with Glen Campbell and Jimmy Web, particularly the sound of Wichita Lineman, which I now consider a kind of ambient music.
There is an interesting crossover between country and western music with ambient music, whose roots are almost completely European. So it was odd when Brian Eno's more country-influenced work, especially in his collaborations with Daniel Lanois, started to be popular in states where country music was really echt, like Texas. Conversely, there is a huge European influence in some country music that even country musicians can't deny, which the U.S. has inherited over most of the twentieth century. Even Eno's Here He Comes, on the Before and After Science album reportedly became somewhat popular on a country station in Texas. Eno is the last person that you would think would be interested in country and western music. But it’s not a matter of being interested. It’s a matter of attempting to write something with all your influences in the room, even though you think you’re not being influenced by them.
Regional authenticity isn’t really attainable any longer. Once ideas travel and are freely traded, most boundaries between them eventually disappear.
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