Festival

I feel its fitting to talk a little bit about Joanna Newsom, seeing as she has just recetly released an album (Have One On Me), and I also have been a fan of hers for quite some time now. The above video is a wonderful rendition of hers of an old folk song which I think is notable and adequatly carries her aesthetic.
Something that I have admired about Newsom is her poetical structure. She is a master of words...word meanings, as well as the emotions they invoke simply with their sounds. Particularly on her album Ys, she floats really well between two extremes: A knocky, walnutty, clinking, twig snapping kind of sound vs. one which is operetic, classically natured, river flowing.

Joanna has been quoted with saying that she derives a great deal of her inspiration from folklore and folkways, which is fitting, because her music conjures up a strange, child-like nostalgia. It somehow reminds me of taking walks to the library with my mother, or laying in bed under lots of quilts...she taps in to something so intimatly human and old-worldy. I find myself effortlessly day dreaming whilst listening to it: particularly Ys with its long long long songs and pseudo myths about animals and moons and herbs.

This train of thought leads me to think about an essay I wrote for an English class last year. It was focused on the tribal and ritual practices of Mexican rural cultures. The main focus of my essay was comparing and contrasting these highly spiritual yearly rituals with the rituals that the Western world take part in. A few topics stick out in my mind, although I cannot locate the paper on my computer. Firstly, it is common for festivals in impoverished communities to be considerably more lavish than those in more wealthy areas. In this case, those who have less construct more colorful costumes, decorations, and tend to dance,drink, and generally party harder. How intriguing!
Another point of my essay was centered around the fact that Westeren culture revolves around commercialism, consumerism, and plastic. (Have you ever walked into a CVS and paid attention to the amount of plastic around? Scary stuff) This grey "culture" is handed to us by larger companies...it is usually not about enriching the soul or spreading love or bettering the self, but rather stimulating the economy and giving scary companies power. Yikes! We are sadly lacking in earth-based ritual and celebration! Therefore, cultures such as the Mexican culture are particularly striking. Here is an excerpt from an excellent photography book called In the Eye of the Sun: Mexican Fiestas. The photography is by Geoff Winningham and the introduction is by Richard Rodriguez, a very interesting openly gay Mexican man who is a public speaker and highly respected member of the Latino community. These are his words:


"Days, entire weeks, before a fiesta takes place, the preparations begin. There are costumes to sew. Masks must be painted with beatitude or pathos, the demonic snear, or the animal grimace. There are flowers to weave. Mole to boil to green. Wood must be fashioned into angelic wings. And the beast must be selected, cornered, its screeching neck slashed by thick unsentimental hands, its fear separating from its blood... Secular Europeans and Secular North Americans have lost faith in the divine, or perhaps in themselves as ceremonial creatures or perhaps in themselves as creatures at all. Our landscape is sterile, intellectual; we have bricked out heaven." R.Rodriguez

To bring things full cirle here--
I beleive that Joanna Newsom, with her strong folk-based lyrics and sensibilities, is an example of injecting humanity back into our lives, and that it just what makes it so stimulating, hopeful, mystical, and inspiring. There are quite a few soul-conscious things going on today; art and music wise.
I think it is so important to include some sort of self-reflective ritual into ones life...be it sitting in silence for a few moments every night...taking a nature walk...letting the full moon naturally cleanse you. We in the States may not be living on "old land" or have ancient cathedrals, but we are living through olds souls, as is everyone. We, after all, are all sacred.
madeleine

p.s. due to saving these images improperly, I do not know their source! Anybody know them? Images on the internet start to float around without names attached to them after a while it seems... the three center images are from the aforementioned book.