Elizabeth Cotten & Good Ole Music
Watch “Freight Train” by Elizabeth Cotten on YouTube
This is Elizabeth Cotten. When she was a teenager, she bought herself a guitar. It was a right-handed guitar, but she was left-handed, so she taught herself how to play it. Not restrung. Upside down. She invented a style of fingerpicking, now known as “Cotten picking” (and played by people who use rightside-up guitars), and then, on the counsel of her church, gave up guitar.
Many years later, Cotten found herself working in a department store, where, one day, she found a lost little girl and returned her to her mother. The little girl’s name was Peggy Seeger. As in the legendary Seeger family. She became the Seegers’ maid.
Eventually, she played guitar for them, they realized her talent, she played shows, and became very accomplished. She won a Grammy in 1985 at age 90. When I was twelve, I watched this clip on a DVD with my dad and cried.
Indie is silly
I don’t like cynicism. I think it’s for turds (misguided turds). But, in the past 100 years, we have seen music mutate from a way to share feelings and be connected together and just have fun and “get things out” into a way to do all of those things and also make money. And then, in the past thirty-or-something years, we’ve seen it be that and the first thing and, sometimes (just sometimes!), a hollow quasi-art with close to no trace of the first definition. I’m not saying music’s doomed, and I’m not saying that making money from music (or in general) is bad. I’m actually very optimistic about music right now, in addition to its future, and I’m definitely a fan of making money.
I am saying that we see a lot less of Elizabeth Cotten these days. There’s so much Ke$ha, there’s hardly any room for this poor, old (metaphorical) woman. And Ke$ha is fine; she entertains people. She makes her fans feel connected through each other. And, in some weird, gross, glittery, drunk-vomit-stained way, I’d bet that she is really expressing herself, underneath that robotic production. But she’s just not simple like Elizabeth Cotten. Pop music (and dubstep and whatever) is music. In my opinion, it’s not as music-y. In my opinion, the first definition—to make noise just for the sake of being a human—is the most music-y. I might even say it’s the most honest.
I try to listen to music that’s as honest as it can be. I’ve been happy to find that I really like listening to music that’s as honest as it can be. So many records that get blasted on “indie” music blogs seem a little bit dishonest. They’re fine—still music—just not close enough to the Cotten caliber. It makes me feel like the snobbiest snob; if I’m a “hipster”, who are already snobs, then I’m a meta-hipster snob-snob, because I’m really snobby about hipster music. Who gives a shit whether you produced it in the least-corporate-big-label way imaginable, or if you refuse to play the Grammys because they wouldn’t let you decide what song to perform? I feel like a lot of these bands care more about their indie identity than making unique records.
When it comes down to it, though, I guess I just like to hear an old black woman sing more than I do a twenty-year-old angst-romanticizer. I just really like Elizabeth Cotten.
I wrote this post for Unrequired Listening.
Video re-found via Kimya Dawson’s great blog.