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Our Music |
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Order David and Roselyn CDs!
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Our Instrumentation |
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Guitar, Harmonica, Trumpet, Mandolin, Banjo and
a raft of African Finger Pianos: Kalimba, Sansa, Mbuti, Mbira,
Morimbula, and Rhumba Box.
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Story Board - Archive
ROSELYN EXPLAINS "NEW ORLEANS STYLE"
People ask me what kind of music I like and I tell them New Orleans Style.
They think they know what I mean. They hear Louis Armstrong trumpets and drums and they are oh so right.
And they are oh so wrong.
New Orleans style is Creole music. Classical music and jazz and rhythm and blues and rock and roll and gospel and country, Cajun, Zydeco, Creole—-mulatto music...mulish music. Mean and low-down and stubbon and light and graceful and airy. Music for/of the survivors.
The music of the slaves was not only Dumballa’s drums, insistent and blood pounding, it was also the music of Mbira—eerie, airy, aerie fingers tripping lightly over the metal patens, the bone patterns, space music, jazz music, new age music, classical music, music of Mother Africa, music of the Fatherland.
One forgets the horns and woodwinds were given to the slaves to play the quadrilles and stately promenades of Europe. These were trained musicians, the orchestras of free blacks were disdained—why pay for something one can get for free?
Women played piano, organs, keyboards, harps and violins. A woman playing a horn was somehow obscene. The symbolism too close for comfort. A piccolo, a flute perhaps...graceful soprano notes deemed feminine.
Drums were women played by men. Banged! Pounded! Beat upon! Controlled! Mastered! Drums were American Indian as well as African. Drums were played all night before battle and all night after by the victorious. Dances were not forty-five minutes on, fifteen minutes off to go out back for a joint. Music was continuous. Hours of it. One stopped for a drink or a joint or a coca leaf or a bite to eat and went on and on and on. Bop til you drop! No "time Gentlemen." No you are a lady if you do this and a whore if you do that. You danced and drank and sang and the music took you where it would.
But yes, the romantic ballads, the troubadours and their dark gypsies luring the blond beauties, male and female, of the manor, the castle, the big house, to the homey but mysterious campfires. The lutes’ sad tales of escape and betrayal and death.
Sex and music. Sex driving the storied songs music driving the sex and always the old folk, dried, sere, prune-faced and prune-minded warning of the dangers...forgetting the throb of blood and drum or remembering too well.
The eerie notes of classical and New Age trying to codify the nightingale and the mockingbird. Trying to deny the reality of change, alteration, point and counterpoint, theme and variation. The music of the spheres—the mathematics of the universe...New Orleans Style.
When a country fiddle hammers on, I hear the blue notes sliding in between. When B.B. King sings, I hear the country boy moaning his girl unwilling to be tied by the strings, unwilling to be true to a note which echoes and vibrates, sings even when it’s the next string which is being played and not one’s own, one’s self unwilling to be left on the shelf. When a trumpet screams Spanish Dances I hear Miles Davis’ portraits of Spain and wouldn’t want to be without either. How can I be faithful when I want it all. I want Byrd’s guitar and Segovia’s. I want Olatungi and Dylan. I want Chenier and Marcelles. I want Queen Ida and Odetta. I want Marva Wright and Irma Thomas. New Orleans Style.
And we got it all.
(Reprinted from Offbeat Magazine, December, 1998.)
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| WHEW!!
We’re home again and planning our next trip out west. We are to be in Berkeley, CA Oct. 6, 7 and 8 so we are looking for gigs south and east of there before then and north of there after then. Can you help? Know any place on the west coast that you can suggest for us?
We had a lovely time in MI. We got pics with Gov. Granholm AND Sen. Stabenow. We’ll get them up on our web site asap.
Eden Winter had us perform at Sunward Co-Housing again to a generous and enthusiastic, if small, audience. We stayed with her friends, Bob and Lee, who treated us to a lovely breakfast and sent us on our way to Wyandotte for the Democratic Club picnic.
That was so much fun. We sang “Union Maid” and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” and “Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom” and “Black Water Blues” and “New Orleans’ Moan” and more blues and folk and civil rights songs and people sang along. We played from 11 AM to 3 PM entertaining between political speeches and introductions.
Thanks to Hugh Madden, father and son, for inviting us to play.
We finished the evening playing for Donna Chamber’s daughter’s Birthday Party up in Columbiaville, MI. They had brought lobster back from a trip to main and did we chow down!! Tom and Alice hosted us up at the lake on Sunday and we jammed with Tom and swam and generally managed to stay cool even though Michigan was in the midst of a heat wave that rivaled New Orleans.
Thanks to Don McGee, the Wednesday evening concert at the Southfield Library was well attended and we made lots of marvelous new friends, including writer, Darlene House and singer, Paul Miles. We also screened our daughter, Autumn Leonard’s DVD, “After The Storm”, about expatriate New Orleans Musicians in Austin. For those of you who wish to secure a copy now before they are all gone e-mail autumnr@gmail.com. She is currently working 7 AM to 7 PM on a new film shoot as an intern so forgive her if she is slow getting back to you.
We spent the night with Jacqueline Steingold and were treated to lunch the next day by Shawn Pardue and Paul Bradfish before heading up to Flint to be entertained by my sister, Marian Martin’s adorable granddaughter, Diarianne.
Gary Keyes was our host in Traverse City as we performed at the lovely sites Seamus Shinners found for us to perform at, Rhonda’s Wharfside Restaurant on Saturday, the Leelanau School’s outdoor concert on Monday and at the Traverse City Brewing Co on Tuesday.
Norm and Mimi were charming at Leelanau. We’ll put Gary Keyes’ pic of us playing there with the setting sun over our shoulder as soon as we can figure out how.
Jack and Jane were our host and hostess at the Traverse City Brewing Co. We had so much fun.
Unfortunately, on the way home, the car broke down in Kentucky again. This makes the fifth time Kentucky has messed us up. Jerramia “Bull Frog” responded to our AAA call for help, took us to Pep Boys and we were back on the road 24 hrs. later.
Unfortunately that meant we missed the Mandalay Jazz Café performance Friday night in Old Mandeville, but we suggested the band that was booked for tonight trade with us and they agreed. What sweet people. Korin has created a lovely club with great food and great music (ahem).
We’ll be performing a show case at the Cutting Edge Conference sometime August 24th to the 27th but we don’t have a date yet. Come on Eric!!
We’re entertaining at the Ogden Museum, on Camp street on Thursday, August 31, 6:30 PM. Ya’ll come, ya hear?
Any suggestions for the West Coast tour, let us know post haste.
Thanks, David & Roselyn
www.DavidandRoselyn.com
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THEY'RE FLOODING MY CITY AGAIN
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again. Once with water and once with neglect! They’re flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again. The army corp of engineers lied; over a thousand people died. They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again. Driving all the poor folks out of their homes, they’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again. Entergy want a 25% raise, flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again, why not replace the blue roofs with solar panels instead of flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again, they built housing in Iraq but not in the USA, no they’re just flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
They’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again. Once with water and once with neglect, they’re flooding my city again, flooding my city again.
Copyright Roselyn Lionhart October, 2005
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First Memory
My very first memory I was less than two. I am
sure of that because my parents were divorced by the time I was
two and this was when we still lived in the little house on Kenilworth
in Flint, Michigan. It was a very small house, painted blue on the
outside. We were in the kitchen and I was seated in hot water in
the porcelain kitchen sink. It was a big sink, the kind with porcelain
drain boards on both sides. My mother, Ailene, was so young and
pretty it hurt to look at her.
I thought she was beautiful. Do all babies think their mothers are
beautiful? Did you?
The kitchen window faced east. Of course, I didn't know that then.
I saw the house frequently through the years until it was torn down
to build the freeway. It was right across the street from Clark
elementary school, which I attended a couple of different years.
Clark school was also torn down. No, nothing stays in one place
anymore, Joanie. Everything changes faster and faster and the universe
keeps expanding until we meet another one and explode again.
I sat in the tub looking out the window intrigued by the beautiful
pieces of glass outside the window hanging down. I tried to tell
my mother I wanted one. I must have been pretty young because I
wasn't talking well yet and I was talking up a storm by the time
I was two. I was reciting the "Night Before Christmas" in church
by the time I was three. I still remember and love that poem. I
finally got through to Mother that I wanted that shining piece of
crystal with the early morning sun gleaming through it and sending
cascades of rainbows all over my tummy. She opened the window, which
was the kind that opened like a door, coming in. I shivered with
the cold. And she reached out the window, broke a shaft of the gorgeous
beauty, and handed it to me. I promptly stuck it into my mouth and
happily sucked on my very first icicle. Hmmm. Goose bumps and joy.
Read other stories
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