A musical even tomorrow night, recommended by  frequent AV contributor Jan Jezioro:

Tomorrow (Wednesday, March 25) at 7pm, the William E. Swan Auditorium of Hilbert College in Hamburg will be the venue for a multi-media presentation of live music and historical photographs from the Great Depression. The evening’s program is presented by the Liberal Studies Department of Hilbert College, with generous support from the New York Council for the Humanities. The event is part of a continuing project by Buffalo based music producer and song researcher Tom Naples about the music of the Great Depression. Naples has recently released a CD titled …Whose Names are Unknown—Music From the Great Depression, with new recordings of Depression era music by Buffalo area musicians. An October concert at the Historical Society focused on urban-based music, along with African American blues music from the 1930s, with projected historical photographs, while a performance during the opening weekend of the new Burchfield Penny Arts Center featured some of the musical selections from the CD. The multi-media performance at Hilbert College will focus on songs and images from America’s Dust Bowl Migration.

“The title of the program comes from the eviction notice that appeared on a farm in the Midwest: ‘To John and Mary Doe, whose names are unknown,’” according to Hilbert Professor of History Joan Crouse, who will provide the narration for the presentation. “The anonymity of the notice sets the tone for the performance,” which tries “to reconstruct the experience of ordinary Americans who have often gone voiceless in their own national story. These are the faces of the dispossessed and the music that helped individuals to weather the cataclysmic economic crisis known as the Great Depression, and to maintain a humanistic bond in a particularly American way. The program puts a human face and voice to the staggering economic statistics while it celebrates the endurance and resiliency of anonymous Americans. As Farm Security Administration (FSA) Director, Ray Stark, said of the photographs taken by Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein and other government photographers in the ‘30’s: ‘You could look at the people and see fear and sadness and desperation. But you something else, too, a determination that not even the Depression could kill.’” According to Professor Crouse, “the songs also document the resilience, the strength, and the political understanding of the dispossessed,” in the same way that “the photographers saw this fierce determination and documented it.” The visual presentation of the documentary photographs will be similar to that used by the noted American documentary filmmaker Ken Burns—the camera will move in for close-ups, and travel over the still photos to provide a “live” feeling to the presentation.

Members of the 198 String Band—Tom Naples on banjo and guitar, Mike Frisch on fiddle and guitar, with guitarist Peggy Milliron providing the vocals—will bring the songs back to life. The program will be wide-ranging, including well-known favorites such as “Do Re Me” and “I Ain’t Got Nothing” by the young Okie, Woody Guthrie, and “How Can You Keep on Movin’ (Unless You Migrate Too)?” by Agnes “Sis” Cunningham, the daughter of an Oklahoma sharecropper and fiddler who was also a socialist organizer. Anonymous songs of the hobo camps and the makeshift migrant’s camps will include “Hi-way Hobo,” known only from a single FSA field recording made by Margaret Valliant of hobo camp resident Noel Westbrook. Migrant camp songs to be performed include “Little Rag House (Green Back Dollar),” “Sunny Cal,” “Arizona,” “Rolls of Relief,” and “The Gout Camp Song.” Producer and songwriter Tom Naples, who has researched the Depression era songs in the extensive folk music collection of the Smithsonian Institution, will also present three songs that he himself wrote. Naples’ songs not only look back to the era of the Great Depression, but also have a continuing resonance for the present day: “Prairie Farewell,” “Foreclosure,” and, hopefully, “Better Days.”

Admission to the event is free. A coffee reception with the performers and presenters will follow the performance. For more information, contact Joan Crouse at crouse@hilbert.edu or 649-7900.

—jan jezioro