Starry Crown

As an aside, I’ve also made a page on Bandcamp for my music.

I was listening yesterday morning to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and this tune, the first on their record, Dona’s Got a Ramblin’ Mind (or here, in iTunes), came on. Their version is fantastic:

I write tunes, and will get to recording and posting some of my own soon enough, but I do think that interpreting songs is something of a lost art in 2011. By this I mean interpretation very precisely. Just as one cuts one’s connection to a very rich musical past if one only plays original music, one also deprives the music of life if one merely seeks to re-create an old form. Traditional song needs to be contemporary music.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops might seem at first listen to fall into the second trap, that of an attempt to re-create. They don’t. Their project is culturally political, or politically cultural, insofar as they manifest a music, Black string-band music, that completely contradicts the stereotype of Black folk music. Were one to hear only the music and ask what color skin the musicians had, one would expect the respondent to answer, “white.”

The lyrics are worth examining:

Well I met old Satan in the lane
and I hit him in the head with a walkin’ cane.
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown over there
Over there, over there,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown, over there.
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown.

Well I got no skillet, I got no lid
Ashcake tastes like shortenin’ bread!
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown over there.
Over there, over there,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown, over there.
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown.

Well I run old Satan through the door,
Hit him in the head with a two-by-four,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown over there.
Over there, over there,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown, over there.
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown.

Well I run ol’ Satan round the stump
I give ‘im a kick over every jump,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown over there.
Over there, over there,
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown, over there.
I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown.

The Biblical reference is to Revelation 12:1-4.

1 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

They lyrics have a characteristically Black American approach to text and scripture in particular. Scripture literally describes events in the ancient past, or in the case of Revelation comes from the ancient past with a vision of the distant future. Vine Deloria argued that Christianity in North America was completely removed from any sense of place and the present. Heaven was distant, the origin of the religion in the past on another continent. This led to a Christian understanding of the world and North America–this is the Christianity of Europeans in North America, remember–as foreign, hostile, and something to be subdued. Black Christianity takes a different approach, though. The singer is himself or herself a part of the text: “I’m goin’ to wear that starry crown.” So, too, is the present spiritually alive:

Well I met old Satan in the lane
and I hit him in the head with a walkin’ cane.

This is not distant religion, and as such it takes a fundamentally radical approach to living in 2011.