Category: country

I liked this song the first time I heard it on the Ken Burns miniseries.   The Carter family, with Mother Maybelle Carter in 1935, release their version with the titled Can The Circle Be Unbroken:

Maybelle Carter later returned on the 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken:

An early question I had about this music was the meaning of the title?  It is obvious now.  This music is about keeping the memory and the story of those who have passed from our lives in our hearts.  It is the hope that we pass on those connections to those that will carry on after us, and that when we pass on, our reward will be Heaven.   Here is an interpretation of the music by Herb Bowie:

“This is not a song of religious dogma, it is a song that speaks to a wellspring of religious feeling, to a tragic knowledge of time and what it brings to all of us, and yet an inescapable human desire to transcend death in some way, to feel a part of something larger that will live on after death. This feeling is part of what it means to be human, to know that our parents meant so much to us, to know how much they passed on to us in terms of their knowledge and beliefs and feelings and love, and with that bequest also passed on an obligation for us to keep these gifts alive.”

For this project, I changed my style by using  stretched canvases.   Instead, all the section ends are solid one-inch poplar wood.   That was the original plan shown in this second image.  That plan changed when I looked at the artwork Africa.  I looked back to that work, for it is on display as part of an exhibition of the Vallery Art Association, of which I am an at large board member.  Reading my blog entries for Africa, I wanted to refresh my memories of this artwork for the reception.  At the VAA reception,  each artist is to give a short talk about their artwork so that the other members can learn about each other’s subjects and varied techniques.

It was this remark from an Africa blog post that changed my direction for Circle.  The post read ” Drilling holes and screwing canvases together brought back memories of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Artworks, and the care needed to support and align canvas parts correctly. I had the easier option to attach the top and bottom canvases to the top and bottom edges of the background, but that looked too two-dimensional.”  It is the italicized part of this post about placing the middle canvas behind the artwork that caused me to change direction and to consider adding a canvas to the back of The Circle.  Throughout this year I have been dealing with a lot of space between the art features (the art term is the negative space, I am told).   I added small canvas and photo images to the back of my artworks to fill what I came to think of as too much empty parts of the artwork.   I did this throughout the year until my last project Twinkle Little Star.  For Twinkle I lacked any fresh ideas for filling its space and eventually added nothing else.  Taking the canvas idea from Africa, instead of one horizontal middle canvas, I am looking at adding two large canvases running and running them vertically, to act against this project horizontal look.   I will see if that works.

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

My next major project is the Country song, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.   For me, this song stood out in the Ken Burns eight-part miniseries about Country Music.  A version of this music became an early Country Standard of The Carter Family.  Then later in the miniseries the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band released the song with the collaboration of early Bluegrass, and Country-Western legends, including Maybelle Carter.   Although, I recall The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band while in college,  because of their 1970 recording of Mr Bojangles;  they are not my earliest connection to country style music.

My earliest remembrance of songs of any kind where the 1958 release of Tom Dooley, by the Kingston Trio,  and Michael, Row the Boat a Shore, released in 1960, by the Highway Men.  Amazingly I have this faint memory of hearing these songs in a large brightly lit restaurant, with chrome chairs, and a high ceiling, on a jukebox in Ashland Wisconsin.  Even earlier my attraction for Folk music began with the radio and the music of Hank Williams. That all changed in 1964 with the Beatles in American and watching them on the Ed Sullivan show.  To this day I still have a lot of interest in Folk, and earlier Country music, that all started in the sixties.

Here is the video of a live performance of the Nitty Gritty Band, Will the Circle Be Unbroken:

One of my second life wishes, in which I defy the odds and not come back as a Chinese laborer but as a young weekend banjo player, would boost my skill as a musician,  and give my Saturday nights out memories a sharper edge along with a better foot tap.

Scott Von Holzen