From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V7 #127 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Wednesday, July 30 2003 Volume 07 : Number 127 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- The Old Buckdancer... [PBCoustic@aol.com] Houseconcert recording -- distribution tree signup [PBCoustic@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 09:48:02 EDT From: PBCoustic@aol.com Subject: The Old Buckdancer... Just for general purposes.....Some background information on the term "Buckdancer", courtesy of Jack Williams... Who knows, you might use it in conversation some day... Paul Message: 10 Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 01:09:22 -0700 From: Jack Williams Subject: Re: Re: Jack: Help re: "Buckdancer" please Hello Wayne, Carey, Lo, Cherrie - and everybody, [I'm sure I missed somebody who posted on the "Buckdancer" topic!] I have two things to add to the consideration of "buckdancing". The first pertains to my song, and to James Dickey's work. (I've recently come to understand that many people, after buying a CD, throw away the jewel case with the lyric booklet, to put the CD into their own "rotation", and never read the brief note before each song.) Some of you know that my song, The Old Buckdancer's Gone" was written in memory of James Dickey, a great southern-American poet, former Poet-Laureate of the U.S., neighbor in Columbia, South Carolina, author of the book and screenwriter of the movie "Deliverance", and all-around hell-raiser. I borrowed "one from him this time" when I came up with the song title. Mr. Dickey won the National Book Award for his set of poems entitled, "Buckdancer's Choice", an outrageous and gorgeous flight of words and fancy. The other pertains to the Lesser U.S. Political Correctness Police Force, which apparently determined that the term "buckdancing" was too close to some sort of racial slur - toward black Americans - and managed, somehow, to change the name of this traditional - and highly variable and localized - southern dance form, to "clogging". This is the way I heard it. Corrections in this account are welcome. In my 9 years at the University of Georgia, in Athens - 1961-1970, just a few miles south of where Big Jim Dickey was born, we knew of the big dance "barns" in the hills and mountains up around Rabun Gap, Toccoa Falls, Helen and Cleveland, where the mountain boys came forth every Saturday night to buckdance in their boots - bolt upright, upper body stiff with legs and feet flying, clattering, and clomping, with or without a partner, a girl who usually did little to contribute to the dance, other than to just keep the boy from having to get out on the floor alone. (I can't resist where this latter point leads me....) The "tradition" of relative inactivity on the part of the woman, I believe, comes from the very conservative Southern notion that a person - especially a woman - should never "show his ass". This was how it was crudely put to us in northern South Carolina. This same notion prevailed in every activity, and in dancing especially, all the way up to the early 60's when what is now known as "Beach Music" (no, not the west coast's Beach Boys' music) introduced the world to the "Shag" - a jitterbug-based dance. This dance, which the S.C. legislature officially pronounced as our "State Dance", usually finds the man doing all the smooth moves while staring admiringly at his own footwork, tentatively holding the hand of his woman partner, who tolerates his excesses, and moves around just enough to justify her presence, and who merely flits about the self-absorbed gentleman like some sort of indifferent satellite. Well... this is the way it looks to me. (...And this leads me even further astray....) As for the passing of yet another tradition among the good southern black folks to the white: "buckdancing", I used to notice - almost exclusively among men - the phnomenon of how much singing, dancing, and even dressing, as are practiced in the southern black culture, were admired, imitated, adapted, and co-opted by white people. This was most obvious and remarkable in the fraternity parties where my bands played music throughout the "Civil Rights" 60s. Young white men were often heard to adapt the black vernacular in everyday speech. This was regarded, later, by the "P.C. Police" as racist talk, when, in fact, it was probably outright admiring imitation! The frat boys, in watching artists like The Drifters and Jerry Butler, for instance, would remark as to "how cool" these musicians were, and would seemingly set out to become equally "cool" - imitating much of what they observed and heard. I should add that, in 1980, mentioning this observation in a conversation with a 60s UGA ex-frat-boy , I received a sound verbal tongue-lashing for daring to suggest that he - or any other good white, southern boy, would be caught dead imitating black people! I must have struck a nerve. I decided not to make an issue of the words he chose upon departing: "be cool"! I know you folks might rather hear about recent adventures on this western U.S. tour, but having a rare free moment to myself, and seeing the thread that was developing on our list, I had to indulge myself writing down some of these very notions which have been appearing in my recent concert "patter" - or storytelling. Take care, Jack HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:14:33 EDT From: PBCoustic@aol.com Subject: Houseconcert recording -- distribution tree signup OK, I'm probably out of my mind for bringing it up... but I've got an excellent minidisk recording of a SW houseconcert from back in February, that I've transferred to a 2-CD set. Well worth the effort of distributing to listers for their own private consumption and sharing with friends... So, I figured we could start a distribution tree list, if enough people are interested in having the CDs. The songlist includes: * Time Between Trains * Shade of Gray * Little Yellow House * St. Mary's * Petaluma * Sorry About Jesus * Got To See The Body * The Architect Song * Barbed Wire Boys * Bonsai * Big Car * Red Dress * Never Promised You A Rose Garden * Three Quarter Moon * Tall Drink of Water * I'd be Good For You * Light Sleeper * Cole Porter * I Can't Be New * May I Suggest * La Vie En Rose I also have "artwork", as such, for liners. So, if interested, please email me offlist, to pbrown@rfsaw.com, with your name and mailing address, and indicate "BRANCH" or "LEAF". The "BRANCH" would have the responsibility of making copies and mailing them out to 4-5 people. "LEAF" means you just want to receive a copy, without distributing to others. Once I get the list of B's and L's, I'll email out who is doing what for and to whom... I'll obviously send CDs to the "BRANCH" people. As far as compensation, the "Leaf"s typically would supply self addressed stamped envelope, or nominal fee, or offer to trade something they have to their branch -- up to you! 'BRANCH"es, if you've got something of interest to trade back with me, great! And please respond quickly to this, if possible -- I'd like to get the list completed by August 8th. Paul pbrown@rfsaw.com *********************************************************** Paul Brown RFSAW, Inc. 900 Alpha Drive, Suite #400 Richardson, Texas 75081 469-916-5969 (ph) 469-916-5951 (fx) *********************************************************** HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V7 #127 ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message