Week 6: Appalachia/ British Ballads

This week’s assignment was something that interested me. I know this class is very new to me and I enjoyed learning about each week’s topic. But learning about the Appalachia and British Ballads was something that garbed my attention the most. Maybe, because it was also new for other people in the eighteen century when Appalachian songs were being collecting, like Cecil Sharp did. Reading through the article, Cecil Sharp in America by Mike Yates, Cecil Sharp’s made me appreciate Appalachian music. His journey through the Appalachian Mountains and how much time it took him to collect traditional songs that originated back to the English and Scottish ancestors, was inspiring. This article made me imagine Sharp’s adventures and what he experience.

Out of all the songs from the Ballard box, the one that captured my attention the most was Down By The Sally Gardens by William Buttler. When I did more research about the song, I learned that it was a song had been an attempt to reconstruct an old song of three lines that was imperfectly remembered sang by an old peasant woman in the village of Billisopare, Sligo. This right away made me think of Sharps journey and I then decided to make drawing of something that was unknown to me trying to imitate Sharp’s experience going to the Appalachian Mountains, a place that was unknown for him. The Appalachian mountains was a place I had hear in my U.S History class in high school and never did research or been to the mountains in my life. As I Google the Appalachian Mountains, beautiful pictures of green mountains came up. Although I was seeing these images of the mountains it is still an unknown place for me. The image that captured my attention was one of a morning with dusk. This dusky morning was something that I was familiar with and brought me very beautiful memories I had in my life growing up. As I went though drawing the mountains, with my charcoal pencil, it was as if I was going back in time, feeling that dusk and wind on top of the hill as the sun was rising. Re-discovering something that had been lost in my memories and recovering it by this image of the Appalachian Mountains. This is the place, Mike Yates article and the song “The Sally Gardens,” took me and inspired me to draw.

Week 3: "Balm in Gilead" - Paul Roberson

The song that I decided to focus on was Balm in Gilead by Paul Roberson. “Balm in Gilead” was not the only song that enjoyed listening to but also, “Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child” and “John Henry”.  Roberson’s deep voice and the sound of the note produce played to express his  lyrics and his feelings is what makes his songs grab my attention. On “Balm in Gilead” the first verse “there is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole” is beautiful and the note of the piano use is a sound my ears have never heard before. It made me feel like I was in Roberson’s arms and my ear feeling his chest, hearing his deep voice causing me to shiver.

Doing more research on the lyrics, I found out that is a reference form the Old Testament. But the lyrics of this song refer to the New Testament mean for the salvation through Jesus Christ. This song is interpreted as a spiritual medicine that is able to heal Israel or in other words the sinners.     

It brought me to a place personal experience becoming a mother. The life I been through has been hell and heaven all at the same time. But once I became a mother I became heal as a person from everything I been through. It was a new light that my eyes receive and able to see my life different than before. My drawing demonstrated three women. The first woman is with close arms feeling alone and in the dark with dark colors and her eyes is downward, expressing sadness. The next is the same drawing of the women but she is beginning to feel more confident of herself starting to let go, maybe of her past or maybe freeing herself to become what she really is. She is pregnant as her eyes are looking downward.  It is color in orange tone, which for me represented a change in her. The last women has a child, they are both in peace, as their eyes are closed. She has been heel as her baby is her spiritual medicine that she has received. Her tone is yellow as if she is receiving light, expression of a new beginning.

Week 4: Spirituals II/ Oh Mary Don’t you Weep

Listening to the song “Oh Mary Don’t you Weep” it was a song of joy and hope. The voice of Mississippi John Hurt and his guitar add this effect of joy. But then listening to the lyrics it told a different story. Such words like “Pharaoh’s” and “Lord told Moses” made me do more research about the song. Doing research on the lyrics, I found out that it contains events of the old and New Testament, such as the biblical story of Mary of Bethany and her please to Jesus to resuscitate her brother Lazarus. This song originates before the American Civil War and to scholars on is consider it to be a “slave song” and contains “coded messages of hope and resistance”.  As I listen to the song again it made me wonder how it was at the start of slavery when ships, filled with slaves, where transported to the New World to be sold. My charcoal drawing illustrates a women weeping for her lost one, weeping inside the stowage where the slaves where put.  I have never seen death so for that reason I did not draw the face of the death, only their feet. But I also try to represent “hope” by giving the women some light coming from above as to say that there is still a light of hope.

Week 2: “You are my sunshine” - Jimmy davis

“You are my Sunshine” by Jimmy Davis is a song recorded in 1939. This song is a song that talks about how he was in love with someone and how their love one made their lives happier. But the verse “I dreamed I held you… when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken” tells us that although they are not together he still cannot forget her. But the way this song is play is very joyful as the instruments makes it sound, with the trumpet sound in the background, and also when it starts in the verse “I’ll always love you & make you happy” the piano starts playing, making me feel like I was watching an old black and white film with no sound and the piano playing adding emotion to the scene.  

For my visual for this song the verses that I like the most were “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine” it immediately made me think of my daughter. She is learning how to walk and she is trying to stand in her two feet. In my head it is a funny scene of her in my head. I created a linear drawing of my daughter as if she was my sunshine in the form of sunlight being unbroken by the clouds. I first created a diagonal line that divides the page as an abstracted way I imagine my daughter’s spine of her body would look. The other lines extend creating her arms and her legs and also forming a circle.  I use the colors black and yellow to create the distinction and focus point. Also the bottom lines being projected downward as a mental image viewed in reality. The upper lines extend in random directions, for me it was a way to represent her body movement as she is trying to find a way to stand up.

Week 1: "Down in the Valley" - Andy Griffith

“Down in the valley, the valley so low. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.” Hearing the version of “Down in the Valley” by Andy Griffith and Opie-Bachelors, it capture my full attention with the mellow tone that Opie use when singing the song. For me, the songs interpret a person that believes that “Roses love sunshine, violets love dew. Angels in heaven, know I love you,” yet the only thing he believes in is in the love for that person “know I love you.”  But it also makes me think that the person in which he or she is in love with, does not know that they love them. In this song, him or her, are allowed to dream in ways for the hope to be able to see their love one, “Build me a castle, forty feet high. So I can see him, as she rides by.”

Something that also captured my attention from the song were the verses “ Send it in care of, the Birmingham Jail. Birmingham Jail dear, Birmingham Jail.” “Birmingham Jail” came from a open letter written by martin Luther King Jr. I decided to look up what an “open letter” was, and it was intended to be a publish letter of protest or appeal, usually addressed to an individual but intended for the general public to see. Having found this allowed me to understand that he or she were very in love, and probably rejected from their love one. Hoping that the letter would express their feelings.

When I stop listening to the song and started to gather my thoughts to visually represent “Down in the Valley,” I wanted to draw a landscape in order to represent the openness of how he or she demonstrated their  love they had and the hope of being love. The form of whole drawing has the shape of a rose. I use the color violet from “violets” and I try to imitate the roughness and softness that a flower petals have, into hills.

I decided to have the view point of the viewer be as if they where watching a sunset from a location hidden behind trees.  I decided to show a sunset setting behind the two hills to represent the hope that there is something beautiful hidden behind the hills. As if the “Angels in heaven” where hidden behind them. Listening to different versions of “Down in the Valley” allow me to have a different experience. But the one that made me imagine more was the version by Andy Griffith and Opie-Bachelors. It has allowed to wake up my artistic skills and to be challenge in a very different way. I think this class is going to help me grow as an artist. Listening to the songs has been a very different experience also as is something I am not use to listening in my daily life. I feel like I am in a camping setting singing with friends to the songs. I really enjoy and am happy that I was able to be part of this class.