Get In Union

The music of the Georgia Sea Islands is unlike any other in the world, and its uniqueness is due to an extraordinary collision of events in American history. Once the site of large plantations, the islands, strategic in blockading shipments by sea to the rebel Southern states, were seized early in the Civil War by the Union. Since the plantation landowners then fled, leaving some 10,000 now-free slaves (some of African descent and some from the Bahamas) behind, the Union, much occupied elsewhere, allowed the islands to self-govern. It was an almost accidental, but still radical, social experiment, given further cultural dimension by the blending of the two former slave cultures, the African and the Bahamian, with American folk music, particularly its gospel and blues. It led to a freshly envisioned tradition of sparsely rhythmic folk and religious music unlike any other, and given the islands' relative isolation, it developed on its own path without undue intrusion from mainland pop. This is where Bessie Jones comes into the story. Born on the Georgia mainland, she settled on St. Simons Island as a young woman, and already familiar as a singer with American and African folk music, she absorbed the islands' own skewed Caribbean spin on things, and was soon singing with the loose confederation of local singers and musicians who came to be known as the Georgia Sea Island Singers. The music they made, a mix of traditional call-and-response work songs, hymns, ring songs, rope-skipping rhymes, and other cultural flotsam drawn from a blended trio of folk traditions, was sparse, joyous, and vital, often accompanied by just handclaps, foot stomps, and the occasional cane fife. Jones was fully aware of the preservationist side of the music she led and directed, and she understood its educational aspect as well, as did cultural archivist Alan Lomax, who visited the Georgia Sea Islands twice to make field recordings of the island singers, once in 1959, and again in 1966. Lomax also recorded over 50 hours of tape with Jones alone on the mainland in 1960 and 1961, and it is from these three bundles of field recordings that this wonderful two-disc set is drawn. It's difficult to pull out highlights, since the feel here is so tightly focused, interwoven, and intimate throughout, but "Sheep Sheep Don't You Know the Road," the joyous "O Day (Yonder Come Day)," and the powerful and haunting "Diamond Joe" are typical, each falling gracefully into emotional clarity. Then there's "Elephant Fair," a skipping set of rhymes that is by turns silly, surreal, and violent, although most of the tracks here are transcendent and fall more to the side of the angels. This set makes a marvelous in-depth introduction to the poise and balance of Bessie Jones, and to the treasure that is Georgia Sea Island folk music.