Just for Laughs

David Daniels as Rinaldo as Ryan Belongie as the Sage looks on Photo: Dan Rest/LOC 2012

One of the many things I love about Baroque opera in particular is how malleable it is. This is as true today as it was then. Take Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Handel’s Rinaldo as an example. Handel wrote the work in record time. It was his first Italian opera for the London stage in 1711 and he recycled large amounts of music from works he had previously written while living in Italy. The work was a hit despite negative critical reaction, and Handel reworked the piece several different times over the next 20 years to meet the needs of various productions. Today his operas are treated in much the same fashion. Cuts are commonplace, and interpolations are made for various reasons. Rarely do opera companies or stage directors feel the need to emulate the settings or time periods of the works with anywhere near the rigor they do with operas from other periods.

But this openness provides for wildly varying takes on similar works. Just last year, LOC presented a modern dress production of Handel’s Hercules directed by Peter Sellars that drew parallels between Handel’s characters and American veterans returning home from the Iraq war. A year later, we have Rinaldo which is set during the First Crusade as Christian armies invaded Jerusalem to reclaim the city by force from the Muslim population. A scenario ripe for contemporary interpretation a la Sellars? No doubt. But the director of this Rinaldo, Francisco Negrin took perhaps a completely opposite yet still very contemporary tack. This Rinaldo despite its dark and brooding look was played mostly for campy laughs and gripping visuals that slowly but surely sucked one in. It may not be the most thought provoking take on an opera, but this Rinaldo is immense fun and great eye candy.

Like much of Negrin’s work, the show is sharply angular, dark with colorful lighting, and dressed like some post-apocalyptic motorcycle gang. The set is dominated by a giant wall that lights up in sections interrupted only by a multi-story sculpture of the city’s Italian name, Gerusalemme. That cast often climb up and over that sculpture, but perhaps the most arresting visual moments are set around the motif of a giant black harpsichord box that is repeatedly lowered from above and tilted to reveal the inside to the audience when the lid is open. The harpsichord comes to represent the prison of the sorceress queen, Armida, one of the opera’s two villains. Armida opens the box and colorful balloons sprout from it by the dozens to lure in Rinaldo’s lover Almirena who becomes trapped inside and held hostage. Soprano Julia Kleiter sings two of her arias while entangled in the strings inside this giant harpsichord which is an image that sticks in one’s head. Later the Armida, an excellent Elza van den Heever, thrashing about in the throws of a rageful rejection of her affections will “play” this giant instrument while clowning around with the orchestra’s own harpsichordist.

Sometimes the absurdity of it all doesn’t quite work out. Louis Désiré's costumes can be particularly ridiculous, Rinaldo and the Christians in duster coast and leather, Argante and the Muslims in jackets and long skirts made up of Oriental rug remnants. Baritone Luca Pisaroni sings the role of Argante and once again is trapped in a costume that does everything in its power to work against his natural good looks. There's unexpected bursts of tafeta from Almirena's outfit as well like something that would get a contestant booted off Project Runway or better yet, RuPaul's Drag Race. The stage action is frenetic to the point of distraction at times. But there are some campy moments as well including a sequence where Rinaldo, played by countertenor David Daniels clad in a sleeveless leather vest, is held back by a bevy of dancers wearing matador-style capes as he does a spit-take following an unwanted kiss from the amorous queen Armida. Cooties indeed.

With so much to look at, one might forget there was an opera going on, but there was and musically there was a lot to like. Conductor Harry Bicket is no slouch and he got a good steady performance from the orchestra. Not all the vocalists were with him at all times with mezzo Sonia Prina, who sang the role of Goffredo, often going commando with her own tempos. Van den Heever has a big bright voice that may have been a bit large scale for this sort of show, but she could at least be heard easily in the big house. Better yet she proved to be a comic actress of the first rate digging into the wild lovelorn fluctuations of Armida with brio. Perhaps the vocalist who had the best evening was the wonderful Iestyn Davies as Goffredo’s brother Eustazio. Davies projected well with a bright easy tone and the agility to manage the coloratura pyrotechnics allowed for in the score. He’s boyishly handsome and even with his Mad Max outfit all eyes were on him. He’s the next great countertenor and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be in top-billed roles starting today. By contrast, while David Daniels is still an exciting performer to watch, the vocal details are increasingly in softer focus for him.

But even with its weaker spots, this Rinaldo provides many of the kicks people who love opera live for. It’s preposterous, yes, but it’s fun, attractive to look at and often beautiful to hear. And even if you don’t think or don’t know if you love opera you should see it. It might just put you in the other category. The show runs through March 24th.

Meanwhile, back in L.A...

Composer James Matheson

Not unlike Regis Philbin, I'm only one man. I can't be everywhere and was sorry to have missed the Los Angles Philharmonic's performances this weekend which featured a new work from composer James Matheson. Luckily man-about-town and bon-vivant Ben Vanaman stepped up to fill in the gaps with this report on Friday's performance.

Friday night was “Casual Friday” at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which is perhaps why Walt Disney Concert Hall sounded even more than usual like a tubercular ward, a chorus of hacking coughs providing an unwelcome accompaniment to the sounds emanating from the stage. In any event, this being “Casual Friday,” the Philharmonic players were dressed in jeans and flannel. When asked about his experience of participating in a “Casual Friday” concert during a talk-back that followed the truncated program (Beethoven’s “Egmont” overture, to be performed on Saturday and Sunday, was not part of this evening’s bill), the talented young conductor Pablo Heras-Casado who led the orchestra opined that the laid-back nature of the evening made the performance seem to him like a dress rehearsal. Well, exactly. If you’re a business executive and wear a suit and tie to work, you feel like an executive. Similarly, the wearing of formal attire surely abets an orchestra’s performance while giving its concerts a feeling of occasion, a quality that sometimes seemed lacking tonight.

In particular, the opening piece, a new violin concerto by James Matheson that was co-commissioned by the Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, felt slightly under-rehearsed. The concerto itself, however, was a dizzying ride, particularly in the frenetic opening movement (labeled Caprice) –with its swirling musical iterations- and the sprightly closing movement, titled Dance. Linking the outer movements was an intense, heartfelt chaconne that, like the rest of the work, gave the violin soloist a considerable workout (e.g. lots of double stops). The soloist on this occasion was the Philharmonic’s Principle Concertmaster Martin Chalifour, a musician I remain somewhat ambivalent about. His playing is technically adroit, but his tone can sound thin and reedy to me, a problem that besets the orchestra’s violin sections in general in my opinion, although I give consideration to the Philharmonic’s new music director Gustavo Dudamel for trying to summon a richer, deeper, and more burnished sound from the upper strings.

The orchestra has the good fortune, however, to have lured Chicago Symphony violinist Nathan Cole to become its First Associate Concertmaster. Cole’s extended solo in the program’s second offering –Richard Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben”- was the highlight of the evening. He produces a beautiful, textured, achingly lyrical sound, and one hopes that someday he’ll be given the opportunity to be the featured soloist during one of the orchestra’s concerts. The Strauss also benefitted from the brio of Heras-Casado’s reading of the score. This “Heldenleben” really felt like a hero’s journey, gathering up in a cohesiveness that is sometimes missing from Dudamel’s interpretations of Romantic and late-Romantic period staples.

Joining Heras-Casado in the post-concert talk-back was composer Matheson, soloist Chalifour, and the Philharmonic’s brassy President, Deborah Borda, who moderated the brief, informal discussion. While the participants gave thoughtful and intelligent responses to questions from Ms. Borda and the audience, the moment that I remember most vividly was when Ms. Borda opined that she actually likes the applause that sometimes erupts following individual movements of concerti and symphonies because it indicates to her that the Philharmonic is reaching “new” audiences (“new” I’m guessing being primarily a euphemism for “young”). Never mind that such applause disrupts the continuity of performance or displays a lack of respect for the compositional integrity of the work being performed, but for an orchestra administrator to encourage such behavior rather than seizing the opportunity of a teachable moment in an attempt to thwart it is unbelievably appalling. All I could think of on the way home was this: where is Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine when you need it the most?

On the (Early) 20th Century

Jonathan Nott with Michelle de Young, Stuart Skelton, and members of the CSO Photo: mine 2012

You may remember that amid all the hype and hoopla over the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Mahler cycle earlier this year something got overlooked. For a variety of reasons, Das Lied von der Erde, undoubtedly one of the composers most critical late symphonic works, got left out in L.A. by Dudamel and company. And while they may always have Caracas, I wanted to make up for lost Mahler and was thrilled to get a chance to do so in Chicago this weekend with the illustrious Chicago Symphony Orchestra. They were incredible under Riccardo Muti recently on their American tour heard in Orange County and this weekend’s program was to have featured another of their legendary regular conductors, Pierre Boulez. As fate would have it, Boulez backed out for health reasons and was replaced by the excellent British conductor Jonathan Nott who led the same concert, which also included Schoenberg’s Piano Concert played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

I should start by saying that the playing in and of itself was of the quality that justifies Chicago’s position as the greatest of American orchestras right now. You could listen to those glowing strings and faultless brass alone forever. And hearing them on their home turf is something everyone interested in classical music should do at some point. But they aren’t infallible, and despite all that gorgeous playing Saturday’s show fell just a bit short. This concert featuring the final throws of Romanticism actually started with the Schoenberg concerto written in the composers late Los Angeles years. It’s a dense non-stop 20 minutes of twelve-tone music and its intricacies fly by far too quickly to catch. Aimard gave a powerful, detailed performance that stood in sharp relief against the almost lush playing of the orchestra. There wasn’t the kind of overall crystalline transparency we’ve become accustomed to over the years in L.A. for this kind of material, but who does that these days anymore anyway?

This first half was barely digested before Nott and the orchestra dove into Mahler’s song cycle about life and death. The Chicago players are Mahler masters and the playing from many quarters was at times superb. Mahler’s ersatz Asian elements were given room to breathe. The work was well organized and expertly phrased even if Nott did let the elbows get a little sharp during “Der Abschied”. Some of the entrances there could have been a bit more subdued, but the point got across. The soloists, Michelle DeYoung and tenor Stuart Skelton were well matched for this show. On Saturday, Skelton stayed out in front of the orchestra in some tricky big voices moments, though not consistently. He was quite impressive in the lengthy first song giving off that Heldentenor vibe. I look forward to hearing him sing some of those Wagner roles in the near future. DeYoung was also fully engaged and committed in the performance even if her middle range could get lost in the orchestral sound at times. Her rich turn in “Der Einsame im Herbst” was a highlight of the who night. And despite my misgivings about the sometimes wandering performance of the finale, the tears in her and Skelton’s eyes at the end of the evening were quite real. And that was touching enough.

Waiting on the Robert E. Lee

Ashley Brown, Alyson Cambridge, and Angela Renee Simpson Photo: Robert Kusel/LOC 2012

Should opera companies be in the business of staging musicals? Yes, I know there is a fine and arbitrary line between “opera” and the rest of “musical theater,” but I believe most people would see a difference between Parsifal and Jersey Boys without needing a PhD to parse out the grey area in between. American opera companies have delved into this breach over the years in good economic times and bad featuring works that are decidedly outside of the standard opera repertoire. The works that fall into this category do so for several reasons. They may be works whose composers have acquired a certain musical and intellectual caché, like Sondheim. Or they may be works that were composed as operas, like Porgy and Bess, but came into the world in a commercial musical theater format and then get a belated high-art make over. And then there are those works whose words and music that were so groundbreaking or that have become such staples of American culture that they achieve a status commensurate with other works typically seen on the opera stages.

Show Boat, fits into that last category. The landmark musical written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II premiered on Broadway in 1927 with an ambition and scope that belied its comparatively lower-art point of entry into the world. It changed a lot of things in American musical theater, so that it finds its way onto a traditional opera stage at the Lyric Opera of Chicago over eight decades later would stand to reason. A musical production for an opera company can be viewed as a way of filling houses and bringing in audiences that would never dream of buying a ticket to Aida. And whether or not this was a primary motivation for this current production, which will also travel to San Francisco, Washington, and Houston, it undoubtedly looks like it will be successful in doing so. The company has put together a team both onstage and off that have an excellent track record for just this kind of project. Director Francesca Zambello has brought American musicals to Glimmerglass where she is artistic director and she is no stranger to Show Boat either. She also put together a well-traveled and extremely popular production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in a similar vein that has played to sold out houses across the country. Add to her direction the musical skills of John DeMain in the pit, who also conducted a great many of those Porgy and Bess performances, and you’re clearly asking for repeated success.

And folks in Chicago have largely got what they asked for. Show Boat has been just as successful in Chicago as its predecessor due to Zambello’s remarkably unassuming, sincere staging. The material with its once radical and expansive story line about miscegenation now seems melodramatic and overly sentimental. But Zambello approaches the material with straight forward earnestness that, combined with Paul Tazewell’s candy-color costumes and Peter J. Davidson’s theme-park-ready boat and night-club sets, makes you feel like Ava Gardner is about to walk out on stage.

She doesn’t, as it turns out, but those that do have been well cast and consistently deliver performances of the very songs that make this show opera house worthy. Alyson Cambridge plays Julie LaVerne and delivers a version of “Bill” to rival any you’ve heard from Audra MacDonald or Barbara Cook. Of course, there’s “Old Man River” as well, and Morris Robinson and the chorus rescue the number from any sort of kitsch that may be kicking around in your head about it. There was plenty of sniffling in the house over this number both times it appears in the show. Angela Renée Simpson played Queenie and Broadway’s original Mary Poppins, Ashley Brown sang Magnolia both in excellent voice. And among all of this was Nathan Gunn channeling Clark Gable in style if not sound as the riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal. He, like the rest of the cast, was amplified for the dialog in the performance, which was subtle and well managed overall. (I know this throws some people into fits, but I’m not one of them if its done well like it is here.)

Whether or not bringing Show Boat to an opera stage is going to increase the size of the opera audience or create huge financial windfalls is debatable. However, it’s hard to complain much about a production done this well. And given the track record of the show and its creators so far, it appears that a lot of people will be seeing it in the coming years. There are four more performances in Chicago through March 17.

Into the Fire

Olga Borodina, Misha Didyk, and Wendy Bryn Harmer Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera 2012

Religious fanaticism doesn't make for great life on earth, but it does often makes for great opera. And while it may not be the best known in the genre, Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina may be the most beautiful example of this. It certainly feels that way watching and hearing the Metropolitan Opera’s resplendent revival of this work under conductor Kirill Petrenko, the company’s first in over a decade. The title itself is a bit of a misnomer. Roughly translated as the Khovansky Affair, Mussorgsky's unfinished masterpiece is named after a boyar, who leads the Streltsy militia in a bid to control Russia during a 17th century struggle for succession. The recent death of the young tsar Fyodor III has left a power vacuum. Although young Peter has been placed on the throne under the supervision of the regent Sophia, the machinations of the nobility, military, and church pose several threats to his rule. The tsar and his guardian never appear in Khovanshchina but representatives of just about every other interested faction in this huge ensemble cast do and while the rise and fall of Khovansky and his son get the title, the rebellious religious sect refereed to as the “Old Believers” get the final word and dramatic climax in a powerful immolation scene where the faithful die rather than succumb to the tsars’ forces. The opera is as much about political intrigue as it is the passing of an old world into a new more-Westernized one.

So while the plot may be convoluted and somewhat opaque at times, all of this provides for some supremely beautiful music from Mussorgsky and in this version, orchestrations that were completed by Shostakovich. The Metropolitan Opera orchestra always sounds great. In this run under Petrenko, they sound even better and its likely the best performance they’ve given this entire season. They are abetted by the enormous Metropolitan Opera chorus who’ve taken a challenging musical text and with the help of director Donald Palumbo nailed the audience to their seats with their big, fluid sound. If there is a testament to Palumbo's work with the orchestra during his tenure at the Met, this is it.

The largely Russian, Georgian, and Ukrainian cast is the kind of who’s who in Russian opera that only the Met can assemble this side of Moscow. There is not a dud among them and each soloist seemed to up the artistic ante of the show on their costars. Olga Borodina has the central female role of Marfa, an old believer who is in love with the younger Khovansky, sung here by Misha Didyk. Her lower range gets a work out in this show and it was admittedly formidable with a rich, burnished sound. And while she is unfortunately costumed like Nicole Sullivan for the last third of the evening, everything about her appearance left under her control was flawless. Marfa’s inspirational guidance comes from the mysterious Dosifei was handled by Met favorite, and Borodina's husband, Ildar Abdrazakov. His Verdi roles are well regarded, but his Russian roles are something else all together. But the wealth of male vocal talent didn’t end there. George Gagnidze was regal as Shaklovity and Anatoli Kotscherga stole several scenes as the elder Khovansky. Vladimir Galouzine represented the nobility as Golitsin and his conflict with Khovansky in Scene 2 bristled with danger.

If it weren't for the staging itself, the evening would have been perfect. Though not as overblown and overdecorated as one of those Zeffirelli travesties, August Everding’s now-stale 1985 production looks its age. The period costumes are lovely and well-preserved, but as a rule of thumb I say if the fabric of your backdrops has begun to wrinkle and pucker to where it can easily be seen by the audience, it’s time for an upgrade. There are a few of those miniature diorama rooms the Met so loved in the 80s and 90s as well, but the immolation scene with the chorus arranged on two levels in a small wooden cabin in the woods still stirs consternation over people willing to take such extreme actions in light of their faith. While Khovanshchina may not engender the controversy of Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer which is working its way to New York for a future season, its hard to ignore some of the parallels. Mussorgsky's old believers may not be terrorists, but their convictions due have spectacularly disturbing results and what the opera lacks in contemporary urgency, it makes up for in sheer scope and grandeur. Don’t miss this one which has four more performances through March 17th.

Bob Dylan's Direction Home

[Editor's Note: As I am facing numerous writing deadlines over the second half of February, this seems like a good time to give a retrospective glance to the first two years of Art of the Rural. Over these weeks I will feature a few new articles, but also many favorites from the archives. Thanks again to everyone who has read and contributed; what began as a labor of love has become a project far larger, and far more rewarding, than I ever could have anticipated - and I deeply appreciate the readership and participation of such a diverse audience. In March we will offer new articles and series, and share some new projects related to our mission.

Bob Dylan's Direction Home was originally published on January 25, 2011. His summer tour did not travel through Minnesota.]

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City’s just a jungle, more games to play
Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away.
I was raised in the country, I been working in the town
I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down.

     --from "Mississippi"

Last week Aaron, a reader from Ohio, passed along some very interesting news. It appears that Duluth, Minnesota, Bob Dylan's birthplace, is actively working to bring back their estranged native son for a concert on his 70th birthday. The news of these plans has been documented in forums on the encyclopedic Dylan resource Expecting Rain, and was confirmed last month in the Duluth News Tribune, where John Ziegler reported that city officials are currently in talks with Dylan and his management to bring him back to Minnesota on or around his May 24th birthday. 

As with all things Bob Dylan, this story contains a good deal of rumor and apocrypha. For instance, I heard that the small mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan's hometown, had originally sought to welcome the musician back on his 70th birthday (Aaron tells me that Dylan last visited for his ten-year high school reunion, where he was roundly ignored by his former classmates), yet Mr. Ziegler reports that Duluth had extended their invitation a full year ahead of schedule, contacting him on his 69th birthday. Regardless, if Dylan accepts this invitation we will see a great deal of media attention focused on his rural Minnesota roots. While there may be a nostalgic whiff to such reflections, it is significant to think of Dylan-the-70-year-old back in Minnesota, over four decades after he recorded his generation-defining howl of "no direction home".

If we put that song--and the long-view of Dylan's legacy--in perspective, then what could also come out of such a birthday in Minnesota could be a reappraisal of a whole generation's relationship to rural place. While Dylan did his best to shirk his "voice of a generation" status, it's clear that his life narrative, captured so eloquently in "Mississippi," is representative of many of his fellow baby boomers: that first wave of the "rural-brain drain," many of whom would later take part in the flight out of America's urban centers and into a suburban life where rolling stones meet their cul-de-sac. 

However, Dylan's last handful of records have embraced the traditional forms of blues and country music just as baby boomers are returning to facets of their own rural upbringing. While the local and organic food phenomenon is part and parcel of this generational trend, many are realizing (as Wendell Berry did so many years ago, in his essay "A Native Hill")  that you can go home again. In my own home region this has been occurring for a few years, as baby-boomers begin to form organizations to preserve our small Ohio Valley town--and to hopefully bring it back to some semblance of its former self. 

Beyond this, the issue becomes one of what "homecoming" means, and how the rural diaspora negotiates this return. As this teenager's video from Hibbing suggests, life never stopped in these communities, and those who stayed both welcome and resent the influence of those who left.

We'll be following the events surrounding this birthday concert; until then, here's a short video produced by the University of Minnesota in conjunction with the UM Press's release of Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan's Road from Minnesota to the World, edited by Colleen J. Sheehy and Thomas Swiss:

Rural International: Luk Thung & Thai Country Music

The album cover for Luk Thung; Dust-to-Digital

[Editor's Note: As I am facing numerous writing deadlines over the second half of February, this seems like a good time to give a retrospective glance to the first two years of Art of the Rural. Over these weeks I will feature a few new articles, but also many favorites from the archives. Thanks again to everyone who has read and contributed; what began as a labor of love has become a project far larger, and far more rewarding, than I ever could have anticipated - and I deeply appreciate the readership and participation of such a diverse audience. In March we will offer new articles and series, and share some new projects related to our mission.

Rural International: Luk Thung & Thai Country Music was originally published on September 10, 2011.]

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A few weeks back, I began an unofficial series of pieces that look to expand what we talk about when we talk about the rural, and today I'd like to discuss a recording that can challenge us to rethink our own categories and boundaries when it comes to rural arts and culture. 

Luk Thung: Classic & Obscure 78s from the Thai Countryside is one of the latest releases from Dust-to-Digital, a record label that has, for over a decade, consistently produced some of the most thorough and thought-provoking reissues of vernacular music and visual art--everything from the southern gospel of their landmark Goodbye, Babylon set to the forthcoming Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM, a multi-disc package featuring diverse pan-African music that has never been released on CD. Luk Thung is one of the productions of the "phonographic arm" of Dust-to-Digital, Parlortone, though this music is also available for download. Luk Thung was compiled by record collector David Murray (see his Haji Maji music blog) and the notes were written by Peter Doolan of the Monrakplengthai Thai vernacular music site.

Many of our readers are no doubt familiar with the work of Dust-to-Digital; as both a record label and a kind of cultural sensibility, Lance Ledbetter's project has not only served as a catalyst for the thriving reissue movement, but has pushed an audience to reconsider the deeper dynamics of a place and its people. 

Luk Thung continues in this direction, and provides an opportunity for many of us to expand our own deeper narrative of the rural arts. While many discussions of rural culture fail to consider the role of the rural diaspora, I cannot think of many instances where we've thought of this geographical movement--from the Great Migration to the farm crisis of the 1980s--in an international context. Luk Thung provides such an opportunity. 

Here's Peter Doolan, editor of the Monrakplengthai music site, writing in the introduction to his liner notes:

Luk Thung is known to many as Thailand's "Country Music"; it's a vibrant and syncretic genre of pop song which aims to give voice to a disenfranchised rural population. Its history is intextricably linked to that of the nation at large, and it continues to provide a soundtrack to the political turmoil that abounds in today's Thailand. Despite its commercial nature and its roots in imported music, Luk Thung's use of local Thai melody, instrumentation, rhythm and vocal styling leads many casual listeners to mistake it for a sort of folk music. In any case, Luk Thung may indeed be filling the social gap left by a slowly vanishing traditional culture. 

The term Luk Thung itself, meaning "Children of the Fields," refers to people of rural background, as opposed to Luk Krung, those born and bred in the city. Bangkok, the capitol of the Kingdom of Thailand, is a massive metropolis disproportionate to the rest of the country, and is, without rival, its political, economic and cultural center. The majority of Thailand's population, however, lives in the provinces outside of Bangkok, as has been the case for millenia. But in the 20th century, spurred by the nation's increasing status as a global commercial power, the capitol began to attract significant movement in from the provinces. By mid-century, a steady stream of migrants were making their way into Bangkok, with most joining an urban underclass of menial laborers, pedicab drivers, market vendors or slum dwellers. Some settled permanently in the city, some came and went with the seasons, but all had to cope with enormous changes in their lives. Music became a vital means of maintaining a feeling of connectedness to the world they were leaving.

As Mr. Doolan tells us in his extensive notes, this rural diaspora first met a state-controlled mass media that privileged western culture (everything from dress to dining utensils) and denigrated traditional Thai practices. After World War II, these forms of expression were re-integrated, as pop music blossomed into a complex and kinetic exchange of idioms, instruments, and experiences; in balancing these various sources and influences, these artists created what I've called before a kind of "rural modernism." Consider the breadth of expression Luk Thung incorporated: "Liké street theatre, antiphonal Lamtat field songs, and Klong Yao long-drum troupes," Mr. Doolan writes. "A particular interest was kindled in songs from Isan, the impoverished and drought-stricken Northeast...singers integrated both Isan's Thet Lae preaching style and Lam Klon poetic form into their performances, and many even began including words from Isan's distinct dialect in their lyrics."

From Peter Doolan's extraordinarily helpful notes we see that these musicians were working in a vein not at all that stylistically different than James Joyce or T.S. Eliot, or any of the modernist painters who incorporated a wildly divergent range of materials and images. Further, the span of Luk Thung runs the American timeline from the Great Migration to today, and from the explosion of folk, blues, country and rock music--all fueled in large part by what a rural diaspora brought with them to the city and its airwaves and recording studios. 

Here's Phloen Phromdaen singing "Ruedu Haeng Khwam Rak (Season of Love)." Mr. Phromdaen, who grew up on his family's farm along the border with Cambodia, first encountered Luk Thung on the radio and saved his money to make his own recordings. A rise to stardom followed and was punctuated, Mr. Doolan tells, by his 1966 hit "Chom Thung (In Praise of the Fields)." Phloen Phromdaen is still singing today.

Mr. Phromdaen went on in his career to create a variant of Luk Thung called Pleng Phut, or "talking music," a development which seems to suggest, if we are thinking in terms of a rural diaspora, a comparison with Johnny Cash, or Elvis, or Muddy Waters or any number of other musicians. As Mr. Doolan writes, these musicians attained a level of stardom in their home country commiserate with the likes of their American counterparts. Given the cultural and political backdrop to Luk Thung, we find many similarities to the social commentary within the language of American folk, blues and country--even to the rebellious use of identity and dialect in "hard country," as discussed by Barbara Ching in her essential book-length study Wrong's What I Do Best.

Lastly, what such a vibrant release as Luk Thung can stir in us is the thought that, even within our own home borders, we may live near folks who most likely identify on one level or another as members of a more distant "rural diaspora," be it from Thailand, Mexico, Somalia or elsewhere. We do a disservice to these members of our community--and to ourselves--when we leave them out of a discussion on rural America.