The Most Well Connected Poorman in America: Randall Morris………on Mike McGonigle

I have written about music in the subways before. Its always been an
adventure for me to move from one musician to the other, each taking me
to another place, a different layer of the ethnosphere, a different
place form the dirt and the pain and the struggle that manifests in
those same tunnels and surreal alleyways. The moods are many, from
poignancy to the point of tears in an old man pleaying an accordian
with his eyes half shut as he caresses the keyboard like it was the
skin of a lover in another time and place…..the variations even in that
are myriad and wonderful from the dark green of a Balkan Gypsy twisted
note soliloquy that floats above the trees like weeping smoke to the
Norteno passion of a Mexican squeezebox rhythm that ultimately is about
love, death, and everything in between.
I have always equated these musicians with the art we love. So to me
to hear a blues player who is wandering thru the city on his way
somewhere else and pulling a song in his own style out of a thousand
crossroads he’s been to is no different then the violent beauty of a
Bill Traylor drawing or a Bessie Harvey sculpture. Its what it is. It
dances outside of the academic trivia players who need to cut the limbs
off the body so it fits the bed. It is what it is. Its rough beauty.
Idiosyncratic as hell, eternal and unafraid to be damned. Whether
its pipers form Peru, or a saw player, or a honky tonk piano with three
tap dancers…when its good its good.
Mike McGonigle was a writer in NY in the 80’s till he was stabbed and
ultimatemy moved to Portland. He had an al tmagazine that the balls to
publish the first article I ever really wrote for this field on Gregory
Van Maanen. He publishes another rone now that occasionally put out
cds also called Yeti which can be found on the news stands and music
stores of Williamsburg but that is not what this note is about.
Some of my favorite subway musicians are these men in their 50’s and
60’s and 70’s who stand in the 14th st station or move car to car
singing acapella Gospel. I cannot tell you how many bleary mornings
their pure harmonies have uplifted me out of. Its like a warm hand on
the nape of your neck on a freezing day. They have the same troubles
as everyone else, probably more but there is this light in their eyes
and whether they sing the drifters of The Old Ship of Zion they glow
like coals. They leave the car or I pass on and I feel there has been
a visitation. A kiss from the Cosmos. They are black and they are
positive and they are men with scars and dreams. I have seen tiny
kids suddenly enthralled standing there with a look of revelation in
their little eyes as they stared into the faces of these smiling men.
I have never gotten the full impact of that feeling from a CD. Till
now. Mike McGonigle has put together a 3 CD compilation called Fire in
my Bone: raw and rare and otherworldly African-American Gospel
(1944-2007) that form the first note of the slide guitar service in the
first song to the last song is some of the most uplifting music I have
heard in ages. Its underpriced. And portions of the proceeds go to
the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund. The variety and sheer
musicality is overwhelming. It is the essence of our field in sound
from Edmondsen to Sampson.
My new soapbox is that ALL African-American self-taught artists made
their work as an extension of the yardshow. It is ALL environment
whether indoors or out. There is a soundscape that goes with it. The
art and spirituality are inseparable. The culture is the apex on which
creativity spins. To separate Art from context is a fraud if it
denies one in place of the other. Every piece of African American Art
from Sam Doyle to Bessie Harvey is a yardshow and all my writing this
year will be to demonstrate this. It is my tribute to Traylor, to the
Jamaicans, to the Haitians and to the musicians in the subways and on
this must have CD set Fire in My Bones. I got my button clicked! No I
didn’t find Jesus but I have come very close to better understanding
what we collect.