the pondering pomegranate: southern folklife ...kinda

every now&again, we make the short journey east on I-40 to Chapel Hill. it does seem the Triangle is flush with intellectual, cultural, and artistic events - of which our current hometown has an increasing smatter... certainly enough to, almost always, keep us entertained, educated, & feeling just a little bit hip. a trip to Chapel Hill is a blast from the past (he, 84-88; me, 87-91 with an add-on 06-08) and a shock of the current (everything is growing up to maximize the valuable real-estate surrounding the campus). our first destination on this outing was the venerable Wilson Library ~

this Library is the possessor of the Southern Folklife Collection, of which i would (likely) have no knowledge were it not for my highly literate (and southern) spouse. libraries did not, i regret to say, figure greatly in my undergraduate career. i made the occasional stop at both the 'undergraduate' and 'graduate' Libraries on campus & performed the requisite book hunt during paper-writing season, but i did not set foot in the Wilson Library until well into my adult life. it is a beautiful building, with an upper reading room that truly engenders silent reverence.

on this particular day, the Southern Folklife Collection was celebrating twenty-five years with a series of musical events. we were in town for two of them - but, really, first things first. it was time to eat.

southern deviled eggs

me, eating. probably the warm goat cheese & pepper jelly spread. omg.

~ then we took a look at the upstairs exhibit

on Southern music ~

this record was HUGE. i'd guess it was about two feet in diameter.

view into the upstairs Reading Room

after we gorged on traditional Southern fare such as the warm goat cheese & pepper jelly spread (okay, they did have the deviled eggs & some ham biscuits - but we washed it down with tea punch...what?), we heard an interesting talk from an ethnomusicology professor at Tulane about the brass band music that continues to evolve in New Orleans. members of the Rebirth Brass Band answered questions (and were, later, performing on campus) about their music and, specifically, about the music of 'second line.' here's a video clip of the Rebirth Brass Band (not second line, but what they do in a club). i, myself, gravitate towards the drum lines rather than all the brass sounds - so here's a video clip about the way the Rebirth drummer developed a new beat.

afterwards, feeling a bit peckish, we found free parking (getting more and more difficult in this little university town) & grabbed a bite to eat before our next musical venture.

i don't know why we always end up here,

but we do....

then, we strolled down to the newest (though not new, methinks) iteration of the Cat's Cradle to see Big Star! (why the exclamation point? seems fitting even though i hadn't even heard of this album or its creator until about three weeks ago.) this past week in our own little hometown, we heard an author talk about and read from her new biography of Alex Chilton, he of Big Star! (i can't seem to help putting that exclamation point.)

the night's offering was a group of local (and varying degrees of famous) musicians performing live the first two Big Star albums. our pull was, primarily, the local musicians and, secondarily, the actual music.

we got what we came for.