Category: Music

Art, Banjo, Bluegrass, Country Music, Creativity, Culture, Death, Doc Watson, Folk, Modern Life, Music1 Comment

Doc, Doug and Earl…Bluegrass Goodbyes

Gary Furr

A few days ago, I wrote about the too-soon loss of Doug Dillard, an extraordinary banjo player who was a bridge figure between Bill Monroe and the “pure bluegrass” (which is itself an irony, since Monroe was actually an innovator himself.  He took a hodgepodge of what is ssometimes called “old time music,” consisting of fiddle tunes for dancing, old folk tunes, blues and other music that flowed from Appalachia and the south and forged a unique sound dominated by the mandolin and banjo and fiddle.  He was not beyond experimenting himself, even bringing an accordion in a time or … Continue reading Doc, Doug and Earl…Bluegrass Goodbyes

Andy Griffith, Art, Banjo, Bluegrass, Country Music, Creativity, Dillard and Clark, Earl Scruggs, Folk, Music, The Dillards, The Dillards7 Comments

Doug, Doc and Earl…Bluegrass Breakdown and Cry

Gary Furr

The Darling Boys are no more This has been one of the unkindest of years in acoustic music.  First, Earl Scruggs, the Founding Father of bluegrass banjo, passed away (read my post on Earl’s death here CLICK)  back in March.  Then a few weeks ago, Doug Dillard, a rollicking banjo player who blazed a trail with the banjo across genres in the 1970s when he left the Dillards to join Gene Clark of the Byrds to form Dillard and Clark. Of course, you’d know old Doug for another reason, if you ever watched the Andy Griffith Show.  He was the … Continue reading Doug, Doc and Earl…Bluegrass Breakdown and Cry

Aging, Brain, Christianity, Culture, Economics, Ethics, Faith, Family, Family, Gospel music, Memory, Modern Life, Music, Oliver Sacks, Physiology, Spirituality, Suffering, Theology, Theology and Life4 Comments

The Songs Remember When Part II by Gary Furr

Gary Furr

…there are aspects of humanity that are not reducible to particles, chemicals and rational analysis. In my last post, I reflected on the interesting work of Oliver Sacks on memory.  A few further thoughts about the whole notion of science, faith, and humanity. Sacks has been criticized roundly for his “anecdotes” that don’t meet all the rigor of some scientific requirement, especially by the radical reductionists.  Some believe that  “there is no self or soul.  We are merely the product of our acculturated experiences and brain physiology and when it’s gone, so are we.” But there is something instinctive that … Continue reading The Songs Remember When Part II by Gary Furr

Art, Brain, Creativity, humanity, Love, Memory, Music, music therapy, Oliver Sacks, Physiology4 Comments

The Songs Remember When: Part I

Gary Furr

“The Lord…gave me these sounds.” 

Oliver Sacks is a British-born neurologist whose maverick investigations inspired the Academy-Award winning movie, “Awakenings” and who gained notoriety for his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a collection of unusual cases of mental and emotional issues.  He is, as his website puts it, “physician, a best-selling author, and professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Columbia University Medical Center,” even being named the first Columbia University artist forhis contributions to the arts.  In his book Musicophilia, “Dr. Sacks investigates the power of music to move us, to heal and to haunt us.”

In his “Music and Memory Project,” Dr. Sacks collected and investigates the power of music on memory.  It is tempting, and I have even said this sometimes myself in thinking about identity, that when memory goes, so does our sense of identity and self.  Who am I when I can’t remember any more.  So often in my vocation I hear people say, “Mom left us long ago.”  In Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, an individual descends into a solitary cocoon of long-term memories, and then finally into silence before death.  Where did what we knew as “the person” go?

A friend recently shared a very moving video posted on YouTube of Sacks’ project.   CLICK HERE TO VIEW    It is a remarkable record of a man named who has debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease which rendered him inert and lifeless most of the time.  They learned from his family about some of his favorite music from Cab Calloway and others early in his life and put it on an MP3 player and put on the ear phones.  The transformation is remarkable.  He is alive again, eyes bright and he begins to move to the rhythm and sing along.  A glow of life continues after the music is taken away.

He says, at the end, “The Lord…gave me these sounds.”  There is something remembered in our bodies, our minds, our selves, deep and irreplaceable.  Human beings and the earth God made are sacred, all of it.  We should treat it that way. Continue reading “The Songs Remember When: Part I”

Art, Books, Christianity, Creativity, Faith, Jazz, Movie Reviews, REVIEWS--Books, Movies, Music, Theology, Writing

“Blue Like Jazz”: Not Your Father’s Evangelical Movie

Gary Furr

 “Blue Like Jazz” arrived at selected theaters this past week, an odd stepchild among usual movie fare of aliens, vampires, and things that go boom.  Derived from Donald Miller’s book by the same name, “Blue Like Jazz” is a story of life and faith during a young man’s first year of college.  Don, the main character, is son of a bible believing single mother who wants to protect her son and an atheist  father who is emotionally disconnected, mostly absent, and religiously hostile.

Donald’s Dad wangles an acceptance from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a school filled with intellectually brilliant and morally unfettered not-quite-adults.  After struggling with it, he heads to Reed and Portland instead of the Baptist college his mother wants him to attend.  Soon life is filled with Political Correctness, drugs, booze and moral haze.   The professors challenge every aspect of life, and students engage in protest and outrageousness as an extracurricular activity.

From that point we follow Don as he struggles with the pain of the life he has left behind but the faith that won’t leave him alone.  He is ashamed of that identity, and tries to fit in, but never really does.  The church is an ambiguous presence throughout the movie.  The childhood church that Don leaves behind is a stereotype of tacky children’s sermons and fear of the world.  The youth pastor is glib, a know-it-all, self-assured, and, it turns out, secretly sleeping with Don’s mother, which brings a crisis into his life later in the story. Continue reading ““Blue Like Jazz”: Not Your Father’s Evangelical Movie”