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   Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:57 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

   This is the little cigar box I've been noodling on. It's cute. It can get loud enough, but I can also play it quiet, which is nice for sitting on the porch as the sun sets and plucking out tunes that are really just for me.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:45 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     The takeaway, as I read through all of these studies on the evolution of American music in the 1700 and 1800s, has been this:

     Everyone made music. Everyone, all the time. And that music naturally melded and blended together, and it became something new.

     And I think that a world in which that is no longer true is a poorer world.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:46 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Of course, even this can't be simple.

     The folk music tradition of the Appalachian mountains is all bound up with race and class in complicated ways that are under explored and under researched.

     It didn't just *happen*, it was born out of British, Scottish, and Irish folk traditions. But it isn't just a continuation of those traditions.

     It started by melding those things together and it was blended and merged with various African folk traditions and native American folk traditions and south and central American folk traditions and Spanish folk traditions, largely as a result of the huge amounts of violence the British and the Spanish inflicted on Africa and the Americas.

     And what came out of all of that was American music. The blues, Country, Bluegrass, Folk, Western music, etc. etc.

     I've read a lot about this stuff, I've studied it because I want to understand it.

     There's no good summary here, and no simple narrative. Lots of different people brought lots of different musical ideas together, and a lot of the examples that we have to study of this (that is to say the only stuff that survives) is pretty horrifically racist and that makes studying it really difficult, emotionally.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:47 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     We've been alienated from creative expression, as a culture, over the last 100 years or so. This is a result of commercialization and the capitalist impulse to monetize. "Why study music if you can't get famous", the thought goes.

     But there's a rich tradition of making music for the sake of it, to tell stories, to entertain one another, to amuse yourself. To do it because there's nothing better to do.

     I'm trying to reconnect with the past through my musical practice. There's almost an element of ritual about it? But at least there's intention.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:48 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     But prior to them arriving in the US, I don't know much about my family history. I know very little about my mother's family, and what I do know, or think I know, I have to take with a grain or three of salt because of the unreliable narrators involved.

     My maternal grandmother's mother was from mexico. That much I know for certain. My maternal grandmother was raised in texas, but might have been born in mexico.

     I found out a few years ago that she has a brother. He was born after she ran away. They were never close.

     That's pretty much all I have.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:48 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Regardless, what I do know is that, going back ~275 years, at least a part of my family has lived Here. In and around the southern Appalachian Mountains. Some of them were good people who did good work, some of them were bad people who did bad work. Most of them were just people who did the kinds of things people do.

     And I can say with a high degree of certainty that nearly every last one of them:

     1) Would not have considered themself a musician.

     2) Would have spent about 10x as much time in their life performing music as I have.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:49 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     Parts of the family stayed in GA, parts went west and north, to Alabama and to Virginia. All the living men in my family except for my great great grandfather (who was a child) died in the civil war.

     They fought on both sides. Literal brothers against brothers.

     One of them kept a diary, I've never read it, but I know my dad has a xeroxed copy.

     We have good records of who they were and where they fought. We helped identify the remains of one of them in the 90s, when I was too small to realize what was going on.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:50 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Beyond those folks, though, all I have is names, dates, and cities going back several generations, because no one did anything significant enough to turn up in a history.

     Eventually, there are a few folks in the line who did something significant. A several times great aunt was the first woman to operate a newspaper in the state of GA, and possibly in the country. There are books about her, although they're ... I mean they're not especially informative. They're the kind of zine style, self published thing that you get from museum bookstores (because that's what they are! That particular ancestral home is a museum, and that museum publishes a couple of slim volumes about her.)

     I know enough to know that, on my father's side, most of the family lines settled in GA in the 1750s - 1800s, and that they were mostly poor/working class folks. Even the bit of the family that ran the newspaper... I mean Sarah ended up taking it over because it was their only source of income and no one else knew how.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:51 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     And I'm here trying to connect to a folk tradition that my family has been a part of for hundreds of years.

     I've been thinking a lot about history, about the past, about generations.

     About how little I know about any relatives I didn't personally meet. Even my great grandmother's husband, from whom my family name is taken...

     I knew my great grandmother. She would have been 103 this year. She lived until I was an adult.

     We spent a lot of time together, and I loved her dearly. I learned a lot about the world from her. I didn't learn anything about her Husband from her or her two children other than he died before I was born.

     I didn't learn about his family. I didn't learn about her family. I met her (much) younger sister once, shortly before her younger sister died.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:51 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     I know that there is a family out there, from which I am descended. I know as much as can be known about my distant ancestors.

     My maternal grandmother ran away from home as a young teen, and her memory and the details of her childhood are sketchy, and involved organized crime.

     My great grandmother also ran away from home at a fairly young age, and didn't reconnect with any of her family until after her father and step mother had died. I can guess why, but I'll never know why.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:52 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     The thing is, that doesn't matter.

     I've really been enjoying playing some sloppy, off-time blues on my front porch. I've been enjoying making up silly lyrics to blues standards as I play along.

     I'm doing the thing for the joy of doing it, with the knowledge that I'll never be famous, that I'll never Make It. I'm doing the thing because a life without creative expression is bland and boring, and because doing the thing is much easier than various gatekeepers made it seem for my whole life.

     I'm probably, eventually, going to record an album of little blues tunes with a little backing band. I'll do it because I can, because a lot of my friends are musicians, and because it's worth documenting, archiving, and saving art that has no commercial potential. The record that it existed is worthwhile.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:53 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     I'm a pretty bad vocalist too!

     I'll likely never be much better than I am now. I've been singing my whole life, I've taken lessons, I've performed in choirs. It's not that I can't hear when I'm off pitch so much as it is that I've never been able to develop the vocal control to fix it.

     There are about 4 notes I can hit consistently. When I'm singing often, or at least when I have sung often in the past, I was able to stretch that a little bit. I can improve, I'll just never be what we as a society have come to recognize as Good.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:54 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     I'm not learning to play guitar in the sense that I'll be able to slot in to an arbitrary band with other people and us play together in any meaningful sense.

     I'm focusing on learning to play simple little slide licks in open tuning. My goal is to be able to string together five or six different little riffs consistently enough to be able to accompany myself through some folks songs and blues standards, maybe even write one or two of my own.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:56 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     I've never really played guitar before.

     Like, I learned smoke on the water and louie louie and seven nation army when I was 14, because every 14 year old learned those songs from the time they were written.

     But I was always sloppy and could never really play the songs in rhythm and it didn't really matter because I'd get distracted before the song was over and only play the opening few riffs anyway.

     I wanted to play guitar when I was a teenager because it is a thing you're supposed to want, you know? I thought it would be fun, and it probably would have been if I'd ever bothered to get good at it, but I convinced myself that I couldn't learn on my own, and I tried to go too fast.

     (and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I have damage to my spine which means my hands/fingers/fine motor control don't really work well under certain circumstances, but in a way that is not particularly consistent or predictable. It's not debilitating or anything, but it's a disability that results in a lot of frustration when I'm trying to learn to do new things with my hands, you know?)

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 21:45:56 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     • Doctor Deathray

     But, it turns out, I never really shook the wanting to learn to do this thing, and I've gotten a lot more comfortable with the idea that I'll never be good at it.

     I've decided that 5 or 6 strings is too many to keep up with, and I've decided that I don't want to play bass.

     So I'm picking on a 3 string acoustic cigar box right now, and I'll pick on a 3 string electric in a few weeks when @DoctorDeathray has the time and the piece of mind to finish mine.

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     Kye Fox :veripanda1: (kye@tech.lgbt)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:42:40 JST Kye Fox :veripanda1:

     in reply to

     @ajroach42 :blobfoxcomfysip: https://tech.lgbt/@Kye/110418207158293077

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:44:19 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

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     • Xenofact (he/him):jrbd:

     @RevXenoFact I think we've changed how we communicate more than we've stopped it.

     Or rather, some of us have. I write for several hours every day. Most of that is one to many correspondence, but there's a fair amount of one to one as well.

     My brother ... not so much.

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     Xenofact (he/him):jrbd: (revxenofact@dobbs.town)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:44:21 JST Xenofact (he/him):jrbd:

     in reply to

     @ajroach42 I'd also note how many people wrote, especially long correspondence. We're all less communicatiors

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     Xenofact (he/him):jrbd: (revxenofact@dobbs.town)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:44:23 JST Xenofact (he/him):jrbd:

     in reply to

     @ajroach42 this is why fanfic matters and why I like seeing for the fun of it writing.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:44:35 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     Two of the few things I know about my fathers paternal grandfather:

     - His leg was amputated at the knee, and as a result he couldn't do a lot of manual work. His wife held down a job and was the primary income source for their household long before that was commonplace because it was the only option.

     - He had a penchant for building improvised instruments from whatever was laying around the house, and he spent a lot of time just kind of noodling around.

     People are people.

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:45:08 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     I'm trying to reconnect with the kinds of creative expression from which we as a culture have been alienated, while recognizing and acknowledging and occasionally reckoning with the past of those things.

     I'm trying to reconnect with generations of people who came before me while recognizing and acknowledging and reckoning with the reality of who those people were.

     I am, for better and worse, thoroughly American. My heritage is full of people running away from one difficult situations, cutting ties with their past and trying to build a better future.

     Just over and over again for generations.

     This leaves me with a weird patchwork of a history full of gaps and guesses.

     How appropriate for someone thoroughly American.

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     SeaGoatGirl (seagoatgirl@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:45:42 JST SeaGoatGirl

     in reply to

     @ajroach42 I am moved by your thread. Thank you for your thoughtful writing.

     I wonder about current generations. We generally are constantly recording our thoughts, activities, & pictures on our phones, social media, music streams...how much of this will survive history? It is all on systems that will be outdated. It will all be inaccessible over time.

     I can't help but wonder, what will be known of us in 200 years, 2000 years?

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     Andrew (Television Executive) (ajroach42@retro.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Jul-2023 22:45:42 JST Andrew (Television Executive)

     in reply to

     • SeaGoatGirl
     • Trevor Owens

     @SeaGoatGirl

     I could get in to a conversation about file formats, permacomputing, owning your data, hardcopy, etc.

     This is a thing that I feel strongly about, have big opinions on, and can talk about at length.

     Is that something you're interested in, or should I keep it simple?

     If I should keep it simple:

     Yeah! This is something we have the chance to decide right now. "Preservation means future access" @tjowens (head of digital collections at the library of congress) said as much in his book The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation (I wrote a review of that here: https://ajroach42.com/thoughts-on-digital-preservation/ )

     We can't know what the future will hold, but we can make intentional choices to enable future access.

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