{"id":20,"date":"2007-07-18T21:01:09","date_gmt":"2007-07-19T01:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/wp\/2007\/07\/americana_cello_solo_and_strin\/"},"modified":"2011-04-28T16:35:08","modified_gmt":"2011-04-28T20:35:08","slug":"americana_cello_solo_and_strin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2007\/07\/americana_cello_solo_and_strin.html","title":{"rendered":"Americana, cello solo and string trio varieties"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Americana” doesn’t gibe with “homeland,” a term which always reminds me of nativist propaganda. The Wikipedia definition of “homeland” <\/a> alludes to that nuance: “When used as a proper noun, the word, as well as its cognates in other languages (ie. Heimatland in German) often have ethnic nationalist connotations.”<\/p>\n


\nAmericana, at least as propagated by cellist Erik Friedlander<\/a> in his new solo cd Block Ice & Propane<\/i><\/b> represents the open-minded, loose and rangy culture of the great land that’s our land, rather than Know Nothing<\/a> principles that would bar the alien, close the borders and bear arms behind fortified shutters.
\nFriedlander discovered America on car-and-camper trips with his parents and sister during the 1960s. Evidently watching the highway unfold as the wheels went ’round led him to associate U.S. national identity with the rough-hewn, old-timey fiddle\/guitar\/banjo figures of Scot-Irish origin that remain at the core of folk, blues and country music (hence rock and pop, too; jazz comes somethin’ else). He distills themes from those basic elements, then shapes and structures them into compositions simple but sturdy as furniture hand-crafted with dovetail joints. His realizations, live at Joe’s Pub on July 17 as well as on his self-released album, are unfussy but luminous, like the “social landscapes”<\/a> his father, Lee Friedlander, photographed during their family travels.
\nMaybe the cross-country driving vacation, like America’s folk music’s roots, is receding into an earlier, more innocent, less gas-costly era – and maybe that era is bathed in the glow of nostalgia. But what comes through Erik Friedlander’s vivid, mostly pizzicato virtuosity is a love of the amber-waves-of-grain vistas that he saw through the windshield, an embrace of the quirkiness of people and places encountered at random stops and layovers visits with relatives. Though he’s now a cosmopolitan, cross-genre artist who performed one of jazz beyond jazz John Zorn’s Masada<\/a> compositions as an encore, Friedlander never condescends to the mainstream he encountered as a boy and remembers in maturity. He ennobles it. See him play with Zorn’s Masada String Trio here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Americana” doesn’t gibe with “homeland,” a term which always reminds me of nativist propaganda. The Wikipedia definition of “homeland” alludes to that nuance: “When used as a proper noun, the word, as well as its cognates in other languages (ie. Heimatland in German) often have ethnic nationalist connotations.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1i3CL-k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":133,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/jazzbeyondjazz\/2008\/10\/connected_in_the_azores.html","url_meta":{"origin":20,"position":0},"title":"Globalism in the Azores","author":"Howard Mandel","date":"October 30, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Globalism held its head high at the tenth annual Ponta Delgada Jazz Festival last week. 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