Welcome to another post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring the Windborne Trio, a vocal group from New England. If it’s not your first experience with Homegrown or with Windborne, you may notice two things about this concert. First, we featured Windborne back in 2021 in one of our “Homegrown at Home” video concerts with its own interview, and you can find both in this previous blog post. Second, of course: Windborne is usually a quartet, but Jeremy Carter Gordon was prevented from performing at this show. Luckily, before Jeremy joined the group, Windborne toured as a trio, so they had the repertoire, arrangements, and experience to put together a concert program without him. So for this show Windborne was Lynn Mahoney Rowan, Will Thomas Rowan, and Lauren Breunig. Just like other blogs in the Homegrown Plus series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections. (Find the whole series here!)
Windborne’s singers grew up immersed in the traditional song and dance communities of New England and discovered a love of world folk music in their teens. All four have traveled extensively in the US and throughout the world with Village Harmony, Northern Harmony and the Renewal Chorus, leading workshops and giving concerts. Over the past decade, Windborne has sought out masters of traditional singing styles in the US and around the world to study a variety of vocal music. Through these collaborations, they have developed the vocal agility and authentic sound for which they are known. BBC Traveling Folk called them “the most exciting vocal group in a generation,” and they have done great things with AFC archival materials. In 2014, Windborne was one of 10 groups selected by American Music Abroad and the US Department of State to tour as cultural ambassadors through music. They traveled to Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Angola, touring with internationally known artists, performing at sold-out national theaters, and collaborating with traditional musicians in each country. They also taught music and dance workshops to schoolchildren, English-language learners, dance schools, choirs, and music conservatories. Windborne’s dynamic concert programs have included songs from Corsica, the country of Georgia, Bulgaria, Quebec, and the Basque country, as well as traditional and original American folk music. For their latest concert at the American Folklife Center, they dug deep into their repertoire and selected some old and new favorites. Check it out in the player below! In our interview, I talked with the members of Windborne about some of the experiences they’ve had since our previous conversation. We spoke about the passing of some of their mentors and the fact that they are on their 20th anniversary tour with Windborne. We spoke of the feeling that they are moving from being the “next generation” of the folk scene to being the current generation, and what that means to them. See the conversation in the player below! You can find both of these videos with more bibliographic information on the Library of Congress website. You can also find them on the Library of Congress YouTube channel.
Collection Connections
If you enjoyed the concert and interview, check out the Collection Connections below.
Windborne
Find all the latest Windborne news at their website!
Songs with Archival Connections
“Which Side Are you On?” was recorded twice by Alan Lomax in 1937–find those recordings at this link. Both singers, Tillman Cadle and Jim Garland, told a story of the song being written by the two daughters of Sam Reece, a miner who was part of the 1931 Harlan County strikes. As Windborne states in the concert, Florence Reece, the girls’ mother and Sam’s wife, is believed to be the true author.
“Stole and Sold from Africa” is a fascinating spiritual that has its roots in the abolitionist movements of the 19th century. An early version (or at least a related song) titled “The Song of the Coffle Gang” was published in abolitionist song collections The Liberty Minstrel, compiled by George Washington Clark in New York, 1844, and The Anti Slavery Harp, compiled by William Wells Brown in Boston, 1849. Most people nowadays associate the song with traditional singer Addie Graham of Kentucky, from whom Windborne learned the song. There are recordings of Graham in AFC’s Jean Ritchie and George Pickow collection, and Jean Ritchie knew the song too, so it might well be in that collection. But the versions AFC has online are both videos. One is by Mike Seeger, singing and playing fiddle and harmonica, from his last performance in the Coolidge Auditorium back in 2007, about 23 minutes into this video. I believe Mike learned it from Addie Graham too, though I couldn’t swear to it. The second was Jake Blount’s version, which opened his concert and thus the whole 2023 Homegrown season.
A version of “The Wassail Song” similar to Windborne’s was recorded for the BBC and dubbed by Alan Lomax in 1951.
Sidney Robertson Cowell collected “Then Hurrah for Home,” a “Diggings” song that was based on the “Few Days” song that Windborne sang, in 1939.
Related Concerts, Guides and Essays
Find a blog with links to all of our New England Collection Guides at this link. Each state guide has links to collections as well as concert and lecture videos.
Our guide to the Country of Georgia has links to collections and many concert videos featuring Georgian polyphonic singing.
At Folklife Today you can see a concert and interview with Basque singers Noka with Mikel Markez.
Thanks!
Thanks for watching, listening, and reading! The American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Concert Series brings music, dance, and spoken arts from across the country, and some from further afield, to the Library of Congress. For information on current concerts, visit the Folklife Concerts page at Concerts from the Library of Congress. For past concerts, including links to webcasts and other information, visit the Folklife Events Online Archive.