Jet, Delay Barnes, America, so I did say last week that the next episode woul...
weeks and that is true. Chima and I are working on episode seven as we speak, but consider
“this a bonus because during the course of producing and recording this series we collected a lot”
of music. A lot of people came in and performed songs for us. Actually a lot of people we were interviewing suddenly broke into song and we ended up having a lot of music and we've been getting a lot of emails saying play more music. Okay so here we go. In this bonus EP, I'm going to
present to you guys some of the musicians that we encountered most of whom were interpreting dollies
music. A bit later I'm going to play you selections from a live event that I hosted that was loosely inspired by the series and by the music and the series. But for the moment I just want to play you some stuff that people have asked for. Starting with, well you know, last EP we did episode six about Jolene. We featured a guy named Justin Hiltmer playing a song, his song "Silver to Exit" wasn't his song. It was an old bridge ballad that he heard dolly cover on one of her blue grass
“albums that became very important to him. It's a song called "Silver Dagger" and he played that”
way a lot of people asked to hear the whole thing. So here it is. And I'll tell you when he first played
this song for us, it stuck so deep in my head. Maybe we would want to reset for that. Yeah let's reset for that. Okay so you don't have the two mics and everything. Justin was recorded by Tasha Limley. All right here's "Silver Dagger." Don't sing love songs. You'll wake my mother. She's sleeping here. Right by my side.
“And her right hand is a silver dagger. She says that I can't be your body.”
[Music] All men are fools. So says my mother. They'll tell you again, love and lies, and then they'll go and court some mother. Leave you alone to find inside. My daddy is a handsome devil. He's got a chain five miles long and on every league, a heart does dingle. I've another man. He's loving love.
Go court another tender maiden in hopes that she might be your wife for I've been born and I've decided I'll sleep alone all of my life. Don't sing love songs. You'll wake my mother. She's laying here. Right by my side. And in her right hand is a silver dagger. She says that I can't be your body. That's Justin Hiltner with "Silver Dagger" that song kills me.
Recorded by Tasha Lemley, you can check out more of his stuff at JustinHiltner.com. All right next. I'm invited to perform my Ki-Kui-Gosper songs, which I also now blend with country.
I carry my guitar into like two country songs, then I do my other Gosperal Ki...
For episode three, we interviewed a woman named Esther Konkara, who's known as the Kenyan
“Dolly Parton. She performed a variety of Skype for us from Campbell County just outside of Nairobi, Kenya.”
She's saying a bunch of stuff for us, some gospel songs and her native Kekui-U. And also some Dolly songs, we'll cross-fade from one to the other. (singing in foreign language)
“So just to translate the song, say, I will sing this song to praise you God,”
because you have always been my great deliverer despite the many battles in my life.
You have always made me in my life. But I love Dolly songs that say that when a flower grow wild, it can always survive. I grew wild enough to write, "Why what song is that?"
“When a flower grow wild, you know this song, it's called "Wide Flower."”
Oh, well sing it out. Okay. (singing in foreign language) I just love to be gone. So that God did one day send me free. I hitched to ride with the wind and since she was my friend, I just let him decide where I go. (singing in foreign language)
That's Esther Konkara singing a bit of Dolly Part and song, "Wild Flowers," which is off her album, "Trio." Esther was recorded in Nairobi by Tomas Brick Hill. Speaking of "Trio's," we actually got a trio to come and play some scoring music for us
three amazing musicians, Steph Jenkins, Steph Coleman and Courtney Hartman.
Here's a little something they played for us. (music playing) , we connected with Steph and Steph and Courtney through an event
We hosted at Radio Lab and then got the minute studio record during that sess...
which we recorded at WNYC, in which was engineered by the amazing Alex Overington.
“Courtney, who plays guitar, just sort of spur the moment shredded through this instrumental cover”
of Dolly's Mary Me, "Total Your Worm." , "Total Your Worm." That's all she played, but I've listened to that one minute, like 70 times. We'll be featuring more from that trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman and Courtney Hartman in the next few episodes.
Gonna take a short break now, and then we'll be back with some very different kind of music that I presented at a live event in Brooklyn that was loosely inspired by the series. That's coming up. Although the Justice Department has published thousands of pages of the Epstein files, the quest for accountability goes on.
“There are huge pages of redactions that involve descriptions of activity by other”
possible co-conspirators, whether they be powerful men, we don't know because they're all blacked out.
On this week's "On the Media" from WNYC, find on the media wherever you get your podcasts. [ Applause ] Hello, hi everybody. Thank you, Elina. Thank you, National Sadas, for getting me back here and creating a place where I can do a weird thing.
Hey, I'm Jan, I'm Umrod. Back with a bonus EP of music we recorded live as part of the series, "Dolly Parts of America." But two weeks before we released the series into the wild, I hosted an event in Brooklyn. It was sort of inspired by that visit that she and I took two "Dolly's Tennessee Mountain Home," which I described in the episode four.
How we went up there to see the home and it reminded me very strongly of my dad's Lebanese Mountain Home. And so when we came back, I got to thinking about all the songs that we sing about home and how as we leave home, we carry those songs with us, we morph them and transform them. And so I ended up hosting this event at National Sadas in Brooklyn as part of the National Sadas
plus series curated by Elina Park where I got together three incredible musicians,
Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon in Caroline Shaw, who all played traditional music that they connect to that reminds them of home that is from their home. But they all took that music and gave it a new spin. We called the event "Covering Home," like covers of traditional songs of home, and I'll play some excerpts. Please give it up for Shelley Washington.
Shelley Washington was the first one up. She's a composer at Princeton University, her work has been performed all around the world. Hello everyone, so I will be playing this large tube. This is a baritone saxophone. If you have not seen one before, it's also the one that Lisa Simpson plays and it is.
Shelley explained that her traditional music was actually a record that her parents gave her when she first started playing the sax, which was about 12.
“My parents gave me one of the Mingus big band, like essential albums that I immediately just”
tried to memorize every single line and just obsessed with that entire album. So every solo line, I could sing all of them, and you can hear the band chattering in the background and making these little like, "Ah ha!" different exciting notes, so you might hear that in the piece. What Shelley did is she took all her favorite Mingus lines, put them all together in the same piece, and then played it on her gigantic baritone sax that she's named Titan.
Here's an excerpt of that piece called "Moingus." [Music]
[Music]
[Music] [Music]
“That was an excerpt of "Moingus" from composer Shelley Washington.”
You can check out more of her work at ShellyWashington.com.
That's s-h-e-l-l-e-y Washington.com. Next up was composer Bora Yu. [Music] So a piece that is called "The Houses We Carey" within, and it was actually in response to
“an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC last spring.”
It's a Korean artist named Doho's Ha, who makes these really beautiful fabric houses,
made of actually Korean Humboldt material, which is this kind of like stiff crinnoline that's translucent, and he literally makes exact replicas of his Berlin apartment, his Lower East Side apartment, the house he grew up in Korea, but they're all reconstructed from his memory, so there's these fabric houses that just hang in space, and you get to walk through them.
“I mean it's really OCD to the hill, I mean like radiators like crocheted together.”
So these are all kind of these suspended times and spaces, because he talks about how as a next pat of from Korea, he goes to all these different cities and lives in all these different places,
but his accent's too thick, so they always say he's not from there, but when he goes home to
Korea, they're like, well you're not from here either, you left. It's this constant theme and his work is so the exhibit was called almost home, and this idea of home existing in your memory, her and your mind, or kind of that the houses that we carry inside of us, and that these architectures live in our memories and our archetypes. For the performance Bora played about a dozen different instruments and found percussion objects, and very strange things like a stro violin,
which is a violin with a horn on it, and she played electronics and saying here's an excerpt. [Music] [Music] [Music] That was an excerpt of Bora Yoon performing her multimedia piece, the houses we carry within.
It's a beautiful piece that you really kind of need to see as well as here, so I would urge you
To go to Borayoon.
here a lot of her music. Okay, the final performer of the evening was Caroline Shaw,
Pulitzer Prize Winning, Performer, Composer, Collaborate with Pretty Much Everybody from Kanye, to the Brooklyn Youth Corress, and she did a duet with cellist Andrew Yee, series of duets, actually, I'm going to play you two of them. Okay, but so maybe you just set up the next song,
“and then I think the fellow composers performers to join me on the stage because we're going to”
be Caroline's backup bowl band. Sure, so what are we about to hear? The next tune is called on Jordan's Stormy Big Spanx. I stand at least that's the first line. It's not really a title, and that was written the words are written by Samuel Stenet of England in 1787,
but it also is essentially, you know, this essential,
“exodus narrative of leaving a place searching for freedom, crossing the river Jordan,”
and the function of the river Jordan is strong in a lot of these songs, and the last one is a very famous al-Flyaway, which is also written by Albert Romley in 1932. You know, all the history,
it's an interesting history the song, though, because he himself is kind of covering
other songs that have to do with the exodus narrative in the south. So there's, I find the song kind of interesting and problematic, and I keep trying to find what it means to go home in that song. Excellent. Oh, Karela, shall I injury? Give it up. I'm very happy to be joined by Shelley, Envora, and Elena, and Jad here, too. -On Jordan's story banks, I stand, and cast a wishful eye
to gain and fair and happy land where my possessions lie.
“Don't you feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home?”
My home is in the promised land, and I feel like going home. Oh, that transported rapture sin that rises to my eyes. Sweet feel of the raiding little and green, and rivers of delight. Don't you feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home? My home is in the promised land, and I feel like going home.
[Music] [Music]
Somewhere morning when this life is over, I'll fly away to that home on God's...
I'll fly away, I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy?
I'll fly away. [Music]
When my shadows of this life are over, I'll fly away, like a bird from those prison walls of life.
“I'll fly away, I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy?”
I'll fly away all glory, like a bird from those prison walls of life. I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy?
“I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy?”
I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy, like a bird from those prison walls of life. When I die, how many of you buy and buy, I'll fly away.
Just a few more weary days and then, I'll fly away to a land where toys will never end.
“I'll fly away all glory, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy, I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy?”
I'll fly away when I die, how many of you buy and buy? I'll fly away, how many of you buy and buy, like a bird from those prison walls of life. Those are excerpts from a night at national sawdust in Brooklyn, night I put together with curator Elina Park, loosely inspired by dolly parts of America, all those dolly songs like Tennessee Mountain Home, that are about trying to hold a feeling of home even while you're wandering far, far away. This was part of the National Sawdust Plus series that Elina curates.
All the musicians who appeared in this bonus EP, Justin Hilton, Eastern Cranc...
Shea and I will be back in one week with another episode of DollyPart in America until then.
