HotHouse Presents the Chicago Premiere of THIS AIN’T NO MOUSE MUSIC Plus Selected Films by Acclaimed Documentary Film Maker Les Blank
All day symposium examines pioneering work in “field recordings” of American Roots musicÂ
Chris did pioneering and legendary work starting in the early 1960’s traveling to remote rural places in America’s outback to record and promote indigenous Roots artists. This Ain’t No Mouse Music discusses Strachwitz’s penchant for a particular curatorial point of view.
Clips of Les Blank films from the era are seen throughout the movie. HotHouse will screen three of the Les Blank films that are featured in This Ain’t No Mouse Music – Chulas Fronteras, A Well Spent Life, and The Blues Accordin’ To Lightning Hopkins.
Interspersed between the film screenings will be music, a rare interview with Bob Koester, (who is similarly a record executive (Delmark Records) and proprietor of the Jazz Record Mart) and commentary by two younger musicologists: Juan Dies and Ayana Contreras.
Date: Saturday October 17, 2015
Time: 11:30pm – 7pm
Location: Columbia College Film Row Cinema
1104 S Wabash, 8th Floor
Tickets $8 / free for Columbia College students with ID establishing current course enrollment
11:30 Introduction – Brown Bag Lunch and get settled with Erwin Helfer
Erwin Helfer, a Chicago boogie woogie and blues innovator and master, has been forging his own piano music legacy. Erwin has been playing and performing for over fifty years. The sounds and personalities of past boogie woogie and blues pianists have nurtured Erwin’s musical growth. For many years, Erwin accompanied Mama Yancey, the wife of Chicago blues piano patriarch Jimmy “Papa” Yancey, and later recorded one album with her. He was also mentored and influenced by Cripple Clarence Lofton, Speckled Red, and Sunnyland Slim. During the 60’s and 70’s, Erwin released two piano duet albums with his performing and recording partner of ten years, Jimmy Walker. On their first album, Peter J. Welding, one of the preeminent blues historians and scholars of all time, wrote that Helfer had “mastered the rhythmic and melodic subtleties” of the blues piano style. Other Helfer recordings include “Heavy Timbre”, a compilation of Chicago blues pianists, several LPs for his own record label Red Beans, two CDs for Austrian Label CMA and others on the Siren Records label. Erwin has the chops, the feel, and the drive of the masters but he also pushes the “classic” blues piano music forward in a totally new direction. His music is graceful, spirited, and at times beautifully dissonant. Erwin’s classical music training allows him to hear and interpret the simple, percussive blues and boogie piano style like no one else. Yet, his classical training is not overbearing on his own piano approach; that is, his playing is fluid and carefree, not stiff. Chicago has long recognized its musical treasure, Erwin Helfer. He performs regularly at Chicago clubs and annually at the Chicago Blues Festival garnering rave reviews from publications such as The Reader and Chicago Magazine. His local gigs and frequent European tours have created a strong and loyal following in Chicago and overseas. (From the liner note of the CD “I’m Not Hungry, but I like to eat – Blues”- The Sirens Records SR-5001)
Noon-1pm: Brown bag lunch and discussion with Bob Koester and Lynn Orman Weiss
Lynn Orman Weiss
Their vivid portrait of an obsessive sonic sleuth, filmmakers Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling take a hip-shaking stroll from New Orleans to Appalachia and right into the very DNA of rock’n’roll. In this beautifully shot film, we come face to face with the creators of indigenous music, from the great Clifton Chenier to fiddler Michael Doucet, from Flaco Jimenez to the Pine Leaf Boys, playing songs that are endemic to their place and circumstance, to dialect and class, to climate and landscape. Their music is now highly endangered by the merciless steamroller of pop culture, assimilation and commercialism, which makes Strachwitz’s desperate pursuit to track down every last artist all the more urgent. But these songs aren’t meant to be locked away in a Smithsonian vault to be decoded by folklorists and musical anthropologists. This film is a living cultural history with a soundtrack that bites and kicks and screams. Even 50 years later, Arhoolie’s records remain alive, unruly and still so sharp that some songs can cut you right down to the soul.
-Jeffrey St. Clair, Author Born Under a Bad Sky
Break 15 minutes
2:15 – 2:45 pm Discussion Ayana Contreras -how / when do curatorial choices define history
Ayana Contreras is an artist that works in sound. Her artistic process revolves around the idea of creative reuse as a means of building community. She hosts and produces a show called “Reclaimed Soul” on Vocalo 91.1fm (a sister station to WBEZ). Each program features an all-vinyl soundtrack from her extensive personal collection, as well as original audio documentaries about people who are using old items for new artistic or cultural endeavors. She also interviews original Chicago Soul artists and musicians. Ayana additionally produces a radio program called “The Barber Shop Show”, broadcast live from a Barber Shop in North Lawndale, which airs on Vocalo and WBEZ. Ayana was a 2011 Dorchester Projects Resident Artist.
3pm – 5:30 pm Selected films by Les Blank
Closing remarks 5:30
HotHouse programs are supported in part by the Dorothy and Gaylord Donnelley Fund and The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
