McKeon's Gripping Novel about Chernobyl

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ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR (2014)

Darragh McKeon

Harper Perennial, 452 pages, 978-006062246875

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The title of Darragh McKeon's novel about Chernobyl is lifted from The Communist Manifesto. The complete passage is: "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." Karl Marx certainly did not have a nuclear power plant meltdown in mind when he wrote those words, but they are eerily apt to describe what happened on April 26, 1986 outside of Pripyat, Ukraine. In retrospect, one could date the beginning of the Soviet Union's demise to Chernobyl.

Many of you are probably thinking, "A novel about Chernobyl? Who wants to read anything that depressing?" I won't lie; there are parts of McKeon's book that are horrifying, but it's also a gripping tale of perseverance, courage, and the search for justice and meaning. Some of life's biggest questions are aired: duty versus honor, order versus sanity, and silence versus the risk of speaking out. Above all, it's about how Soviet citizens were forced to (paraphrasing Marx) face the realities of their real conditions—in this case, a failed state held together by paranoia and fear directed by soulless apparatchiks. After Chernobyl, though, what greater fear could the State invoke? What induces more paranoia than a silent killer like radiation? Officially, 31 people died when the power plant core melted; unofficially the ultimate toll will likely be closer to 40,000–once all the radiation-induced thyroid cancers and leukemia reap their final harvest. A few doomsayers say that a half a million people will suffer health problems.

McKeon pulls no punches in describing agonizing final throes of radiation poisoning, first responders vomiting within minutes of arrival, and peasants being left in harm's way because to evacuate them would violate the State's official statement that everything was under control. It wasn't, of course–all that was (seemingly) solid melted both literally figuratively. We see the tragedy up close through the eyes of a peasant lad named Artyom, who knew something was amiss when the sky turned crimson. He and his remaining family flee to Minsk (which should have also been evacuated), and McKeon vividly relates the things terrified families sought to carry with them when finally ordered to leave. What would you take–that which is valuable or that which was enriched by sentimental value? Artyom's father tries to carry off an unhinged door upon which he had recorded his children's growth–a disobedience of orders that leads to his forced conscription with a clean-up crew.

We also meet Grigory, a heroic doctor sent to Chernobyl with nothing more than a single box of iodine pills and his iron resolve to convince a hidebound government safe in Moscow that the situation on the ground was disastrous. For his troubles, he gained KGB attention. The KGB already knew his ex-wife Maria, once a dissident journalist and now a harassed factory worker. Others want Maria to take up her pen again and let the word know of Soviet perfidy, but she's just trying to keep body and soul together so she can help her nephew Yevgeni, a piano prodigy who doesn't even have regular access to an instrument. How best to survive is the dilemma facing each of the four main characters: Artyom in a Felliniesque refugee camp, Grigory in a field hospital with no more personal protection than a paper mask, Maria from prying KGB eyes, and Yevgeni from a social system that already has him pegged as a future factory worker.

  McKeon invoked Marx, but what happened at Chernobyl is also well summed by Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity." New York Times critic Anthony Marra called Chernobyl the greatest story of "displacement" since Dunkirk. Hyperbolic? Perhaps, but such is the power of McKeon's novel that it might make you think so. And, if we take displacement to mean something broader than a movement of people, it was mighty enough to fell a Soviet empire built upon air, not solid blocks.

Rob Weir

Maura Kennedy Project with Poet B. D. Love a Masterpiece

MAURA KENNEDY

Villanelle: The Songs of Maura Kennedy and D. B. Love

Varése Sarabande Records 302- 007-339-8

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Three things we've long known: Maura Kennedy has a gorgeous voice, she's fearless as a performer, and she doesn't do little-girl vocals. That doesn't mean she doesn't have a softer side, though, and Villanelle highlights this–as well as her penchant for risk, her versatility, and her willingness to air out her lungs when the song requires it. About those risks, Kennedy took up the ultimate challenge. In a meeting with California-based poet B. D. Love, the two cooked up an audacious scheme: he would compose original poetry and she would write appropriate melodies–no word changes, no choruses, no repetition, no clichés. The result: An absolutely stunning album that alters moods, tempos, and styles more often than Cher changes costumes. You know from the get-go you're in for a treat. The album's title and opening track references a demanding style of 19-line poetry consisting of five tercets (three line that create a complete poem) followed by a quatrain. Try writing a melody for that! Now try to make it sound as gorgeous as what Kennedy composed. It's hard to describe, but it's simultaneously complicated, fragile, beautiful, and mystically evocative of the open spaces of the West. It, and songs such as the folk rocker "Bicycles with Broken Spokes," the old-time-laced "Mockingbird," and the Tex-Mex weepy "Borrowed Dress" are evocative of classic projects from Nanci Griffith and Tish Hinojosa.

Kennedy is also known, of course, for her work with her husband, Pete, which uses harder-edged material to create counter-balance when things get too smooth. On this album, Maura recreates that effect by donning different personae and musically transporting us to alternative musical landscapes. There is, for instance, the bluesy "She Worked Her Magic onMe," a song in the Bayou spirit of "Black Magic Woman;" the torchy "I'll Be Alone Tonight," which would be at home at an after-midnight Texas honky-tonk; and several songs that mash country with hints of sad East Coast girl-group material from the early 1960s, including "Breathe Deeply Love" and "Darling Cutter." That effect on the last song is especially a nice bit of legerdemain, given that Cutter is a young man who is the damaged product of abusive parents who escapes into a world of self-inflicted wounds and Internet porn. If that's not enough mood changes for you, there's also "Fireflies," a Kennedy original and the only lyrics Love did not pen. Its echoic vocals and faintly medieval melody are reminiscent of some of Jacqui McShee's post-Pentangle offerings. For heaven's sake, there's even a Christmas song on this album! If you know anything about B.D. Love, it goes without saying that his lines are metrical and imaginative. Best of all, they are like the villanelle–complex in style but, if done right, so steadfast in their clarity that we notice only the way they stir.

Rob Weir

Brian McNeill Looks at Scottish Music--In One Place: Falkirk

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BRIAN McNEILL and FRIENDS

The Falkirk Music Pot

Greentrax 383D

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What is Scottish music? Once one accepts the reality that what is glibly labeled "Celtic music" is more useful for marketers than ethnomusicologists, the question becomes a much harder one to answer. Does one root around deeply in the Scottish past to find antecedents for each rhythm, melody, and beat? That was the avenue taken by Dick Gaughan back in 1991, when he spearheaded the Clan Alba project. His was a brilliant undertaking that, nonetheless, managed to anger self-styled purists. In a new undertaking, Brian McNeill, who takes an ethnomusicological backseat to no one, tacks a different direction. Instead of seeking to unearth Scotland's musical past, he presumes that region and culture conspire to create distinct sounds. His is a microcosmic look at Scottish music in one place–his native Falkirk–and he simply avoids definitional battles by presenting music of, about, and played in Falkirk. Strictly speaking, just two of the 22 tracks on this double CD are traditional and McNeill is perfectly willing to accept that visiting students from Malawi's Bandwe Secondary School, with whom Falkirk schools have an exchange program, fertilize Falkirk's music just as richly as a native son such as himself.

McNeill calls this project a "cooking pot," an apt description for the musical porridge stirred by McNeill, local students, and homegrown talent in 2014, when Falkirk won a grant and designation as an official Creative Place. McNeill is on the CD with a few of his classics: "The Lads O' the Fair,' "The Boys that Broke the Ground," "The Best of the Barley," and "The Travelling Nation's Pride." The last selection is actually sung by Sylvia Barnes (ex- of Kentigern) and a reminder that McNeill is as much in his producer, teacher, musical director roles as that of headline performer. Many listeners will not have previously heard Amy Low, Emma Buchan, Ellie Williams, Andy McKean, Willy Thomson, or Andrew Howie. That's because the first two are youthful pipers, Williams a precocious 17-year-old singer/songwriter, and the last three regional folk club staples. And you would have had to be in Falkirk on the right night to hear the Falkirk Schools Ensemble, the Bo'ness and Carriden (brass) Band, or competition pieces from various local songwriters. McNeill gives the final word to pupils from the Bandwe Girls Secondary School as they sing "Phla Phala Phala." How appropriate. The word means "porridge." Go to the head of the class if you guessed that in Malawi it's cooked in a big iron pot.

Rob Weir

Christina Baker Kline Early Book Lacks Orphan Train Likability

BIRD IN HAND (2009)

Christina Kline Baker

William Morrow, 288 pages, 978006078901

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Christina Baker Kline's 2013 novel Orphan Train was a runaway hit. As is often the case, this sparked interest in earlier novels and rumors of impending movie options on those works. I liked Orphan Train, so I decided to check out an earlier work, Bird in Hand. After having done so, I must conclude that Kline is a writer only now hitting her stride. Bird in Hand reads like something made for the Lifetime channel. It is perhaps good as a non-challenging beach read, but it's neither original nor substantive.

Kline employs a few of the oldest conventions in literature: a love triangle, the allure of dangerous liaisons, and the pull between stability and sexiness. At heart it is a book about Alison and Claire, two Southern girls/best friends who live life in the New York City fast lane after college. Their husbands–whom Claire and Alison met in college–become fast friends and the two couples build lives that revolve around loft parties, dining out, and gallery openings. Their close friendship slowly cools, though, when Alison and Charlie have two kids and move to the suburbs. Claire and Ben stay in New York, where he is an ambitious architect and she a writer. Alison also works in the publishing industry, though for a parenting magazine, whereas Claire's novel–based perhaps too closely on her and Alison's lives—becomes an overnight sensation. To kick off a press junket, Claire holds a large party in the city, which Alison reluctantly attends–reluctantly because she and Claire have drifted apart and Alison feels woefully inferior. In a telling moment, Alison searches for an outfit without baby vomit on it, a startling contrast to Claire's sultry ensemble.

On her drive back home to New Jersey, Alison loses her bearings and is involved in a horrible auto accident in which a small boy is killed. It's not her fault, but add grief and guilt to Alison's litany of inadequacies. As it transpires, the accident is the catalyst for serious reexamination on three sides. Charlie is bored with his soulless job, the suburbs, responsibility, and Alison. She, in turn, is feeling unappreciated and unloved. She's right. Charlie and Claire have secretly had the hots for each other since college and each sees the other as a thrilling alternative to their rock steady (read "boring") spouses. The rest of the novel follows a path we anticipate will come to no good end.

Both the scenario and the writing are more melodramatic than tragic–like a soap opera that's gone on too long. The novel also suffers in that of its four central characters, only its least developed, Ben, is in any way likable and he only because he's so clueless we feel sorry for him for much of the book. Claire is still another literary convention: a femme fatale. She's a Southern princess: spoiled, selfish, amoral, and sexy. The last quality explains why Charlie is attracted to her, but there is little reason why Claire would reciprocate. Charlie is handsome, but he's also an empty suit whose ability to manipulate others barely masks his slacker demeanor, his lack of compassion, and his overall flat affect. We can, however, see why he'd be bored with Alison. At the risk of making a gendered remark, she's one of my least favorite literary types: a Millennial mom written as though her generation invented parenting. Only toward the end does she experience more feistiness than a cleaning cloth. If the message of this novel is that life is complicated, thanks for stating the obvious. If, however, we are supposed to feel pity, sympathy, or compassion for any of them, Bird In Hand left those options in the proverbial bush. Orphan Train succeeds because Baker populated it with sympathetic characters; those in Bird in Hand are merely pathetic,

  

Rob Weir

Guadi Galego's Galician Feminism

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GUADI GALEGO

lúas de outubro e agosto

Fol 1078

Mention "Celtic lands," and chances are good few will mention Galicia–a northwestern region of Spain that bleeds into northern Portugal. That is unless you come from there, like Guadi Galego, who has devoted much of her musical career exploring its tunes and singing in the Galician language–an Indo-European Romance language that includes Celtic and Germanic vocabulary. For 18 years Galego played bagpipes and sang with Berroguito, an important regional Celtic-influenced band. These days, though, Galego is as apt to champion activist feminism as Celtic culture. For her second solo album, Galego takes up the cause of Galician mothers, whom she views as trapped within a capitalist, patriarchal, macho model of maternity. She's also expanded her musical palette on an album that freely mixes folk melodies, pop rhythms, jazzy torch singing, and arrangements that skirt the borders of theatricality–sometimes within the same song.

The album title translates "Moons of October and August" and pays tribute to the months in which she gave birth to her two sons. Those boys better grow up to be feminists, as Galego puts that spin on everything everywhere. "Matriarchas" was written as homage to the three Mirabal sisters murdered in 1960 for their opposition to Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. (Dominicans often view this as a key moment in the slow transition to democracy. Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, just five months later.)  It's one of Galego's hybridized tunes, one that begins quietly and mournfully, but she uses the considerable power of her voice to build it, add instruments and voices to the mix, and increase the drama. The album's opening track, "Merguillei," is similar in feel—quiet, then big. Is it folk? Pop? More the latter, I think, and that too is intentional. Galego has particular affinity for working women–the ones often pressured to find an impossible balance between work, parenthood, and an outside life that she insists includes the disco. Her drum-looped "Chea de Vida" and "Aromas de Terra" are so much in the pop vein that were they in English you might think them lifted from Robyn's dance club repertoire. But then what does one make of gentle songs such as "Pernoctei" or "O Muro," the first what you might get if you crossed smoky jazz with a flamenco singing; and the latter soulful and subdued? The last song translates "O Wall," and that's perhaps the best way to think of this album. Ms. Galego is no respecter of boundaries, including those dictated by men, commerce, or musical genres.

Rob Weir

Family and Irish Sagas from Sean O' hEanaigh

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Séan Ó hÉanaigh

The Tides that Bind Fånaíocht

Cló lar-Chonnacht 002

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With a name like Séan Ó hÉanaigh, d'ye think he might be Irish? hÉanaigh has a distinguished musical pedigree. He was born in Boston to Irish parents who moved the family back to Connemara when Séan was just ten. He literally grew up with music through recordings, live music, the radio, family gatherings, and sing-alongs with his mother, Kate, who collected and compiled songs in a big red notebook. Oh, by the way, hÉanaigh is Irish for Heaney and his uncle was the legendary Galway sean nós singer Joe Heaney (1919-84). In his youth, hÉanaigh has made a fair mount of music on his own, though this is his first album since 1992. Since then he's produced recordings, promoted Irish music, and co-hosted a radio show with Scots Gaelic singer Mary Ann Kennedy.

The Tides that Bind is apt on all levels. The cover sports a picture of the boat that returned his family to Connemara in 1966, and many of the songs are plucked from his mother's notebook or learnt from his uncle. There are also three English language songs, four originals, and two in Scots Gaelic that he learned from Kennedy. Kennedy appears on this album to play harp and sing backup vocals, as do other well-regarded musicians, including Allan Henderson (Blazin' Fiddles), Blair Douglas (Runrig), and Findlay Napier (Back of the Moon). But this is a wistful album, not one that spotlights virtuoso performances. hÉanaigh  has some miles on his voice, but he uses that to his advantage to evoke a homespun feel.  Akin to an intimate house concert, hÉanaigh wends his way through some Irish love songs learned from his mother ("Buachaill Caol Ard," "Brid Thomáís Mhurchadha") and intersperses change of mood and pace songs. For instance, a hÉanaigh original, "Óro mo Stórín," a regretful song of lost love, segues to "Time are Changing," his cheery English language song about a relationship that has endured the twists and turns of life's paths. He follows the well-known tragic song "A Nobleman's Wedding" (learned from Joe Heaney) with a bouncy Irish song in which he imagines the mayhem that ensues in a mix of a soldier, a tailor, and a lass. My personal favorite, though, is the more sombre "Bóthar An  Bhláth Buí" in which hÉanaigh muses upon the sorrows that lie amidst the rocky ruins of old cottages and abandoned fields. He also ends on a doleful note, his cover of "The Banks of the Lee" (which, of course, he learned from his uncle). So there it is: love, joy, and sorrow, the ebb and flow of life–the tides that bind. Rob Weir

The Onlies: Young Band on the Rise

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THE ONLIES

Long Before Light

Soft Day Records 003

Within recent memory, grizzled vets of the folk music scene were worried that both performers and audiences were getting too gray for the future health of the music. These days, there is such a wealth of new talent that observers wonder how all these promising upstarts can attract attention in an increasingly crowded field. This is especially vexing given that so many new bands have gravitated to bluegrass and old-time music. Sociologists can probably make a case that nostalgia is attractive when the future is uncertain, but I prefer the simpler explanation that young people are attracted to bluegrass energy, the rhythms of old-time music, and the time-honed gravitas of trad. Enter the Seattle-based trio (and occasional quartet) The Onlies, who specialize in all three and share an additional love of Celtic music.

If there is a single prerequisite for gaining attention, it's that you need to be very good at what you do. Music is like top-drawer spirits; it gets better over time. But wait! The Onlies–guitarist Leo Shannon, fiddler/banjoist Riley Calagno, and fiddler Sami Braman– are still in high school. True, but all three have played together since they were in grade school. And lord knows that they share good role models: Darol Anger, Liz Carroll, Bruce Molsky, Alaisdair Fraser, Brittany Haas, Tommy Jarrell…. Moreover, if the fiddle-centric Long Before Light is any indication, they already possess more poise than many of their elders. The Onlies exercise their interest in Celtic music on "Moll Ha' Penny," a set of two Irish tunes, and again on "Freddy's," a New Breton delicacy written by the late John Morris Rankin. We can also hear Tommy Jarrell's influence on "Cheese Closet," a deliberately raw tune penned by Shannon. He also does a nice job on the old-time standard "Jubilee," a song popularized by Doc Watson. But one of the one precocious things about this album is that 60% of its fifteen tracks are originals. That list includes Colcagno's "Skipping Stones," a lovely little song onto which Braman appends "North Fork," a pick-'em-up-lively fiddle tune of her own composition. Together with sweet harmonies it makes for one of those earworms you're happy to invite into your head. It's emblematic of most of the selections on the album: joyous, earnest, and nimble. Let me address the gorilla in the room, though. Does one also hear youthful inexperience? Mostly no, though there is, of course, room for growth. The harmony singing is much better than the leads at present, and a few of the tunes could benefit from being more adventuresome. Sure. Now ask yourself what you were doing in high school! Then listen to this CD and repeat after me: "The kids are alright. The kids are alright….."

Rob Weir

Here's a YouTube live performance.