{"id":8662,"date":"2009-12-03T10:57:54","date_gmt":"2009-12-03T15:57:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=8662"},"modified":"2013-08-30T11:18:05","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T16:18:05","slug":"belly-dancing-at-the-juke-joint-with-eric-deaton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/belly-dancing-at-the-juke-joint-with-eric-deaton\/","title":{"rendered":"Belly Dancing at the Juke Joint with Eric Deaton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSmile at trouble \u00a0and walk on by.\u201d-Eric Deaton<\/h2>\n

This review was originally published in The Local Voice<\/em> #94\u00bd – December 3, 2009.<\/p>\n

OXFORD, MISS. (TLV) – Expect more than a typical blues record when you listen to\u00a0Eric Deaton<\/strong>\u2019s latest effort\u00a0Smile at Trouble<\/em>. Your first clue is the sort of Hindi\/hillbilly hybrid scene on the front cover: a multi-armed figure (think a cross between some guy getting arrested on Cops<\/em> and the Hindu god Shiva<\/strong>) with a snake wrapped around his waist and the Sanskrit mantra \u201cmani padme hum\u201d written of the steps of a trailer.\u00a0\"smileattrouble\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The next hint that Deaton is up to more than just the blues comes on the first track, \u201cAlap,\u201d a droning Indian-inspired instrumental. Twangy strains of the sitar are right at home with Deaton\u2019s achy refrain: \u201cI\u2019m so tired of cryin\u2019, things are lookin\u2019 up at last.\u201d His use of a shruti box, a simple Indian hand-pumped instrument, provides the rich droning tapestry he weaves throughout the album.<\/p>\n

In \u201cMarrakesh Moan\u201d he offers the line that gives the album it\u2019s name: \u201cSmile at trouble and walk on by.\u201d This track, like the others, pulses fluidly, languidly marrying the sounds of the East and the West. Similarly, the instrumental \u201cIt Must\u2019ve Bentonia\u201d manages to be distinctly southern as well as otherworldly.<\/p>\n

Somehow the juxtaposition of these seemingly dissimilar forms of music works beautifully, inspiring listeners to consider the possible connections between the Blues and Hindu music. Both the Blues and Hindu music (which is mostly songs of praise and devotion to one of the millions of deities) are steeped in age-old mythology: from\u00a0Robert Johnson<\/strong>\u2019s devil in \u201cCrossroads Blues\u201d to Hindu songstress Mirabai\u2019s passionate odes to mischievous god Shiva.<\/p>\n

Whatever Deaton\u2019s reasons or inspiration for this album, it\u2019s so interesting (and refreshing) to hear the Blues paired with a genre other than rock-n-roll. Produced by\u00a0Jimbo Mathus<\/strong>\u00a0with assistance from Deaton and\u00a0Justin Showah<\/strong>, the album was engineered at Delta Recording in Como and mixed by\u00a0Winn McElroy<\/strong>\u00a0at Money Shot in Water Valley. Mathus and Showah also play on the album along with\u00a0Kent Kimbrough<\/strong>,\u00a0Tyler Rayburn<\/strong>, and\u00a0Charles Gage<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Equal parts Indian drone and Hill Country moan,\u00a0Smile at Trouble<\/em>\u00a0gives Deaton\u2019s already impeccable musical sensibilities a new depth and resonance.<\/p>\n

Order Eric Deaton’s compact disc,\u00a0Smile at Trouble,<\/em> at HillCountryRecords.com<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

A Brief History\u00a0of the Shruti Box<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The origins of the shruti box can be traced back to the Chinese\u00a0sheng, an ancient wind instrument still in use today, which makes\u00a0sound when air passes through small bamboo reeds. These freereeds were later to influence a new family of Western instruments,\u00a0including the harmonica, accordian, and harmonium.<\/p>\n

Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein<\/strong> (1723-1795), Professor of Physiology at\u00a0Copenhagen, was credited with\u00a0the first free-reed to be made\u00a0in the Western world after\u00a0winning the annual prize in\u00a01780 from the Imperial\u00a0Academy of St. Petersburg. The\u00a0new metal reeds were used in the\u00a0harmonium, a foot-operated bellows instrument invented in Paris in\u00a01842 by Alexandre Debain<\/strong>. The harmonium proved to be very popular in\u00a0small chapels and churches as it was\u00a0smaller and much less expensive than the\u00a0pipe organs of the day.<\/p>\n

A later version of the harmonium was developed which\u00a0enabled the bellows to be operated by hand, and which featured\u00a0a smaller keyboard and less stops (the small knobs pulled out to\u00a0create a sustained note). This lighter, more portable instrument\u00a0was taken by travellers to India where it was adopted by the\u00a0native musicians and further refined to suit the folk and classical\u00a0music styles. The keyboard was finally removed to make a new,\u00a0smaller instrument designed solely for the purpose of producing\u00a0sustained notes and chords to accompany singers and musicians.<\/p>\n

It was called the sur-peti and later became known as the shruti\u00a0box. In the 1960s travellers to India began bringing shruti boxes back to the West. The poet Allen Ginsberg<\/strong> was one of the earliest well-known players to use it\u00a0to accompany his poetry readings. Since then the shruti box\u00a0has slowly crossed geographical boundaries and musical\u00a0genres to become a true world\u00a0music instrument<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSmile at trouble \u00a0and walk on by.\u201d-Eric Deaton This review was originally published in The Local Voice #94\u00bd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":8667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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":[1595],"tags":[1966,1967,1958,1965,1961,1144,1963,474,1960,1956,1962,1964,1957,1959],"class_list":["post-8662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-review","tag-alexandre-debain","tag-allen-ginsberg","tag-charles-gage","tag-christian-gottlieb-kratzenstein","tag-eric-deaton","tag-eric-deaton-trio","tag-hill-country-records","tag-jimbo-mathus","tag-justin-showah","tag-kent-kimbrough","tag-robert-johnson","tag-shruti-box","tag-tyler-rayburn","tag-winn-mcelroy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/Eric-2.jpg?fit=510%2C340&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}