美国国家公共电台 NPR Lula Wiles Flips Notions About American Folk On Its Head

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

The all-female trio Lula Wiles¹ is giving folk music a new reputation through the band's sophomore² album "What Will We Do."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKING AS IT TURNS")

LULA WILES: (Singing) Is this land yours? Is this land mine? The fault lines crack and the fists, they fly. In the heat of the night, I touch the falling sky.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The three women met as little girls at a fiddle³ camp one summer and bonded⁴ over their love of folk music. Now the group's in their 20s. And in their new album, they speak to some of today's most pressing issues. Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland and Mali Obomsawin are the members of Lula Wiles. And they join me now from Boston.

Welcome.

ISA BURKE: Thank you so much for having us.

MALI OBOMSAWIN: Hi, Lulu.

ELEANOR BUCKLAND: We're glad to be here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So I have to ask. You met at a fiddle camp when you were little girls. I want you to take me back to that meeting.

BURKE: (Laughter) So this is Isa speaking. We went to this fiddle camp every year. When I first went, I was 11.

BUCKLAND: This is Eleanor. And I think I went when I was 12. And I'm pretty sure I met you, Isa, the second year I went. I do remember you teaching me a fiddle tune⁵ called "Old Yeller Dog Come Trotting⁶ Through The Meeting House." And that is one of my first memories of our friendship.

BURKE: Yeah.

OBOMSAWIN: And I - this is Mali speaking. I started going when I was 12 or 13. And I actually grew up in the same hometown as Ellie. So I knew her. I met her in swimming lessons.

BUCKLAND: Yeah.

OBOMSAWIN: But I remember in the dinner line...

BURKE: Oh, yes. I love this story.

OBOMSAWIN: I was complaining to a few of my friends - my camp friends - that I couldn't sing. And Isa turned around and was like, shut up. You can sing.

BURKE: (Laughter).

OBOMSAWIN: And that was how we met.

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I love that. It's a great story.

BURKE: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm going to talk about this album. A lot of the songs on this album are about love and relationships, but they're not romantic songs. I'm specifically thinking of the song "Bad Guy" because it turns...

(LAUGHTER)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...Male-female relationships on its head. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BAD GUY")

LULA WILES: (Singing) Followed her husband down into the glade⁷. And I drew my dagger⁸ across his chest. And the wound I dug as deeply as his grave. How black his blood did flow. If I was the bad guy, would you love me less?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me about this song.

(LAUGHTER)

BUCKLAND: Well, this is Eleanor speaking. And it's about this concept of fleeing from a crime and confessing that crime to your lover, to somebody that's really important to you. And we set it to music specifically in a pretty old-time fiddle traditional murder ballad⁹ style of music because - and if people aren't familiar with the folk tradition, there are just scores and scores of murder ballads¹⁰. And in most of them, the man kills the woman because she either says no to his advances or they get pregnant and he's upset. And so he brutally¹¹ kills them both. It's horrendous¹². And we wanted to put a drop in the bucket of sort of settling that score.

BURKE: Yeah. And this is Isa speaking. I think we kind of wanted to explore the murder ballad from a perspective that made sense to us, which was one of female solidarity¹³.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mali, you are a citizen of the Abenaki nation. And there's a song on this album that examines the exploitative relationship between cowboys and native people. Let's listen to that.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD OLD AMERICAN VALUES")

LULA WILES: (Singing) Good old American cartoons, Indians and cowboys and saloons. It's all history by now. But we hold the pen anyhow.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Tell me a little bit about this song.

OBOMSAWIN: It's about erasure¹⁴ and the relationship between native people and settlers. That line is definitely sourced in me growing up and not learning any Abenaki history or hardly any Native American history at all in school and having to really seek it out myself and do my own research. And, you know, I find myself noticing that when I go to bookstores, you know, native history is in a different section than American history, for instance. Right?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.

OBOMSAWIN: And that seems like an enormous problem because that means that native history is optional. It's not a serious interest, right? It's elective, whereas American history is something that is important. And they are two separate things.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD OLD AMERICAN VALUES")

LULA WILES: (Singing) On these good, old, American values, there's a fortune to be made.

(SOUNDBITE OF LULA WILES' "HOMETOWN")

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You are all from rural Maine. And listening to this album and to the thoughts that sort of informed it, there seems like there's something that you really want to get across.

BUCKLAND: This is Eleanor. And one of the songs that I wrote primarily is a song called "Hometown." And it speaks directly to my experience and Isa and Mali's experience of growing up in rural Maine.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HOMETOWN")

LULA WILES: (Singing) Your hometown shot in like a magazine ad, prom queen crown and a picket¹⁵ fence. Everybody's chit-chatting on the Main Street drag. They all know you from way back when. Flip¹⁶ the page, it's a broke-down dream. There's a truck in the yard and a bird in a cage.

BUCKLAND: So in the case of this song, what we were trying to say is that we feel like the American dream is broken. And yet, lots of rural people - and specifically conservative, working-class people and lower economic class - are still operating with the idea that the American dream can give back to them. And in fact, we think that it is mostly broken.

OBOMSAWIN: This is Mali speaking. I think sharing the stories that get erased¹⁷ and drawing attention to them and starting conversations about those stories is one of the primary goals of our album and what we're talking about with each other...

BUCKLAND: Yeah.

OBOMSAWIN: ...And with our friends, what we're worried about, we're losing sleep about.

BURKE: Yeah, what's on our minds, whether that's learning to be on our own when we've been heartbroken - there's quite a few (laughter) songs on the record about that - or the more overtly¹⁸ political songs. That's why we called the album "What Will We Do" because that's the question that we're all asking in a myriad¹⁹ of different ways.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT WILL WE DO")

LULA WILES: (Singing) What will we do if we marry a tinker? Oh, true lovers, what will we do then? Only sell a tin can and walk on with my man, and we'll yodel it over again.

OBOMSAWIN: You know, as musicians, we're sort of answering our own question - right? - like, what will we do? You know, people listening to the album will ask themselves that question. But for us, what we will do is write a series of songs that start conversations, hopefully, because we kind of think that the best route to justice of any kind is sort of demolishing²⁰ and dismantling²¹ ignorance. And that comes through starting discussions...

BUCKLAND: Yeah.

OBOMSAWIN: ...And actually talking to each other and not stigmatizing²² each other or each other's viewpoints.

BURKE: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Mali Obomsawin, Isa Burke, Eleanor Buckland are the members of Lula Wiles. Their new album is "What Will We Do." Thank you all so much.

OBOMSAWIN: Thank you, Lulu.

BUCKLAND: Thank you. Yeah, we had a great time.

BURKE: Thanks so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT WILL WE DO")

LULA WILES: (Singing) What will we do if we have a young...

1 wiles   

n.（旨在欺骗或吸引人的）诡计，花招；欺骗，欺诈( wile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• All her wiles were to persuade them to buy the goods. 她花言巧语想打动他们买这些货物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The woman used all her wiles to tempt him into following her. 那女人用尽了自己的诱骗本领勾引着他尾随而去。 来自《用法词典》

2 sophomore   

n.大学二年级生；adj.第二年的

参考例句：

• He is in his sophomore year.他在读二年级。
• I'm a college sophomore majoring in English.我是一名英语专业的大二学生。

3 fiddle   

n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动

参考例句：

• She plays the fiddle well.她小提琴拉得好。
• Don't fiddle with the typewriter.不要摆弄那架打字机了。

4 bonded   

n.有担保的，保税的，粘合的

参考例句：

• The whisky was taken to bonded warehouses at Port Dundee.威士忌酒已送到邓迪港的保稅仓库。
• This adhesive must be applied to both surfaces which are to be bonded together.要粘接的两个面都必须涂上这种黏合剂。

5 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

6 trotting   

小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走

参考例句：

• The riders came trotting down the lane. 这骑手骑着马在小路上慢跑。
• Alan took the reins and the small horse started trotting. 艾伦抓住缰绳，小马开始慢跑起来。

7 glade   

n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地

参考例句：

• In the midst of a glade were several huts.林中的空地中间有几间小木屋。
• The family had their lunch in the glade.全家在林中的空地上吃了午饭。

8 dagger   

n.匕首，短剑，剑号

参考例句：

• The bad news is a dagger to his heart.这条坏消息刺痛了他的心。
• The murderer thrust a dagger into her heart.凶手将匕首刺进她的心脏。

9 ballad   

n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲

参考例句：

• This poem has the distinctive flavour of a ballad.这首诗有民歌风味。
• This is a romantic ballad that is pure corn.这是一首极为伤感的浪漫小曲。

10 ballads   

民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴

参考例句：

• She belted out ballads and hillbilly songs one after another all evening. 她整晚一个接一个地大唱民谣和乡村小调。
• She taught him to read and even to sing two or three little ballads,accompanying him on her old piano. 她教他读书，还教他唱两三首民谣，弹着她的旧钢琴为他伴奏。

11 brutally   

adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地

参考例句：

• The uprising was brutally put down.起义被残酷地镇压下去了。
• A pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed.一场争取民主的起义被残酷镇压了。

12 horrendous   

adj.可怕的，令人惊惧的

参考例句：

• He described it as the most horrendous experience of his life.他形容这是自己一生中最可怕的经历。
• The mining industry in China has a horrendous safety record.中国的煤矿工业具有令人不安的安全记录。

13 solidarity   

n.团结；休戚相关

参考例句：

• They must preserve their solidarity.他们必须维护他们的团结。
• The solidarity among China's various nationalities is as firm as a rock.中国各族人民之间的团结坚如磐石。

14 erasure   

n.擦掉，删去；删掉的词；消音；抹音

参考例句：

• The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. 过去给人擦拭个干净，擦拭的行为又忘了个干净，于是，谎言就变成了真理。 来自英汉文学
• The inspection, modification, replacement or erasure of part of file's contents. 检查、修改、代替或擦去文档内容一部分的过程。 来自互联网

15 picket   

n.纠察队；警戒哨；v.设置纠察线；布置警卫

参考例句：

• They marched to the factory and formed a picket.他们向工厂前进,并组成了纠察队。
• Some of the union members did not want to picket.工会的一些会员不想担任罢工纠察员。

16 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

17 erased   

v.擦掉( erase的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；清除

参考例句：

• He erased the wrong answer and wrote in the right one. 他擦去了错误答案，写上了正确答案。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He removed the dogmatism from politics; he erased the party line. 他根除了政治中的教条主义，消除了政党界限。 来自《简明英汉词典》

18 overtly   

ad.公开地

参考例句：

• There were some overtly erotic scenes in the film. 影片中有一些公开色情场面。
• Nietzsche rejected God's law and wrote some overtly blasphemous things. 尼采拒绝上帝的律法，并且写了一些渎神的作品。

19 myriad   

adj.无数的；n.无数，极大数量

参考例句：

• They offered no solution for all our myriad problems.对于我们数不清的问题他们束手无策。
• I had three weeks to make a myriad of arrangements.我花了三个星期做大量准备工作。

20 demolishing   

v.摧毁( demolish的现在分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光

参考例句：

• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings. 这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。 来自《用法词典》
• Conventional demolishing work would have caused considerable interruptions in traffic. 如果采用一般的拆除方法就要引起交通的严重中断。 来自辞典例句

21 dismantling   

（枪支）分解

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。
• The dismantling of a nuclear reprocessing plant caused a leak of radioactivity yesterday. 昨天拆除核后处理工厂引起了放射物泄漏。

22 stigmatizing   

v.使受耻辱，指责，污辱( stigmatize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Laing regards the concept of mental illness as both unscientific and stigmatizing. 菜恩认为精神病的概念是不科学的和诬蔑性的。 来自辞典例句
• The existing social benefits are considered to be stigmatizing and repressive. 现存的社会福利被指责为是无价值的、残暴的。 来自互联网