#3 - "Bonny Barbry-O" - 8-5-2021
Ballads in the Wilderness - Luddites on Location
Dear Friends: There are so many versions of this fine old ballad - and in most of them, I’m struck by the undercurrents running just beneath the romance.
The young woman, who is called Barbara, or sometimes Peggy, is confined by her family to the “safety” her bedroom, from which a soldier endeavors to coax her. Always, her honor is at stake, permission is required, and one mode of confinement is traded for another.
In the broad, sagebrush hills of southeastern Wyoming, Ft. Laramie lays at a geographic and cultural confluence. In the 1800’s it was a stopping-off point and gathering place for trappers and traders, explorers, soldiers, missionaries, fortune-seekers and the disenfranchised, all heading West. The greater region supported a way of life for the Native People of the plains.
In the wake of the so-called “clash of cultures” is the ephemera in the photos and videos I took at the Fort - sabers and satin dresses, mahogany desks and buffalo hides, genteel parlors decorated with feather lances, arrow quivers and painted shields.
In my mind, song and setting entwined this summer day to tell a converging tale of dominance and subjugation, stratified and half-hidden and undulating as the land. The passing train, and even the bugle, just happened to sound while I was recording.
I learned “Bonny Barbry-O” from Ged Foley, who recorded it with the Battlefield Band on their album, Home Is Where the Van Is. Thank you, Ged.
I would also like to extend very heartfelt "Thank You" to engineer Clayton Stubbs, who so thoughtfully edited this and many other Luddite Studios videos. And my thanks to you for watching.
2 окт 2024
