Not enough people know Anni Rossi, the singer/ songwriter/ violonist. She plays with her instrument like you’d play the guitar, indeed, she isn’t scared to strum the string, making it a perfect tool for RNR.

Meet with Anni

a place (I won’t name for some personal reason) in Williamsburg

On Friday night, following an evening of drinking cheap beer with colleagues, I joined my new roommate, Andy, a New-Yorker and member of an anarchist organization called The Base. I knew that he knew the place where I needed to be. It was his friend’s birthday, and their musician friends were playing for her. Those kinds of friends are very precious, between tours, they will certainly animate your greatest parties.

That said, the gigs were very pleasant. First line, a guitarist and a drummer nostalgic of Kurt , second, a band from the past future, I mean like the people during the eighties pretending to be from the future. ( I’m not sure if you know what I mean, I’m stoned.) Anyway, those guys freaked me out, they were really good, but I just couldn’t take it, it took me back to … a night in Budapest, it was November, We were waiting for the bus in Nyugati station, I was wearing somebody else’s hat and he loved it… I was mentally preparing for the long tricky way back home (since I live in the extremities of Bushwick, just on the border with Bedstuy…) when I heard the name of Anni Rossi, which surprised me for the reason I mentioned before. So I asked around: what about Annie? She’s here? Really??? Where? (Turned out she was there all the time.) Is she going to perform? She’s great, isn’t she? I was, let’s say, suddenly a little overwhelmed and turned straight back to shake her hand: Are you Anni Rossi? Yes, and what’s your name? Line. Line who? Line ** ******. Curious and nice, she seemed unfamiliar with this kind of devotion, yes because I confessed my passion for one of her song, it was playing in my headphones in Thailand, Scotland, and on various trips here and there.

I asked her insistingly to play it, she said she’d try as she didn’t bring her violon (maybe she was upset with it), that night she preferred an electric banjo, accompaigned by the classic bass and drum combo. The concert was like a Rob, Ryan and Anni family reunion. Her belly button proudly displayed, she performed with a nonchalant attitude and voice like a cool Cold War Kid. Sipping her whiskey in between songs, she took it slow, inspiring air, expiring it, creating beautifully contained bluesy waves.

And finally the way back home wasn’t that bad at all, walking with magical bubbles in my head. Anni Rossi is just Loveli, check it out!

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Bushwick

is located in the center of Brooklyn, where I live. It is full of brownish little 2 storey houses with flat rooftops and old factories transformed into lofts. It wasn’t such a nice neighbourhood (criiiiime) a couple of years ago, but as the rental price is cheaper than in other shiny and trendy places such as Williamsburg (headquarter of the hipster community), a lot of young and poor artists/ professionals like me are living in there. In my street seems to live many repented, retired gangsters, so it’s kind of quiet, apart from loud conversations and tooting at 2 am.

The mentioned neighbouring Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant) is the land of heavyweight rappers and boxers. For example Mike Tyson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but the chess world champion, Bobby Fischer also lived here.

In 1931, the Republic Bank of Dallas fails. Among the executives there is John Lomax (1867-1948). He lose his job, like many others in those days. Originally he is an English teacher and folklorist, previously he was full professor at Texas A&M University (Agricultural & Mechanical), later worked as a member of administrative staff at University of Texas, and was co-founder of Texas Folklore Society. He is a nation-wide known figure owing to his anthology of cowboy songs and folk ballads.
In sight of his father’s depression his eldest son encourages him to begin a new series of lecture tours about American folk music. In the course of this they go to New York and Washington. Lomax concludes agreements with a publishing house and the Library of Congress. For the latter he takes to make field recordings on him. In the summer of 1933 his expedition starts. His youngest son, then 18 years old Alan go with him. Go after sounds to plantations and farms, at juke joints and penitentiaries. At Angola Prison Farm in Louisiana he discovers twelve-strings guitar player Lead Belly, who has been sentenced for attempted homicide in a knife fight. In 1934, after his release he become driver and assistant of Lomax’s next round. He gets publicity and recording contract through Lomax, and finally become one of the most influential blues musicians. Just very few names who covered his songs: Abba, Nick Cave, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Nirvana, The Fall, Brian Wilson, Tom Waits.

And there is the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. There he makes recording with Bukka White (1909-77), who has been imprisoned for shooting assault. Parchman Farm Blues about the hard times was written by him, but this is „When Can I Change My Clothes”, because there’re old pictures from the farm

„Most of the guards were untrained men, employed because they knew how to ‘handle and drive niggers’. We saw with horror that there were sadists among them who took pleasure in persecuting, beating, and torturing the helpless prisoners. We did meet sincere, kindly men trying to better the lot of the prisoners, but they were hampered by the limitations of the institution itself. A report in the New York Post confirms my own impression of a generation ago: ‘The state penitentiary system at Parchman is simply a cotton plantation using convicts as labor. The warden is not a penologist, but an experienced plantation manager” – said Alain Lomax. Also here were inmates such famous murderers as Son House (self-defense, pistol, 1902-88) and R.L.Burnside (dice game, pistol, 1926-2005). And there were many nameless prisoners whose songs has been recorded by the two Lomax

1. Bama – I’m Going Home 2. Bama – How I got in the penitentiary (interview) 3. 22 and Group – When I Went to Leland

Bama – How I got in the penitentiary: Well, boss, the way I got in trouble the first time: the folks was barin’ me, and I cut and shoot a feller up. So, I just got in the penitentiary and just worked and worked and worked so much. I had to work. Cut up the fellow, shoot’um up. And then, when I got out of the penitentiary, I thought I had worked enough, and I decided I could make my livin’ without workin’. And I commenced with puttin’ pistols on folks. And that wouldn’t do. And I commenced to stealin’ everything that wasn’t hot and nailed down. And the polices commenced to runnin’ me every whichaway – every way I turn. So, after I got’um started runnin’ me, I just kept on doing wrong – fightin’, stealin’ – you know – an’ robbin’. And sometimes I wouldn’t (doing) be nothin’ but I’d been doin’ so much ’til that when they’d get me, I’d due to been got anyhow. An one, two time they ‘rrest me, an’ I told’um I hadn’t done nothin’, an they said, „Arrest you in egvance – you gonna do sumpin’.” So that way I just stayed in the penitentiary all the time, boss. In and out, in and out, for the last 18 years.

Alan Lomax (1915-2002) , after death of his father in 1948, continued his father’s mission. He introduced Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger and others on radios and in concerts and records. His big fish was Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904-72). He also went after songs to the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa. “Neighborhood investigation shows him to be a very peculiar individual in that he is only interested in folklore music, being very temperamental and ornery. … He has no sense of money values, handling his own and Government property in a neglectful manner, and paying practically no attention to his personal appearance. … He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results” – was written by an FBI agent, for Alan Lomax was observed as a supposed Communist between 1940 and 1980.

44 songs from his Parchman Farm recordings between 1947-59 on 2CDs with 124-page hardcover book have been released this month by Dust-To-Digital. These Negro work songs are perfect for your everyday job.

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essence of delta blues by rnr666