How far out did John Coltrane go at the end? Or how far inward, to the depths of the universal, Emersonian self most of us rarely touch? Was his quest fueled by mere artistic restlessness or by a sense of […]
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Kevin Lynch
Kevernacular (Kevin Lynch) is a veteran, award-winning arts journalist, educator and visual artist. He won The Milwaukee Press Club's 2013 gold award for "Best Critical Review of the Arts" for my Culture Currents blog "Edward Curtis Preserved America's Vanishing Race for Posterity." The Aug. 22 posting reviewed a photo exhibit at The Museum of Wisconsin Art by Curtis, who documented the passing of America's original Native American culture and society in the early 20th century.
He was a long-time staff arts writer for The Capital Times in Madison and The Milwaukee Journal, where he was lead writer of a Pulitzer-nominated Newspapers in Education project called "That's Jazz."
KL at the Blue Plum Music and Arts Festival, Johnson City, Tennessee, June 2012. photo by Sheila Lynch
Among other publications, he's written for Down Beat, The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, New Art Examiner, Rain Taxi, American Record Guide, CODA (The Canadian jazz magazine), Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine, Scene PBS TV magazine (Minneapolis), Graven Images: A Journal of Culture, Law and the Sacred; The Shepherd Express, OnMilwaukee.com and he has been a featured blogger on roots music for NoDepression.com. He's taught cultural journalism, English rhetoric and composition (while earning half of the credits for a PhD. in American Literature), and film studies. He served as a music program host for WLUM-FM and WMSE-FM in Milwaukee. He's also working on a novel, Melville's Trace or, The Jackal. Kevin is a also a visual artist and studied jazz piano and theory at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. A recent hand disability keeps him from piano playing these days. He lives in Milwaukee.
STATEMENT: In blog writing and reporting, I strive to maintain and espouse the same journalistic standards of professionalism cultivated in over 30 years as a working arts journalist. Given the freedom of the blogosphere, misinformation compounds and spreads at an alarming rate. So, maintaining such standards is more important than ever, even as I welcome the new freedom and vibrancy.
My blogger's moniker suggests a particular hybrid quality as a cultural observer. My sense is that meaningful distinctions between fine and vernacular art blur in the cultural currents -- aside from functional genre names. I've covered and researched both realms plenty and categories help identify and clarify -- fine vs. folk vs. pop art - but there's no hierarchy of quality among genres or traditions, in my mind. As Duke Ellington said, "There's two kinds of music, good music and bad music."
"Vernaculars speak" implicitly nags the old culture-class question of, say, who's better: Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas? Pop culture poet/songwriter Bob Dylan is taken seriously today by intelligencia, of course -- almost to death. But I think that beyond Bob, and because of him, the craft and art of songwriting has spread and grown almost exponentially in many vernacular idioms, often in new hybrids. And that phenomenon is important and noteworthy.
The Gypsy Lumberjacks showed their impulse to wander by venturing into territory that so far remains a wasteland for them. Milwaukee, specifically, a gig at Catch 22 — a sports bar where virtually all downtown dwellers were outdoors, savoring one of the […]
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – Shank Hall (Milwaukee, WI – Sept. 5, 2014) At 83, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott might be shrinking a tad. There didn’t seem to be too much there, under the long, gray curls, the big cowboy hat, and the […]
Artist-in-residence and Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch (left) works with the Wisconsin Conservatory Music Jazz Institute’s award-winning students saxophonist Lenard Simpson and student pianist Peter Garofalo. Jazz ain’t the music that made Milwaukee famous. However, like beer, the music’s innate effervescence […]
What did they know when they titled the last recording released before Haden’s death on July 11? That his boyhood polio had returned, fatally as it turned out. Polio long ago robbed his young singing voice. So he became perhaps […]
On the new ECM CD, Last Dance, with pianist Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden’s extended bass solo on “Where Can I Go Without You?” magnificently extends the melodic contours and the meaning of the song, as if the question had been deposited directly […]
The Pabst Theatre crowd leapt to its feet and roared, and you knew he was coming back. Not only that, 65-year-old Richard Thompson suddenly scurried back out to his guitar, like a kid pouncing onto a Christmas present. I’m standing […]
It’s no secret that the bass gives the gas to funk, as the pulse and the sinewy drive. Among wind instruments, the honking sax has mostly led the charge since the blues and R&B blasts of Illinois Jacquet, Maceo Parker, […]
The Best Roots Music Albums of 2013 I continued to be amazed by the strong quality and artfulness in vernaculars presumed to be mere “folk” musics. These rankings make some fine distinctions between albums but the points stick, for me. […]
From a Westerly Cultural Travel Journal, Vol. 3. MORRISON, CO. — The scenery on my drive to Colorado diminished as I headed west: the farmland of Northern Illinois and Iowa are verdant but without the rolling sumptuousness of “God’s country” […]
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