Documentary Arts, Inc.

Clyde Langford
Paper Plate Blues
Lightnin’ Hopkins’ older brother, Joel, taught me when I was 13 years old. He was a guitar picker, and he was sweet on my grandmother that lived with us. And he found out some kind of way that I was interested in learning to play a guitar. And that was a sure way he could get a chance to be around her. Over there, he’d show me how to play a guitar in the evening time, and after I’d get out of school. Joel was part of my mama’s daddy’s people. Not really close cousin, but maybe a fourth cousin, something like that.
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John Burrus
Cowboy Songs and Country Hymns
John Burrus started singing when he was twenty-three years old. He was a rodeo cowboy, who, while the other cowboys went into town, stayed back at camp to practice his guitar. He learned a few basic chords, G, D, C and A, and then tried singing along as he played.
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Osceola Mays
Spirituals and Poems
The spirituals and poems of Osceola Mays are remarkable indeed. In them, the past is recounted with a reverent intensity that expresses the deeply felt emotions of three generations of black Texans. The harsh realities of segregation and discrimination are juxtaposed with the importance of family and community life in these spirituals and poems learned by Osceola Mays from her mother.
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The Hoddu & Xalam of Senegal
Griot Roots of American Banjo
Along the coast of West Africa and throughout the Senegambia region of the savannah grasslands, are modern griots – traditional songsters who accompany themselves on plucked lutes. Each of the ethnic groups they represent has its own name for the music they perform.
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Guitars of the Americas
Enríc Madriguera and Felix Casteverde
Historically Spain has shown a close relation between the art music and the music of Spanish folklore. The pieces by Luys Narvdez, vihuelist - a predecessor to the guitar - and composer, display this combination of folklore and high art. Canción del emperador/Song of the Emperor was dedicated to king Charles V, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor of Europe.
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Hallelujah Jubilee
East Texas Black Harmonica Players and their Songs
In the rural East Texas towns of Longview, Tyler, Raywood, Liberty, and Sulphur Springs, the harmonica has been played by African Americans in church and at house parties for more than a century. John T. Samples, Sr., Virginia Peoples, Robert Berry, Jack Wilson and Cleveland Walters, Jr., exemplify the roots of this tradition.
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The Kiltormer Group
Irish Music & Song from County Galway
Seeing The Kiltormer Group live at any number of pubs in County Galway or County Clare is a totally different experience: The band pumps out reels, jigs, hornpipes and songs for two solid hours for happy, sweaty couples that fill the postage-stamp-size dance floor until long past midnight.
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