[Fwd: John Fahey]

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Many present-day Jewish music-makers' entry level into music was
through the world of folk guitar.

> The following is from a local Washington, DC news list sent out on Zydeco
> and Blues by Wayne Kahn [rtonrhythm (at) boo(dot)net]
>
> DC lost a hall of famer this week
> >From Mary Cliff
> Guitarist John Fahey, whose eccentric acoustic stylings influenced a
> generation of musicians, died this morning at Salem Hospital in Salem, OR
> after undergoing
> a sextuple bypass operation 48 hours previously.  John Fahey was born on
> February 28, 1939 in Takoma Park, MD. His father played popular songs on the
> piano and Irish harp, and his mother was also a pianist.  John spent his
> youth raising wood turtles and fishing in the Susquehawa River and upper
> Chesapeake Bay. On Sundays the family went to the New River Ranch in nearby
> Rising Sun, MD where they heard the top country and hillbilly groups of the
> day, like Bill Monroe and The Stanley Brothers. On a fishing trip in 1952
> John met a black singer and guitarist named Frank Hovington, whose
> fingerpicking style so intrigued John that he bought his first guitar soon
> thereafter, a Sears Roebuck model that cost him $17.00, and started teaching
> himself to play.
> After getting a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from American University,
> Fahey moved to Berkeley, CA in 1963, where he established his own label,
> Takoma
> Records, and began his long recording career. The following year he moved to
> Los Angeles, got an M.A. in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA, and was
> instrumental in the rediscovery of blues artists Skip James and Bukka White.
> He expanded the Takoma label to include fellow guitarists Leo Kottke and
> Peter Lang, among many others, and New Age pioneer George Winston was
> another whose early career was nourished by the quirky innovator. In recent
> years the Takoma catalog has been purchased by Fantasy Records of Berkeley,
> CA, and Fahey's Takoma LPs are now being systematically reissued on CD. Bill
> Belmont at Fantasy calls Fahey "A true American musical genius."
> Although Fahey preferred to be known as an American primitivist, he was
> widely acknowledged as the "godfather of the New Age guitar movement," and
> his recordings (over thirty albums for a wide variety of labels) showcased
> his ongoing musical explorations. Several were sonic explorations in the
> alternative music vein, and all had exotic titles (a 19-minute excursion was
> called "On the Death and Disembowelment of the New Age," while another was
> called "Old Girlfriends and Other Disasters." At the same time, he never
> lost his early love for traditional and roots music forms, and during the
> early 1990s he formed another record label, Revenant, to reissue classic
> recordings of early blues and old time music. At the time of his death he
> had just completed a new album.
> For further information contact Mary Katherine Aldin via email at
> mkaldin (at) folkloreproductions(dot)com or at the office number (310) 
> 451-0767.

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