The Songcatcher
Director: Maggie Greenwald (“The Ballad Of Little Jo”)
Cast: Janet McTeer, Aidan Quinn, Emmy Rossum, Iris DeMent, Taj Mahal
Rating: PG-13—- sexual content, intense scene of childbirth
Area Sightings: Fine Arts Theatre in Asheville; on the lips of every other local

A few weeks ago, word got to my “holler” that some greenhorns from Hollywood had made a movie about music in the Appalachians. I snorted with cynicism, knowing in my wee brain that some high-faulting city slickers couldn’t become experts on the mountain culture in one year. “Deliverance” is a still a sore spot around here, and its stereotype of mountain folk still flickers in the rest of the country.
Still, my curiosity was piqued high enough to warrant a drive to town to see “The Songcatcher.” If anything, I would see shots of the beautiful region — the movie was shot in the Reems Creek area as well as portions of Haywood and Jackson counties — I have proudly called my abode for 30 years. As the lights dimmed, I expected a mishmash of boot-stomping banjo with dramas arising from too many swills on the moonshine bottle. I was right ... in a fractional sort of way.

“I have never heard such singing,” says protagonist Dr. Lily Penleric (McTeer). “I have never been anywhere where the music is as much a part of life as it is here.” She could have been saying that about downtown Asheville, Sylva or Waynesville. This region bleeds music and nary a conversation goes by without at least a mention of a finger marrying a string. This is the magnetism of “The Songcatcher.” Sure, the story falls under the paint by numbers approach of “Little House on the Prairie,” and, yes, the mountaineers give into the trappings of adultery, a general mistrust of outsiders and the corny aftertaste of moonshine.

However, these irritations are less cumbersome than a chigger bite because the dedication given to mountain music is flawless. The production team’s meticulous research and a steely desire for authenticity will educate any moviegoer who has never gotten a whiff of a culture that’s embedded in nature.

“I was inspired to tell this story after doing some research into the early days of country music, going back to the roots of it before there even was a recording industry,” explains director Maggie Greenwald in the production notes. “I was intrigued by these wonderful ballads that were being sung in the mountains for a century before the world ever knew about them. I was further intrigued to find that the people who brought this music to the mainstream were women — the teachers and missionaries who were up in the mountains at that time, and who realized for the first time the power of this music and culture.”

While researching her script, Greenwald came across the old mountain term “Songcatcher,” which refers to anybody who collects songs, whether a singer or an outsider. She also uncovered the real-life history of one of Appalachia’s most infamous songcatchers, a woman named Olive Dame Campbell, who went to the mountains with her minister husband in 1908, a period when few outsiders dared come to Appalachia. Olive was immediately floored by the treasure trove of music and crafts the mountain people bestowed upon her. She began collecting their ancient ballads and studied the ways of their handicrafts. Eventually, she founded the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, which was dedicated to preserving and teaching traditional Appalachian ways.

Campbell brought many of the songs she heard to the outside world, but it wasn’t until the British musicologist Cecil J. Sharp published them in 1915 that they began to corral eyes and ears of outsiders. Greenwald saw this irony - that it took a man to garner the world’s attention. The director decided immediately that she wanted a woman at the center of her story. Dr. Lily Penleric would personify Olive Dame Campbell.

“I realized that songs are very much a women’s tradition - handed down from mother to daughters, from grandmothers to children around the house,” said Greenwald. “It was really exciting to me to discover a form of music that was primarily created by women, passed down through the generations by women, and even discovered by women,” explains Greenwald. “I began to see the potential for Dr. Lily Penleric.”

The film is set in 1907, and Dr. Lily Penleric is a musicologist who finds the old-boy network at her college too much to handle. After being denied professor status for the umpteenth time, Lily decides to pack up her belongings and head up the Appalachian mountains, where her sister Elna (Jane Adams) has a semi-successful school for children. Lily’s personality is as tight as her corset, and you immediately realize her uncomfortable airs in such “heathen surroundings.” That is, until Lily hears Elna’s student, Deladis Slocumb (Emmy Rossum), sing an old mountain ballad. Lily is floored by the sounds emanating from the youngster and learns that this music has been in the mountains for centuries. Penleric immediately begins research on the mountain music by retrieving a phonograph to capture the sounds of the locals. Her goal is to create a book of songs to give to the world and (in an ulterior ego boost) further her credentials.

She acquires a first-generation machine that records directly to wax, which means that any direct contact to the sun makes her music as useful as candle drippings on furniture. The second daunting task is hauling the heavy machine up steep mountains in a dismal wooden cart. The third is the locals’ unwillingness (at first) to have their voices recorded. Her first stubborn customer is Viney Butler (Pat Carroll - the voice of the sea witch in “The Little Mermaid”), who has an amnesiac response to Lily. “Don’t know any songs,” she grumbles through a mouth of rotted teeth.

Through some backwoods intuition we’re not made aware of, Viney warms to the professor and is soon belting out songs inside the phonograph. Old mountain love ballads like “Single Girl” cascade out of the elderly woman’s voice and onto Dr. Penleric’s fragile recordings. Unfortunately, Viney’s grandson, Tom Bledsoe (Quinn) doesn’t take kindly to strangers “stealing” heritage music.

“Do you play music, doctor, or do you just steal it?” he smugly asks through a thicket of untamed beard. Tom is a bitter man who’s been to “the other side” (Spanish Civil War in Cuba) and has lost two wives. He hides his intelligence behind liquor swills and a desire to do nothing but play his banjo and guitar. Lily sees his immense talent but finds that his exterior is Arctic. Of course, the laws of opposites attracting (with origins from early Hollywood scripts) dictates that the two of them will be burning it up by story’s end. Fortunately, this is a minor detail (although I found myself actually rooting for their “entanglement”) that furthers the richness of the tale.

Lily soon finds herself disarmed (and at one point disrobed) by the culture of the Southern Mountains. She finds that her true calling is to shimmy barefoot to music that takes the blackness away and replace it with an eternal beacon. She finds these people to be no different from her and she soon becomes as rooted as the hemlocks that surround her.

Of course, as with anywhere, there is villainy afoot that keeps the plot simmering. There’s the heartless landstripper (David Patrick Kelly) who swindles folks out of their third generation homes. A faithless husband impregnates his wife (with child No. 5) and then secretly runs off to another hussy; and there’s the violent (but predictable) intolerance that evolves when some of the townfolk discover that Lily’s sister, Elna, is having an affair with another woman schoolteacher. The webs are immense, but the music creates a fluid gateway that makes the viewer happy for the plethora of subplots.

Like I said, “The Songcatcher” has an authenticity that should make any Western North Carolina native proud. The lengths that each member of the movie staff went to in making this film are commendable.
To prepare for the role of Tom Bledsoe, Aidan Quinn read books about the period and collected periodicals of the time to get in tune with how mountain people conducted their lives. To keep with the idea of total immersion, Quinn lived in a Blue Ridge Mountain cabin during production. He also upped the ante by learning, for the first time in his life, to sing and play. David Mansfield, who was the composer and music director (as well as Greenwald’s husband), made sure that the instruments were as era authentic as the songs. He handcrafted a banjo from cake tines - which Aidan Quinn used in the film - to exemplify Appalachian’s insistence on homemade instruments

The day after Pat Carroll began shooting her scenes, one of her front teeth fell out. Appalled at first, Carroll saw that the missing molar transformed her into the eccentric Viney Butler. “I called Maggie and told her my tooth has fallen out and the look is wonderful,” Carroll said in the production notes. “She said ‘are you sure aren’t in pain?’ and when I said no she said ‘well, then let’s use it.’” She kept the gap until after the film was shot.

The glitter of the Big Apple was doused quickly for Manhattanite Emmy Rossum. The 13-year-old was trained as an opera singer and has matched voices with biggies like Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavorotti. The open air (and hawk–- sized mosquitoes) were new to Rossum, who also had to learn a new craft in Appalachia love ballads. A natural talent, Rossum melded into the sounds and found she had a strong affinity for the primal renditions. “The operatic sound is more in the head,” she said.
“While this kind of ballad singing is more nasal, but it is a very free sound.”

Music gurus should also pay special attention to cameo performances by Taj Mahal, Iris DeMent and country legend Hazel Dickens. Taj appears for an all too brief minute, demonstrating the ancient art of the “Claw Hammer” banjo, which employs down-strokes instead of up-strokes. DeMent portrays a haunted woman who has just lost her home to the coal corporation. Her voice curls out high and lonesome notes that make the forest turn a shade of blue. In addition, Dickens unleashes the goosebumps with a chilling rendition of “Conversation with Death.” This triumvirate of voices will stay with the psyche well after the movie has rolled the credits.

Go see “Songcatcher” first and foremost for the music. The sappy aura of the plot can be cumbersome at times, but it’s almost a vapor amongst the landscape of greenery and soul-adhesive ballads. It’s a good educational movie for anyone interested in knowing how these sounds have cascaded down the hills and into every alley, bar, back porch, and street corner. Yep, them city folks done good. They came to our home, treated it with cultural respect, and left it better than they found it.

 

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