"Peter Rowan's America"
Conquest In Song
by Brad Warren
Peter Rowan is one of the invisible heroes of popular music. Though his name is little known even among musicians, his songs are everywhere. "Panama Red." "Midnight Moonlight," and "land of the Navajo," for instance, have entered America's common tongue. His lyrics celebrate the honor of underdogs, conquered Indians, and ordinary traders and soldiers who stumbled off the track of plunder and found in life something beautiful enough to take a stand for.
Rowan recently released an ambitious historical theme album titled Awake Me in the New World. He played at the Backstage in Seattle this autumn and, after making the house roar with laughter and fall silent in the romantic trance of his performance, he talked briefly about this album, which is on tape and CD from Sugar Hill Records of Durham, North Carolina.
The new songs chronicle the conquest of the Americas, mainly through the eyes of a cabin boy on Columbus' voyage. In sensual, even sentimental songs that blend flamenco, calypso and western fold, the boy falls in love with the New World and its natives. Yet Rowan's lyrics shade the tale with hints of the murderous history that was to follow. "We have no word for weapon, we have no name for war," says the woeful, foreseeing shaman in the album's first song.
This is material most songwriters would botch. Not Rowan. He was the main song-writing force behind the classic album Old and In the Way, which opened thousands of rock 'n' roll-weary ears to a fresh take on fold traditions. Partly because the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia played on it, that album drew listeners who couldn't stand anything else with fiddles and banjoes in it.
Rowan became one of the founding lights of folk rock. By blending bluegrass with rock and other styles, he helped create the musical idiom that brought fame to the likes of Lyle Lovett and Bonnie Raitt.
Some admirers credit Rowan as the legitimate heir of Bill Monroe, the maverick founder of bluegrass, with whom he once played. Neither has won much fame, but they both break the hidebound molds of folk tradition to make possible one of the few unadulterated sources of joy in America's history: songs with something to say.
Brad Warren is a playwright and journalist who lives in Seattle.
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Contents on this page were published in the December/Jan, 1994 edition of the Washington Free
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