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Rating:
I don't know how many will disagree if I declare now that musically the 20th century has gone down in history as the Era of the Guitar, but that's how it is for me (if you like): Andres Segovia introduced it to us and immediately made it "classical," Robert Johnson swears, and how could we not believe him, that he stole his from the Devil himself, Django Reinhardt transformed it into Jazz, Chuck Berry devised a rather original way to play it (of course, I'm referring to the duck walk...), a still too little understood John Fahey (perhaps it's too soon...) gave it the voice of Nature and Spirit and then, someone even thought of setting it on fire and sacrificing it in the name of Mother Art...
Besides these divine beings luckily, all those sincere and honest enthusiasts of the instrument found their small space, those artisans who, far from the presumption of being able to invent, dedicated their humble existences to trying to make that strange wooden object sound as it should...
With Leo Kottke or even with Robbie Basho and, of course, Jerry Garcia, Ry Cooder, and David Grisman (to name a few), I am particularly talking about the American folk guitar par excellence from the late Sixties to today, the voice of the great country, blues, and bluegrass tradition. Kottke's "initiation" is emblematic in this sense; indeed, young Leo around '69 attempted the feat of courting the Buddha of the folk guitar, Mr. Fahey, who perhaps went by the name "Blind Lemon Spinoza" or something like that at the time, by sending him through the mail with who knows how many hopes to the freshly founded Takoma Records address a tape with some of his recordings.. Well, despite the legendary grumpy and reserved character of the great master, it was truly impossible for a jewel that is none other than "The Driving Of The Year Nail," one minute and fifty-nine seconds of a wild old acoustic at a frenetic pace with a devilish fingerpicking and breathtaking harmonics, to go unnoticed...
Because this is Kottke, a virtuoso in love with folk and enlightened by Fahey's first masterpiece, "The Transfiguration Of Blind Joe Death," who consumes a metal slide a day on a twelve-string oak guitar for a music from country fairs of yesteryear and who even has fun between numbers citing a certain J.S. Bach ("Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring")..
Note 1: with 500,000 copies sold, this album has sold much more than Fahey did in his entire career..
Note 2: the rating would be five in relation to the rest of the world, but having made the mistake of giving a rating to "America"...
Note 3: the initial excursus is not intended to be exhaustive in any way, so I hope not to receive insults from fans and/or relatives of unmentioned artists...
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