The blues according to lightnin hopkins

When Les Blank documents something, it says documented! He cataloging what seems like a single summer day and evening in rural Texas community. Not everyone was going to San Francisco in the Summer of Love 1967. They were catfishing, eating rib sandwiches, killing snakes, going to rodeos and dances and church, feeling the blues, playing the blues, and making the most of life. The result is a joyful document.

Lightin’ Hopkins is the Platonic Ideal of a Bluesman. He’s a troubadour and raconteur with a rakish hairdo, wayfarers, and shriveled mummy fingers reducing our problems to a pentatonic scale and showing us what our heart sounds like when it hurting.

Blank closes the film with a lovely image. A tight…

Given the current recommendation to stay home and practice social distancing, we at the Chicago International Film Festival are looking at past selections from each year of the Festival that you can stream now from home. Stream our past selections as we look forward to the 56th Chicago International Film Festival this October 14-25, 2020. Find the full 56 Films for 56 Years selections here.

Today’s #56Films entry is Les Blank’s portrait of the legendary blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins and his rural Texas community which screened at the 6th Chicago International FIlm Festival in 1970.

The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins

Director: Les Blank
6th Chicago International Film Festival

Les Blank, one of cinema’s greatest poets, joyfully chronicled the American everyday through exhilaratingly free-form documentary cinema. The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, a sublime marriage of music, performance, oral history, and film, finds Blank in rare form as he pieces together an ethnographic portrait of the legendary blues singer and his rural Texas community. The film lets the blues speak for itself anywhere and everywhere—at dances, backyard barbeques, in living rooms, and on pastoral farmland. Blank’s keen observational eye and unparalleled camerawork seems to effortlessly stumble across poetic details and visual revelations. The music does the talking, and Blank is there to listen and watch. — Sam Flancher, Programmer

The great Texas bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins is captured brilliantly in this deeply moving film. Blank reveals Lightnin’s inspiration, and features a generous helping of classic blues. The film includes performances at an outdoor barbeque and a black rodeo, and a visit to his boyhood town of Centerville, Texas. This powerful portrait is among Blank’s special masterworks.

Throat-singing, a guttural style of singing or chanting, is one of the world's oldest forms of music. For those who think the human voice can produce only one note at a time, the resonant harmonies of throat-singing are surprising. In throat-singing, a singer can produce two or more notes simultaneously through specialized vocalization technique taking advantage of the throat's resonance characteristics. By precise movements of the lips, tongue, jaw, velum, and larynx, throat-singers produce unique harmonies using only their bodies. Throat-singing is most identified with parts of Central Asia, but it is also practiced in northern Canada and South Africa where the technique takes on different styles and meanings.

Tuva

Tuva is a predominantly rural region of Russia located northwest of Mongolia. There, throat-singing is called Khöömei. Singers use a form of circular breathing which allows them to sustain multiple notes for long periods of time. Young Tuvan singers are trained from childhood through a sort of apprentice system to use the folds of the throat as reverberation chambers. Throat-singing in Tuva is almost exclusively practiced by men, although the taboo against women throat-singers, based on the belief that such singing may cause infertility, is gradually being abandoned, and some girls are now learning and performing Khöömei. The Tuvan herder/hunter lifestyle, with its reliance on the natural world and deeply-felt connection to the landscape, is reflected in this Tuvan vocal tradition. With their throat-singing, Tuvans imitate sounds of the natural surroundings—animals, mountains, streams, and the harsh winds of the steppe. Throat-singing was once only a folk tradition, practiced in the windy steppe, but it is now embraced as an emblem of Tuvan identity and more often performed by professionals in formal settings.

Video

Video: N. Sengedorj of Mongolia demonstrates Khöömei throat-singing.

Video

Video: Mark van Tongeren, an ethnomusicologist specializing in Khöömei, gives a lesson.

Inuit

The Inuit are the indigenous peoples of northern Canada. Unlike Tuvan throat-singing, the Inuit form of throat-singing is practiced almost exclusively by women. It is also a more communal form of singing than the Tuvan variety, usually performed in groups of two or more women. Their technique relies more on short, sharp, rhythmic inhalations and exhalations of breath. It was traditionally used to sing babies to sleep or in games women played during the long winter nights while the men were away hunting. Throat-singing was banned in the area over 100 years ago by local Christian priests, but it is experiencing a recent revival, especially among younger generations who believe that learning it from their elders connects them with Inuit strength and tradition.

Video

Video: Nukariik (Inuit) Sisters Karin and Kathy Kettler demonstrate traditional Inuit throat singing practiced by women in their community.

Xhosa

The Xhosa people of Bantu origins are indigenous to present-day southeast South Africa. Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are famous Xhosa. The Xhosa people have a deep and unique style of throat singing, also called eefing. Two notes are produced one tone apart while higher tones embedded in overtones are amplified simultaneously. This low, rhythmic, wordless vocal style accompanies traditional call and response or group vocal songs. It also accompanies party songs and dances, adding a musical element that is distinctly Xhosa.

What was Lightnin Hopkins known for?

What style of blues did Lightnin Hopkins play?

Who did Lightnin Hopkins influence?

How did Lightnin Hopkins get his name?