One of the things Old Folks liked about
living in Atlanta was being able to go to the Woodruff Arts Center, on the MARTA
train, to a concert, an art exhibit, or a play.
Of course, he couldn't catch
a bus from his house to the MARTA station, to catch the train. And he didn't go downtown
all that often. A work night was too much hassle and the weekends were often full
of other activities.
Now that he and Brenda lived in Parker, Florida, they
could go to a concert, an art exhibit, or a play at Seaside, Santa Rosa Beach, or
Grayton Beach.
In fact, they went to see Sylvia, at the Seaside Repertory
Theater, Saturday night.
They went to The Red Bar to see Dread Clampitt Sunday
afternoon.
If Old Folks wanted to see an artist he could just walk across
the street and talk to his neighbor, Jodi, who had done a family portrait of himself
and Brenda and the boys, from a snapshot.
Old Folks knew several working artists he could drive under 50 miles and
talk to, including Billie Gaffrey, Justin Gaffrey, Woodie Long, and Bryan Hand, who
did the art for Dread Clampitt's albums and T-shirts and had done a painting for
Old Folks, too.
Brew had long been interested in the connection between, or among, folk art,
roots, or Americana music, and vernacular writing.
He called himself a vernacular
writer.
He had vernacular writer business cards made up, right after he went
to see the Souls Grown Deep show, in Atlanta.
Big Chief and Swamp Rose gave Old Folks his own booth, at their Homegrown
Powwow in Hiland Park, where he sold or gave away or exchanged books and pamphlets
and CDs to or with folk artists and roots musicians at the powwow.
The full title of the Souls Grown Deep show was Souls Grown Deep: African-American
Vernacular Art of the South.
It was part of the Cultural Olympics, held in
conjunction with the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, in Atlanta.
Only in Atlanta,
which had a long tradition of using public money to sponsor shows that excluded white
artists, like the National Black Arts Festival (NBAF), which has been doing it for
14 years now, would you see a black-only folk art show--like there were no white
folk artists in the south, or even that the shows devoted to southern folk art excluded
blacks. They didn't. They don't.
It was okay for a black folk art show to
exclude whites.
Old Folks could not see why this was justified, in 1996.
To Old Folks it was reverse-discrimination, Crow Jim, black racism.
If white
racism was bad, why was black racism okay.
* * *
Old Folks wrote about this in his books, which got him branded a racist.
He said the word vernacular translated of native born slaves.
He said a slave was an ambassador in bonds, who spoke boldly, as one ought to speak.
To his master.
He was a vernacular writer. Waiting for some black person
to come along and apply the term to rap music, or poetry slams, and co-opt it for
black people, like chauvinistic blacks ignore bluegrass when they say jazz is America's
classical music, or chauvinistic blacks put down white folks artists as not quite
as authentic as black folk artists, the genuine article, being black, you see.
Old Folks lacked street cred.
He couldn't be a vernacular writer because
he was white, and middle-class.
He was a management employee at a large,
multinational corporation.
What authority did he have? What authenticity?
He was an interloper, a poseur.
Bukowski said if you know you don't
have any soul, you might have it, but if you think you do, you don't.
This
applies to blacks as well as whites.