Love, Money and the Music of America’s FRONT PORCH
Our culture has changed dramatically over the past five or six years, it’s almost unrecognizable. It seems the spirit of the American front porch has surrendered to the digital septic tank of social media.
Cancel culture has become a way of life. We have become conditioned to “unfriend” each other, to dismiss each other, hang up on someone if you don’t like what they say instead of learning how to discuss our differences.We amputate, isolate, disassociate and eliminate. All in an effort to suspend personal responsibility to maintain friendships and relationships. We claim we have boundaries but use them as emotional walls to prevent access to our emotions
That isolation and suspension of communication is one of the cruelest actions we can do to each other, fed by a global wave of narcissism not experienced in human history as it is today.Songs have become generic dribble because nobody wants to say anything that might potentially be offensive, politically incorrect, not “woke” enough. Imagine all the songs that would be canceled from the library of music because they don’t meet up with the current standards. It is almost shameful.
Taking the lead, sticking your neck out, standing on stage has become a dangerous enterprise because the risk of being decimated by a misguided opinion has become very real.The impulse is to condemn, the knee-jerk reaction is to engage in verbal combat all because we don’t like somebody else’s viewpoint, a different opinion, a separate point of view. We preach “freedom” so long is that freedom is used in a way that we approve. None of that makes sense.
Sure, buried in the mountain of cancel culture is the sincere, needed effort to adjust the wrongs of the past. That is a good thing, and that is not necessarily cancel culture. It is a delicate dance of intention, difficult to navigate and hard to differentiate from each other. Never before has the human culture been in desperate need of love and the spirit of the front porch.
“It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.” – Pete Seeger
Still, it’s been a strange few years in America, right? It makes you want to do something to help fix things, but it’s hard to figure out the right course to take. Everyone is so polarized and even a simple or kind act is judged through a political prism. It’s frustrating. Community action does not have to be political, sometimes it is done simply in the spirit of love.
Welcome to the SongFarmers community
Once upon a time, rural communities across America would gather with their neighbors on front porches … the grand pulpit of hometowns, the gathering place of grandparents, moms, dads and children, neighbors and lemonade in the summertime, front row seats to the sunset and the rising moon.
The music of the front porch is traditionally banjos and fiddles, mandolins and guitars, old songs that everybody knows, grandma singing an ancient ballad to the baby grandchild in her arms on the front porch swing. As the modern age ascended, our new culture with its air conditioning and television brought people inside behind closed doors … and the music and comfort of the front porch gave way to the new feng shui welcome to homes across suburban landscapes: the garage door.
Compounded by the tsunami impact of the Internet, we have reduced our ability to communicate with each other from the elegance of hand written letters down to personality-free 140 character tweets.
To me, the front porch is the emotional symbol of communities bonding together. And I cannot think of another time in history when the bond of the front porch is more needed than right now. To me, rural areas of the country, like Kentucky, are the fertile birthing ground of America’s front porch. It is the gentle rocking chair, the sturdy oakwood of this much-needed front porch.
But the front porch spirit matters as much in a New York City highrise as it does in an Indiana farmhouse. As we watch angry and frustrated neighbors storming capital buildings, venting frustrations, polarizing points of view, condemning each other for how others think, as we watch an entire generation drift farther and farther away from what the front porch represented, the words of Winston Churchill come to mind. When asked by a reporter if he was going to remove the arts from the government budget to support the war effort, Churchill reportedly looked at the news man and bellowed,
“Then what on earth are we fighting for?”
The stress and anxiety between polarized communities was further ignited by a global pandemic and economic turmoil. The uneasiness, insecurity and fear not just of what’s going on around us but of what tomorrow is going to bring, is pushing many to the breaking point. Isolation and depression, narcissism and selfishness have become epidemic. Perhaps this is a time to consider reaching out to what the front porch should represent to all of us.
With the music industry in complete disarray and careers of songwriters and performers in near collapse after a lengthy dormancy, perhaps the true purpose of music and art should be re-examined.
The greatest stage in the world is in fact your own front porch. The greatest audience in the world is your own family. The brightest spotlight in the world shines on your living room couch. Home is the greatest venue on earth. That is why all artists should open up the lens of our collective spotlight to include as many others as possible. It does more to brighten our stage then to jealously keep others away. Your home, no matter where it might be, is the grand fertile birthing ground of the front porch art form.
Perhaps we’ve drifted so far away from that truth that it is hard to imagine, hard to even believe. But it’s become more important than ever for communities to again embrace the gentle power of what has been represented all along by the vanishing front porch.
Once upon a time in Europe there was an old saying that went, “if everybody in the whole world simply took care of their own homes, you would not have to worry about the world anymore.” In the 1960s this became a bumper sticker,“Think globally, act locally. It is not just a Kumbaya cliché, but the front porch represents everything that we love about our homes, our communities, our families and our neighbors.
Maybe it’s time to revisit what the front porch represents … before the house the front porch belongs to burns down.In that spirit, I created a national community of pro-active musicians, nearly 80 active chapters from Arkansas to Florida to Vermont to Ireland, called “SongFarmers.”
Here’s why:
The SongFarmers movement is for the “creatives,” those who birth into reality what the mind says does not exist. They are the poets, painters, dreamers and time travelers, world-wanderers and highway vagabonds, rail riders and drifters. They dream what is unseen so others can appreciate what has been created. They are 5-string politicians, 6-string therapists, banjo barristers, acoustic lovers and penny-pinching peacemakers … because those who sing together can not fight. They are still there. Still writing, searching, singing, trying to get this world in tune.
But what is happening to all these hard working, struggling musicians, poets, dreamers and wandering souls that make their way across the ribbons of America’s highways, trying to sing, scratch out a living with their songs, paintings and poetry? The creative universe has entered a strange vortex, an empty, confusing digital shadow of what it used to be. They have become Vincent searching the world for Theo, Pete looking for Toshi.
Today, our painters, poets and songwriters are drowning in a cyber-tsunami of ones and zeros, streaming their souls across cell phones and iPads for free in such massive volume the odds of hearing them, seeing them is almost nonexistent. And yet they continue to labor in the silence of this digital thundercloud, hoping their work will be found, heard, appreciated, noticed … maybe even pay their rent.
SongFarmers helps change the direction of a Creatives muse from “money” to their own community.
So, I cast my lot with the true peacekeepers of the earth. Those who plant gardens, raise their families, support their neighbors and welcome friends to their front porches. The poets, artists, dreamers and playwrights, the songwriters and visionaries working in the silence of their anonymous life. They are the greatest peacekeeping force in the history of mankind. The arts are valuable because artists get people to stop. Get them to stand quietly. And listen. It’s physically impossible to fight during the act of listening and that is what musicians, writers, poets and artists of all kinds do for planet earth. They get people to stop… And listen.
Art and songs are important, they are vital and necessary. There’s a reason the book of Psalms, a book of song lyrics, is the biggest book of the Bible. Stand with the peacekeepers during a time of unrest. Do what you can to turn your front porch into the grand stage of your hometown. Be one of the creative artists who help your family and neighbors to stop. And listen.
Tout a Toi & Folk on, Michael Johnathon