Discuss: Redemption Songs

Comment by Jack Malinowski, actually:
Great article and fitting tribute to Emmylou.

I, too, was in the audience that night at the Ryman, and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up at “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.

That song has become a metaphor for the sprawling moonscape killing fields of mountaintop-removed Appalachia.  Mountaintop removal leaves nothing alive.  It is mechanized death no less than an invading army slashing and burning its way across a field of conquest.

I worry that events like this, while edifying in the short run, allow their energies to die down.  I’m glad you chose to write about this now that some months have past.  We need more of these events, with more and varied artists. 

Frankly, we need for at least one of these concerts to be held in Big Coal’s back yard, with folks coming from around the nation to let Appalachian people know that Big Coal’s dirty little secret is a secret no longer.

I have taught my students in northern Pa about mt top removal for years. I have shown them pictures to connect the atrocities of KING COAL.  I hope to now have them listen.  There is a battle brewing now in our backyard called the marcellus shale and why in my my heart does it sound like what they have battled in Appalacia? Thank you for an article that was speaking to my heart.

This is an excellent article. Emmy Lou has been a favorite for a long time and glad the author referenced John Prine.

There are several wonderful collections of “coal music”—including many recent collections related to mountaintop removal.  They are powerful.  The film Coal Country and the music had a strong impact in the Climate Crises course that I co-teach (as a scientist) with a music historian.  We have come to believe that artists may have the means to reaching the public about key environmental issues in a way that scientists and their data will never be able to.

If you have a chance to ever see Kathy Mattea perform her multi-media presentation about coal mining, I highly recommend going. She goes way beyond her music to give a moving, heartfelt presentation.  Since she grew up in West Virginia and had coal mining grandparents the authencity of her concern can really be felt by the audience.  Her first-hand experience of meeting with miners, activists, and the W. Virginia governor about miner safety, the future of coal and its impact on Appalachia etc. is amazing; she has a strong personal commitment to positive dialog and change about difficult issues.  She came to our campus this past spring and mesmerized a large audience including our students who typically don’t listen to music of this genre or who hadn’t thought much about Pennsylvania’s coal history and the fact that the same Appalachian Mountains connect us to the states were mountaintop removal is currently an issue.

True that. We’re all going to have to bear up under the increasing pressure to extract as much coal as possible in the coming decades. Who’d a thunk that on the cusp of the second millenium we’d be still seeing a push to burn the dirtiest of fossil fuels? You can count on it trying to get worse.

I live in a coal producing state, with most of the power I consume generated by very old coal fired plants. Strip mining has eaten up large chunks of geography that won’t come back, leaving economic ruin for the residents of those counties.

Interesting irony…I recently helped organize and present a music festival for acoustic music, which featured long time Emmylou collaborator Sam Bush as the headliner. The venue was a piece of reclaimed strip mine land. The current owner of the property inherited it from his family members who largely “cut off the timber, and stripped off the land.” You really can’t help but feel sad for what was once there. But, just for one weekend a year, the land reverts to what is now probably its hightest and best use. Good as we can do for it, now.

Enjoyed the piece. It proves an old adage of mine: Music never made any situation worse…and there is just a chance that it will make things significantly better….like here.

There is no connect in the public’s imagination between the related issues of mountain top removal, the mess in the tar sands, coal bed methane, the spill in the Gulf, let alone between these and Katrina or the flooding in Pakistan.

Yes, we will continue to take coal from wherever and burn it, take oil from wherever and burn it, natural gas from wherever and burn it. It is part of allowing the market free rein in a time of change. Cheap energy is gone, reasonably priced energy is disappearing quicker than an acre of Appalachian forest under a steam shovel.

With the market price of energy inflated by cowboy style investment and worsening scarcity, we find it profitable to go after the energy that is harder to get at, has poorer performance and thus a greater cost to benefit than better fuels, and which is more environmentally damaging to produce and use.

On its way out, the dinosaur economy will do its share of thrashing its tail about, not caring what’s in its way, knocking aside the baby, the bath water, the mother and little sister too.

We are being asked to trust an industry, the carbon fossil fuels industry, which has never been forthcoming about the extent of the ecological damage caused by its operations and products, to tell us the truth about their business. To take care of our communities. To safeguard the future health of whole continental watersheds, the entire globe.

Bring it on, Emmylou. Music taken to the streets allows us to understand each other in ways powerful and mysterious. And truth always plays better than lies.

Thank you, Erik, for this thoughtful and beautiful article. We have some photos/documentation of the Music Saves Mountains event, and the following night, Movies Save Mountains with the films “Deep Down” and “Coal Country,” and wonderful performances and words from Kathy Mattea at http://deepdownfilm.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117&Itemid=114.  The events truly were amazing.

Thank you,
Jen Gilomen
Co-Director, Deep Down