THE MICHIGAN) DAILY Sunday, March 29, 1970 THE MICHIGAN DAiLY Sunday, March 29, 1970 Cielidh: Songs are people By GARY BALDWIN The weekend song fest con- tinued Friday night at the Ark, and both the singers and the audience showed a great deal more excitement than Thursday night. Every bit of that energy came through in the quality of the music. Unlike many other forms of music in which the composition itself or the talent of the per- former alone are of primary im- portance, folk music is the peo- ple's music, and the effective- ness of the songs is determined by the bond of the audience and performer. Everyone must also have a great interest in the music. That's why folk songs are about people and events .. . to gain that interest. Friday night all those elements were there - especially the people (the size of the crowd was also greater). Some may have wondered why I carrried on so much :n the review of Thursday night about the singers who are here this weekend, those at the Ark last night know why. The songs were essentially the same as Thurs- Vv day. But the performers were .:: not just singers; they were peo- ple. The round robin form be- came looser and there was more spontaneity, as the order was often broken. Jenny Haley was there from California, Roger Renwick be- gan to joke a little more, Mi- -Daily Thorqas R Copi chael Cooney walked around -cinema Dime-store culture playing Barry O'Neill's guitar (bottle neck style) for a half an hour before things were set to begin, and Joe Hickerson's ex- citement seemed to beam from his face as he smiled while he sang. I finally got around to talking to Larry Hanks, too. He is em- ployed at Lumberg's Guitar Shop in Berkeley, which is known as the country's best. He lives in nearby Albany, and has worked for Lumberg for some three and a half years. He has sung at the Fox Hollow Folk Festival, Cafe Lena (in Sara- toga, N.Y.), and Freight and Salvage in San Francisco, three of the country's best places for good folk music. Like scores of others, his early influence was Woody Guthrie (though his bass voice could make Tennessee Ernie Ford blush). That prob- ably has a lot to do with his current interest in ecology. He sings a few songs by Malvina Reynolds dealing with that sub- ject. I also found that the Mar- tin guitar I alluded to Friday is not a Martin at all. It is an unlabeled, oak guitar with a small sound box made about 1920. Anyway, he was as warm to talk to as he is quiet on stage. He'll be singing at the SanDiego State Folk Festival on April 24, 25, and 26. Hanks again contributed a lot Friday night, but the others were in equally good form. Cooney played both banjo and harmonica on one song, and just picked the hell out of his banjo. Hapks did a song which he at- tributed to the Washboard Three from Oakland the chorus of which was "I'd rather be a newsboy is the USA than a ruler in a foreign land." Cooney matched that with a song chorused "I am one hundred per cent American, God damn I am." At one point Roger Renwick explained the reason the singers were using so many concertinas was that they were all in some- what different tunings. Jenny Haley, who is known primarily for writing parody songs, fol- lowed with the comment that she has a "blind friend who went to the top of the mountain, 4*~-- - - 3020 Washtenow, Ph. 434-1782 Between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor HURRY, HURRY ENDS TUESDAY MARCH 31 above the crickets. He says the (sound of) earth is in F, but I get from an F sharp to a G." Michael Cooney continued to flatter Barry O'Neill, who made one of his rare performances as a guitarist. But Barry informs me "I'm not really that well known nationally." Believe who you will, but O'Neill contributed his usual wit (as well as his songs) and sang especially well in a duet with Roger Renwick early in the evening. If I seem to be straying from the music itself, you're right. What I'm trying to get across is that there is a lot more to folk music than just music. I dare say the "folk" are much more important. There were good peo- ple at the Ark Friday night. They were the only reason the music was as good as it was. The cielidh concluded last night at the Ark with the good news that another one will be there next year. And like the first two nights, the music was great. Though the cast of singers remained the same (fortunately - for the audience - Jenny Haley couldn't go home because of the air strike), all the songs were different, and despite the fact that singing has gone until 2:30 each night no one showed much fatigue. Roger Renwick opened with a ballad, followed by Hans doing "Do Re Mi," and Jenny begin- ning the spiritual "I'll Fly Away" with her own addition, "Some bright morning when the strike is over, I'll fly away." Late Friday night saw an old suspendered lumberjack ham- ming it up and swinging to an audience that appreciated him. H° was one of the people Mich- ael Cooney was speaking of last night when he said, "There's a lot more great folk songs we haven't heard. But they're all in the, heads of old pople who will be dying soon, and who listen to the radio and don't sing those songs anymore because they think they are corny." Cooney was right. The folk music fad of a few years ago- sterilized ("took the magic out" as Coon- ey said) some of the great old folk songs, then yielded to leave others in their obscurity. Perhaps this weekend showed that obscurity is not always a bad thing. Because the magic was there. And folk music has never been more alive in Ann Arbor. -- - --- Program Info: NO 2-6264 HELD OVER! 3rd W EEK . . . SHOWS AT: 1:00-3:00-5:00 7:00-9:10 P.M. NOMINATED FOR 9 ACADEMY AWARDS i 4 CIEMA BUILD PETITIONING FOR MEMBERSHIP CALL 761-1294 or 769-0437 before Mon., MCrc 30, for Appointment "If you don't work, you don't eat" ;rr ^rr+ 6 When insouthern Ca/tornit visit univ.rsas tudios - .. HAS THAT YOUTHFUL ACCENT WHICH PLACES IT IN A LEAGUE WITH ZEFFIRELLI'S 'ROMEO AND JULIET.' "-John Mahoney, FM and Fine Arts Magazine "AN INSTANT CLASSIC. IT HAS A HAMMER-LOCK ON . X HISTORY, PERFORMANCE, PATHOS AND ROOTING INTEREST!"-Archer Winsten, N.Y. Post "EPIC BATTLE OF THE SEXES."-incent Canby, N.Y. Times -t RICHARD BURTON ENE asHENRY ill 4 14 ~Anne': By NEAL GABLER Just about every year the motion picture academy, feeling guilt pangs over its prospective nominees, makes an earnest effort to reward Kultchah. But, as in most other things, its members seldom look below the surface to find the genuine article. They settle for some- thing that has the look and feel of culture but is really nothing more than kitsch. It's what I call the pseudo-Shake- speare syndrome. The victims of this affliction think that elaborate sets and costuming, t h i c k English ac- cents, lutes and flutes and a fractured syntax that. sounds like a verbatim translation of Latin are enough to rival the Great Bard himself. So here comes the % parade-Becket, A Man for All Seasons, The Lion in Winter and occasionally a little of the real thing slips through as in Zefferelli's doc- tored but delightful Romeo and Juliet. Yet, no matter how hard he may try, Robert Bolt just isn't Shakespeare, and not even the thickest of English accents or a plethora of weighty words can elevate him to that status. Anne of the Thousand Days now playing at the Michigan is the contender this year for the academy's culture honors with ten nominations. It has clop- ping hooves, clinking swords, clicking heels, creaking leather, clanging bells, clamb ering townsfolk. It also has a score by George Delerue lifted right out of R and J based. I guess,r on the assumption that what's good for Venice is good for England. Anyway, it's all Shake- speare, isn't it? And the dialogue is in the grand tradition, as when Burton bellows, "I will marry Anne if it splits the whole world in two like an apple and flings the two halves into the void." Well said! The Anne of the title is, of course, testy Anne B o 1 e y n (Genevieve Bujold), the object of lecherous King Henry VIII's (Richard Burton) desires. Un- like her predecessors in the King's affection, Anne doesn't yield easily. Her aloofness makes Henry all the more obdurate in his p a s s i o n since, as Anne's father says, "What his majesty is denied he goes half mad to obtain." For six years, with sin- gle p u r p o s e, Henry pursues Anneuntil. ...The rest is his- tory as well as A Man for All Seasons. Unfortunately, the film uses its history poorly. Falling short of its Shakespearian mark, Anne of the Thousand Days comes off like a' history book adapted ,to the screen instead of using the period to realize a truth about the human drama. Its charac- ters." are interesting, but they are too shallow to convey any message a b o u t our condition. They never get any closer to truth than dime-store Freud- ianism. Richard Burton does little to aid the humanization of this his- tory. Like so many of his other performances, Burton blusters through the role, as if volume and animation equal Acting.. Genevieve Bujold, who, like her co-star, has been nominated for an Oscar, fares slightly better al- though it strains all credulity to think Henry would chase her for six years (a Katherine Ross she isn't). Her worst moments are her tirades where she fur- iously wags her head from side to side like a petulant three- year old. In the supporting cast Irene Papas plays Queen Catherine with appropriate dourness, and I must say it's a relief to see her unwidowed for once. Of all the performances, however, An- thony Quayle, as the cunning but aging Cardinal Wolsey, ex- cels. One more word about the cast: Was William Squire cast as Sir Thomas More because he bears a striking resemblance to Paul Scofield?I Even though Anne of the Thousand Days is not what its producers or the academy want it to be, if you can wallow through the verbeage - it has more talk per foot of film than any movie ever made - it might be enjoyable as pure spectacle. All the sixteenth century trap- pings are here to produce the feeling of the era. But if you're looking for culture, go to- the ballet. 1 GENEVIEVE B UJOLI a s A N N E B O L E .N IN I ALWiALLIS PoUTO IRENE PAPAS ANTHONY QUAYLE-JOHN CouCOS R.+. JH ft~AU .518T81GOL4i~m.RARSOKOQYEI . s. awf. ( &..HARDS JAIR07T ". ~ t8 WMLS A UNKR5AL PKIM EC IiCOtOI PAIIAjISIQOrte 4 X;.'' u.. NOMINATED FOR 10 ACADEMY AWARDS SHOWS AT 1:10-3:40-6:15-9:00 Feature 7 minutes later Selected or the Royal Command Perfornwnct, 1970, London U. I F NTS FILMS A Division of National Talent Service. Inc. Proudly Presents THE MAYSLES BROTHERS' NEWFILM SALjE S A N The Most Highly Acclaimed lim Of The Year! II - Y . 1. , ..__._ ..v.._ .............__ .. ..._._._._.. t 1 ri f 1 ;Iii I.i _.___ -- _,__------r--- i STiatoElEB Richter THE CELEBRATED SOVIET PIANIST - F~~IrNGC THEATRE CORPORATION A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY FOH VILLaGE 375 No. MAPLE RD.-7694300 MON.-FRI .-7:00-9:30 SAT.-SUN.-1 :45- 4:15-6:50-9:25 "DAZZLING!" -L A. TIMES SiUR o. t#Iifw3so >::AiiYA C50i YC 20th CENTURY-FOX PRESENTS HiCSIM. AND MTHE SUNDANCE KID PANAVISION* OLRBY DOLR= M~uggstedFor MTUREAudemncs "Hard-hitting, anti-establishment stuff."-Judith Crlst / "I was spell- bound. I've seen SALESMAN three times and each time I've been more impressed. Fascinating, very funny, unforgettable."-Vincent Canby, New York Times / "Probably the most important film you will see this year."-Joseph Gelmis, Newsday / "Impossible to over-estimate. There is no doubt that we shall see SALES- MAN as a turning point in the history of film."-Film Society Review / "An extraordinary film no one dares miss."-New York Magazine / "An experience that sticks in the mem- ory. The suspense becomes un- bearable. As dramatic as any hu- man drama I've ever seen in any medium. Ten times more fascinating than the big budget hokum turned out byhHollywood. It is total real- ism."-Rex Reed COMING To CINEMA II April 8 & 9, 7 & 9:30 P.M. AUD. A, ANGELL HALL 7 5c . , in Hill Auditorium TUESDAY, MAR. 31 at 8:30 Tickets: $7.00-$6.50-$6.00-$5.00-$3.50-$2.50 UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY, BURTON TOWER, ANN ARBOR Office Hdurs: Mon. thru Fri. 9 to 4:30; Sat. 9 to 12 (Telephone 665-3117) (Also at Auditorium box office 1 1/2 hours before performance time) will be presented in a Special Recital ill! 3 E A.- Ii fl-rn J ....... SUMMER EMPLOYMENT Classic Crafts Corp. is now accepting applications for its summer college program. Positions available as company representative. Challenging opportunity for ambitious individual who enjoys travel. Must have use of car. Salary: $2000 for summer with all expenses paid. Mr. Eshleman will be interviewing at the Summer Placement Office, 212 SAB, on Tuesday, March 31st PHONE OR STOP BY FOR APPOINTMENT Subscription Office OPENS MONDAY! I I II 7; -4 A SPECIAL FRANZ KAFKA SEMINAR LAWRENCE BERKOVE Chairman of Division of Humanities-Dearborn Campus JOSEPH D. BEN DAK Research Sociologist, CRCR 2:15 SUNDAY, MARCH 29 "THE HUNTER GRACCHUS" 1429 HILL STREET -- HILLEL HOUSE ALL ARE WELCOME The last word in thrillers. Terrific.l .Gne Shalit, Look Magazine WY DRAMA CRITICS' CIRCLE AWARD Nov. 15 (mnat. ., & eve.) 6 ExcITING PLAYS OHM1970-71 PLAZA SUITE mw.. mo-N 'RRST MUJSICAL TO R SN t' - 0#ROADWAY E CRO p a f I 7N MNTHE ROOP.'~ -4T.--,.w a-a-.,. t"., I I I1 :,r' I r ~, . ~ -