Rip Van Winkle: What's become of the country we call home?

[struggle4progress]

Originally posted: July 29, 2006
Posted by Mark Silva at 11:10 am CDT

We hadn't thought of David Bromberg very often since 1971, when we watched him play in the coffee houses of Saratoga and basement clubs of Harvard Square, but suddenly, watching him play last night in a music hall just outside of Washington, we were reminded all over again of what it means to fret about what has become of our best ideals – or, as Bromberg would have it: What 's become of the country we call home?

"What has become of my beautiful town?'' Bromberg sang, mournfully, at the close of a stirring set of acoustic blues, bluegrass and "Library of Congress'' folklore accompanied by a trio of angelic singers including his wife, the aptly named Angel Band. But lately, he explained, breaking away from the lyrics and carrying his audience into a monologue about lost civil liberties in the land of the free, he has thought not so much about his hometown of Tarrytown as he sings his Kaatskill Serenade, but instead about his country, which he no longer recognizes for its detainment of criminal suspects without trial, torture of combatants and operation of prisons in lands that condone treatment illegal back home ...

We could tell, watching several people who quietly rose in protest in the midst of Bromberg's monologue to leave the crowded music hall where his soothing music and trademark humor had comforted us for the better part of three hours, that the old singer who packed this hall on a Friday night had suddenly and without warning crossed a perilous line from entertainment to social commentary that some simply will not tolerate these days. Just ask the Dixie Chicks ...

What's wrong, after all, with finding new meaning in a 30-year-old song? It started, years ago, as a song about Rip Van Winkle, who awakened from 20 years of slumber in a land no longer familiar. And for the writer, it has become an anthem about a land he no longer recognizes ...

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/07/what_has_become.html