AN INTERVIEW WITH RUTHANN FRIEDMAN

What is folk?
It is the music that comes out of personal experience living in society. It’s not necessarily composed. It’s not written by people who are highly educated in music. It comes from a simpler place. That’s my definition of it. Someone else can have another. It’s the music of the people. Appalachian music, Cajun zydeco, that’s folk music. What I do is folk but influenced by jazz and classical. Some people play music that sounds like what was played 100 years ago. I’m not sure what folk music is anymore. We’ve been influenced by so many things. I know what I live. I was raised listening to classical, opera and folk. That was on our record player. When I became a teenager, I discovered jazz and it blew my mind. Herbie Hancock, you know, Miles Davis. It opened my mind to a whole different way of listening to music and playing music. People are obviously influenced by other things. It’s all mixed up now and I think it’s fine.

Can any style of music be a platform for a folk song?
I particularly do not like rap or heavy metal. It grates on me. My mother hated rock and roll. She wanted to listen to swing. Folk music is a very personal kind of thing. The way you play and sing, it’s very deliberate. The lyrics are important, even more than the rhythm or beat. I speak to people. I hope it reaches them. If it doesn’t then I haven’t done my job.

What is the purpose of folk music?
To reach people emotionally and help them understand the commonality we have in our life and families and how we feel. We are pretty much the same, except for whatever our heads have been turned to. We have all the same basic needs and emotions and desires. We get lonely and sad and happy. That makes people feel comfortable. It feels good when someone comes up and says, “You made me cry” or the song made them feel we have the same feeling about something. When you perform on stage you want the people with you. You want them to identify with what you’re saying. Some people want something heady and intellectual. Some people want something simple. We all want love songs. It was all so new when I was a kid, folk music. It was traditional Appalachian music, ballads, Irish songs. Then folk music became songs of protest and political songs with Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Dylan opened my generation’s eyes. Not all my songs are political but I want to find some way to move the young people. The ME-ME generation has destroyed this country.

Music has the power to do move the people, you think?
Folk has always had a lot to do with the anti-war movement. Even Motown. “War, what is it good for?” The political situation is so horrendous right now. It’s frustrating. I hope we prevail, the good guys. America has got to let someone else be the damn superpower. Let someone else be the guardian of the world, this role we have played so badly. We have to sit back and see how it happened to England and Spain and Rome. You can’t protect your borders.

Why do you live in Los Angeles?
The art scene here has flourished. It’s becoming a cultural mecca, which it wasn’t in 1954. It was like a wasteland. There was no skyline. Only City Hall. Watch Dragnet, that shows what L.A. was. I saw the Marina City Club get built. It was the beginning of the end. This wonderful smalltown feeling was going, going, gone. But I do love it. I love it and I hate it. I hate the congestion and smog. I have to live by the beach. I need to feel the wind in my face. I’ve lived in the same neighborhood in Venice for about 37 years with the same phone number.

What was Venice like in its heyday?
Venice used to be like Silverlake and Echo Park are now. Abbot Kinney was plumbers and electricians and junk shops and artist studios because there people paid low rent. People lived in little beach cottages. Marina Del Ray had just been dredged when I moved here. There was a stoplight at Lincoln and Washington. There was one Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood. Things change so fast now. It used to take a lot of time for things to change. My mother is going to be 99 next month. She was born in 1911. There were Model T Fords. There was no radio or television. Airplanes were new. We had the first TV on the block. It was quite a big thing. All the kids would come over. But times change and I keep up. I try not to get confused. Facebook, computers, internet research—thinking of a question you want to ask and you can type it in and delve into it—it’s all magic to me. The phone is still magic to me.

What is unique about the new folk scene?
When Devendra Banhart asked me to play his festival at El Cid four years ago, the scene was all new to me. It is very different from what it was before but it is still great. The differences probably have a lot to do with my perspective. I started doing this at 16. The 1960s were a different world. It was smaller. There were fewer of us. You knew everybody. Now there are circles within circles within circles. It’s something else. Everything has been thrown up in the air and we don’t know how it’s going to settle now. It’s complicated but will end up better for everybody.

You’ve lived a kind of life that’s been romanticized by alternative culture. The 1960’s, dropping acid with Ken Kesey, drinking with Janis Joplin. How has the illusion of those times overtaken the reality?
Southern Comfort, that was Janis’s drink of choice. You know, the Chinese say it’s a curse to live in interesting times. I grew up where you don’t let a guy touch you. You don’t have sex until you’re married. You have to be a teacher or secretary or find a rich husband. Coming out of that, we were the bra burners. It was fantastic, but the ’60s were not idyllic. It wasn’t what people think. There was a lot of gonorrhea. Women were used by men because the idea was that you had to have free love and do this. There were people on the streets, dirty and hungry. People like the Diggers in San Fran and the Free Clinic here rose to the challenge and showed the good nature of us, but a lot of people took advantage of peace and love. Makes you vulnerable, being that loving and hoping.

Is the practice of “being free” something that stems from insecurity? Why do people identify with the ’60s?
There’s this illusion that the 1960s was some sort of magic. It wasn’t. That was a natural organic social revolution. These people realized they were sold a line of bullshit. Things they were told were horrible were not. Drugs, for one. People found out marijuana wasn’t the devil weed. “You lied to me about that, what else did you lie to me about?” Today, kids are looking for that essence. They want to experience what we experienced. You can’t go back there; you have to go into now. When you asked me what kids need, I wanted to say, “a hug.” Besides writing songs and letters to the editor, I can give a hug. Make people care about each other. We are so isolated and narcissistic. It’s hard to find people who want to care and trust each other. It’s a very fragile society right now. There are people who are absolutely hippies, “love children,” speak no evil, hear no evil. But there are not many of them. I hate to be cynical. When you find one you should give them a big hug. I will say I am honored to be a friend to the kids I am hanging out with. It gives me newfound life. I dropped out of the scene and got married and raised my children. When they were old enough to go off on their own I went back to school. That re-awakened my creativity. Then Water released my album and I met Devendra and now I am recording a new CD in San Jose with John Miller of the Mumlers. Old people are boring. They want to go to bed at 9:30. But you know what, use it or lose it, keep your mind open. People who know everything, I have a terrible time with them. I don’t know anything for sure, for real. I am just muddling along in this pot like the others.

—Daiana Feuer

photo by Lauren Dukoff