CD Review

Magpie
John Brown: Sword of the Spirit
(Appleseed)

Unfortunately, Magpie's latest CD, an incredibly bold and ambitious project called John Brown: Sword of the Spirit, is also far too preachy and overtly "educational" to listen to with pleasure. Taken from a play they have based on the lives of John and Mary Brown, the songs revolve around his militia-style attempt to start a slave revolt in West Virginia. The action progresses through the stories of individuals who were directly or indirectly involved - from John and Mary Brown to Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and several unknown figures like Quaker John Copeland and freeman Dangerfield Newby. But when songwriters deal with history through the eyes and voices of individuals who lived it, the point is to make these people live and breathe again. They must, for a moment, become real. The problem here is that not one of these figures has an inner life - none experiences a conflict, wrestles with indecision or a has sudden insight. None has an idiosyncratic trait that marks him or her as an individual, none - even the possessed John Brown himself - reveals anything to us that is hidden from themselves. Each song gets in some interesting facts - like the fact that Brown talked to Douglass extensively about his plan or that the first man killed at Harper's Ferry was a freeman bent on freeing his wife who was still in slavery. The songs seem designed to work in a school presentation - each aiming to make a point rather than giving life to the people in them. And that seems like a shame.
-HB