In addition to his films and music, Cohen is a celebrated photographer. He took this picture of Bob Dylan in 1962.
On Tuesday, the campus hosted John Cohen, a man who has worn many creative hats. In a career spanning over a half a century, Cohen has won acclaim as a filmmaker, musician, photographer and a musicologist.
Cohen, a short, quirky septuagenarian with a snowy beard, is a man of eclectic pursuits. In the 1950s he gained notoriety as a photographer, documenting the Beats and Abstract Expressionists in New York City.
During this time he also earned an MFA from Yale for a thesis on the weaving patterns of indigenous Peruvian textiles, while at the same time forming a revivalist folk band called the New Lost City Ramblers, which is still around today. In the 1960s he traveled extensively, studying the folk music of Appalachia and the indigenous Qeros people of Peru.
His explanation of this diverse œuvre is that he finds the same “raw energy” in Abstract Expressionism that he does in old Appalachian music. His fascination with “finding the avant-garde in the old times” is based on a belief that both art forms have a quality of “being on the edge… in my mind, they’re not that different.”
His appearance in Olin 014, sponsored by a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, consisted of a Q & A session before and after screenings of two of his films, Roscoe Holcomb (2009) and Shape of Survival (1976).
Holcomb languidly portrays the small world of Roscoe Holcomb. Holcomb, an obscure musician from rural eastern Kentucky whom Cohen brought to the limelight with his better-known documentary The High Lonesome Sound (1962), is a simple man who does not have a whole lot to say (which, coupled with his almost undecipherable drawl, makes understanding him very difficult, to say the least). But when Holcomb sings, his twangy tenor and unadorned melodies transform a modest man with crooked teeth and Buddy Holly glasses into a veritable manifestation of old time America.
The other film, Qeros, is also concerned with folk music and tradition, but instead of Appalachia, Cohen takes us into the 3,000-year-old world of the Qeros people. The Qeros live 14,000 feet above sea level in the Peruvian highlands, where they cultivate fifty varieties of potatoes and herd llamas and alpacas. They have their own musical tradition, consisting of pan flutes and other woodwinds, which the Qeros play in an arrhythmic, atonal trill. According to Qeros, the llamas and alpacas find the music “comforting.”
Both documentaries are impressionistic, offering little in the way of dialogue or narration. Cohen’s subdued art reflects the simple, peaceful worlds that both Holcomb and the Qeros inhabit, with sustained wide shots of landscape and people.
Each has a compelling mixture of bucolic nostalgia and harrowing poverty, common characteristics in two cultures marginalized by their own countries. We see young, emaciated boys hauling coal in Holcomb and in Qeros, a seventeen-year-old girl is buried in a small hole after dying of a mysterious fever.
In the midst of these curious stories is the storyteller, John Cohen, a strange, affable man who happened to find success in almost every modern artistic medium. He has an unassuming and unpretentious style — his approach to his presentation consisted simply of getting up on stage and encouraging questions right off the bat, and making sure to thank each audience member for his or her question.
Like Holcomb, Cohen is a man of few words, and his responses rarely extended beyond a couple of minutes. His art is also understated, and perhaps there is a pattern. In both cases, Cohen lets the art speak for itself. Holcomb’s crooning and the Qeros flutes carry the momentum of the film, while Cohen hides behind the camera and in the editing room. Likewise, Cohen’s films carried the momentum of his Tuesday presentation, while Cohen, the man, merely answered questions. •
