Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.
Paul Muldoon’s short, beautiful poem touches on many things – a secret life, a hint of tragedy, but as much as anything else it captures what can be double-edged about farming. We don’t know what happened to Brownlee, but from the outside the view is that he “should have been content” with his barley, potatoes, bullocks, milker and farmhouse. But all was not as it seemed, and farming - what may seem like the bountiful joy of growing, of producing and living of the land and culminating in harvest, might seem idyllic in theory, but clearly it is often not. Farming’s hard won rewards are fragile, and in the sudden, cold wind of an indifferent universe, they can all suddenly be gone, snuffed out like a life, blown away like straw in the breeze. And perhaps only Brownlee’s two black horses, in that poetic image, shifting their weight from foot to foot, and “gazing in to the future”, really know the truth.
Farming seems to be all about extremes. Hard work can bring high yields, yet there are also massive risks, and what has inspired many a song is the hovering black cloud, or hurricane, or drought, that may cause everything to be lost. Most of us are probably descended from farmers back in time, so is it the most natural, fundamental and important of all jobs? It spans the furthest corners of the world from rice and tea in China to India to the vast wheat fields and ranches of the US and Canada. On a psychological level, is there great joy and satisfaction in sowing crops and watching them grow, or keeping animals to watch them multiply? Or is there something deeply unnatural about mass production, and the level of control and manipulation in battery farming to GM crops?
Country, folk and bluegrass will offer rich pickings this week. So your choices may range from the deep mountains of Dolly Parton to the dustbowls of Woody Guthrie. Many of the Delta blues musicians, such as Mississippi John Hurt earned a living as farm hands. There is a rich history of first-hand experience in music from the fields. And many songs will also be about escaping life on the farm, as much as living or working on it. Perhaps, as in Oklahoma!, you may wonder whether the farmer and the cowhand can be friends?
Farming, perhaps with less authenticity, may even crop up in the work of those who turned to it after becoming famous - such as Blur’s Alex James with his love of cheese, and the Who’s Roger Daltrey and his trout. My only true farming experience, apart from a bit of blackberry picking, involved a bit of cash-in-hand work as student, walking in a line through fields of wheat to pull up clusters of rogue crops. This ancient, if surreal pastime was made easier by passing down the line some specially rolled cigarettes and a chewing on a few local mushrooms until the wheat field began to glow and look something like this …
Back to the songs, and what kinds of feelings do they harvest? Joy? Insecurity? Doubt? Controversy? Certainly stories of how fate can play an extreme hand will almost certainly run through the roots of many songs on this subject. But they may also express a sense of pride, family history, struggle, and fortitude. They may talk, for example, about conflicts between farmer and land owner, or farmer and farm hands, not to mention cowboys. Or battles with the elements. The fate of crops - wheat, maize, corn, tobacco, tea, apples, potatoes or other fruit and veg. Or the state of the land, rivers and other forms of irrigation, the prairies, meadows and hills. Your songs my talk about farming equipment from ploughs to tractors and harvesters. Or farmer’s daughters and sons. Or they may feature all kinds of farm animals - herds of cows, ox, and sheep, chickens, goats, pigs, horses, llamas, or armadillos. OK, I’m making it up about the armadillos. But that would be fun, wouldn’t it? Mind you, I do like llamas …
So is farming a noble profession, or a cruel, exploitative one? Or one exploited by others, such as by the supermarkets and land owners? Probably all of the above. Whatever it is, there’s no denying how much we need it. As it says in one song, covered by artists that have included Pete Seeger and Ry Cooder:
The farmer lives on credit ’til the fall.
Then they take him by the hand, and they lead him through the land,
And the middle man’s the man who gets it all.
The lawyer hangs around while the butcher cuts a pound,
But the farmer is the man who feeds them all.
So then, sow the seeds of your imagination, gather in your crops of your musical collections, and bring in the harvest for this week’s farm-based songs. This week’s head herdsman and lord of the land comes from the other side of the world - we welcome back deanofromoz, who will undoubtedly pitchfork and sort the wheat from the chaff. Herd your nominations in by last orders (11pm UK time) this Monday 3 August in time for a beautifully grown selection of produce published next Thursday 6 August.
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
Tell us why it’s a worthy contender.
Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song’s words.
Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify or SoundCloud are fine.
Listen to others people’s suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist from readers’ suggestions, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com
There’s a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
Many RR regulars also congregate at the ‘Spill blog.
Interested in a musical hoedown? Enjoy songs and sharing them? This September 2015 the glorious Guardian Readers Recommend blog is going to be 10 years old! There will be an informal celebration of this during the weekend of Saturday 19 September, with a meeting up from lunchtime onwards on this day in London, near the Guardian’s offices. For more details, and possible other meet-ups around this time, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com or keep an eye out on the Readers Recommend topics appearing here each Thursday.
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