We’re waiting for the show to start. It’s Saturday night at the Autry Museum of the American West, and we’re gathering to experience the latest from Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO): “Current: Routes: Following the Highways and Byways of American Music” with curator-pianist Lara Downes and Dom Flemons, “The American Songster®.”
At the foot of the stage, a young music-lover is sprawled on one of several enormous cowhides with her mother and brother. She’s seven, and her mother has firmly negotiated a few moments of interview in exchange for no ID, no name, no photo. The girl has her feet propped up on one of the many throw pillows tossed across the cowhides by Autry management. Earbuds in, she silently taps the toe-tips of her black cowboy boots together to inaudible music.
And she already looks a little bored.
We ask, “What are you listening to?”
She sits up, pops out her earbuds, pops them into their dental-floss-style case, and says, “Bey, ‘American Requiem.’ You know, ‘Cowboy Carter.’”
“All Bey, all-day,” says her mother, taking the case from her.
We ask what she likes about classical music. She thinks for a minute, then says, “I use it when I’m studying. It’s very organized, and you don’t have to remember any words.”
We ask what she likes about country music. She thinks, shrugs one slender shoulder. “Well…Beyoncé. She’s from Texas.” She shakes out her fresh set of box braids and pulls her cowgirl hat low over her eyes. “And I like the hat.”
LACO, founded in 1968, is an artistic phenomenon unique to Los Angeles, stating its mission as “…to enrich and connect our community through intimate and transformative musical experiences which exemplify and foster artistic excellence, education and innovation.” The conservatory-trained players in this premier orchestra are recognized worldwide for their prowess, and over the years, LACO has bagged eight ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming. The collaborative performance at the Autry reinforced these bonafides, where Downes and Flemons framed the classical skills of Josefina Vergara (Violin I), Susan Rishik (Violin II), Jonathan Moerschel (Viola) and Giovanna Clayton (Cello) within the warm vernacular of the American folk tradition.
A slight cosplay element made the evening fun. As any Electric Horseman, Rhinestone, Drugstore, or Midnight Cowboy/Gal will tell you, you walk differently in cowboy boots than you do in sneakers. A photo booth stocked with Western gear, sequined and bedazzled for Beyoncé-liciousness, drew clusters of adults as well as giddy tweens. And the tang of spicy, slow-roasted pulled pork, chopped fresh herbs, and charred chuck-wagon chipotle rising from the eats prepared by Little Bear Catering set many a mouth to waterin’.
Artfully clad in overalls and a bandanna, LACO Executive Director Ben Cadwallader got the party started on the right note by dedicating the evening with the acknowledgment that the museum and its campuses are located on lands stewarded for centuries by indigenous people, “…and we pay our respects to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders), and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present, and emerging.”
Flemons, an original founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, took the stage accessorized with rusticated suspenders and his trademark topper, a well-traveled hat that looked like a horse had stepped on it, well-suited to his folksy renderings. Downes was diaphanous in a billow of pastels, finished off with a pair of gilded boots she favors for high occasions.
Flemons’ expert picking wrested a few rodeo-worthy “Yahoo!”s and “Yee-haw!”s from the crowd, which in turn brought the slightly sleepy cowgirl beside me to her feet, whooping as she tossed her hat into the air, braids flying.
When we caught up with Downes the next day by telephone, she said, “Unless you’re indigenous, First Nations, Native American, you’re from somewhere else. Your people are from somewhere else. This is the baseline for the program and for my album, ‘This Land.’ Everybody’s curious about where they come from, and no one really feels at home here. All families have stories about migration, whether from the deep South up to the promise of Chicago and New York or talking about the other side of the Atlantic. That’s why family stories about migration are so resonant.”
Yet, curiously, shared songs make us feel more at home within ourselves and with each other, even if the “other” is of another complexion and other geography.
One comparatively modern song in the evening’s repertoire strikes the heart like an arrow: Paul Simon’s “America,” written in 1964, one year after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jr.
“That song still feels like a tipping point,” says Downes. “The feeling of mourning and being in this fractured state. It really reflects the time we’re living in now, six decades after it was written. I know it because I’ve now lived it.”
Downes performed for and addressed students in Watts earlier in the week. “Those kids had no relationship with the music I brought in,” she said. “These songs might as well be a thousand years old. So there isn’t that sense of history, but I told them that their grandparents probably sang some of them.”
It’s no secret that country and musical genres that bump up against country are having a moment. The most intriguing conversation around this may be found in the writing of queer, Black, banjo-picking scholar Francesa Royster in her book “Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions” (University of Texas Press). When we interviewed the author two years ago, she cited Lil Nas X singing his hit “Old Town Road” and the fact that her young daughter couldn’t get enough of it.
She compared the “loaded” nature of country music for Black people as equivalent to coming out as queer. Of Lil Nas X, who is also Black and queer, Royster said, “When he sings ‘Can’t nobody tell me nothing,’ this is a song where I hear the spirit of Black resistance and creativity.” This growing, if uneasy, acceptance forms the backdrop for the performances like that experienced at the Autry.
The beating heart of Downes’ Autry performance was her rendering of three classic pieces of Americana – The Streets of Laredo, Wayfaring Stranger, and Black Is the Color – played as arranged by Roy Harris in 1945. Harris was born in a log cabin in rural Oklahoma in 1898, moved as a child to the San Gabriel Valley, and developed a populist style during his work with the WPA Federal Music Project. Traditional gospel hymns and well-known folk melodies figure prominently in his symphonies, which are recognizable for their broad tonal melodies and asymmetrical rhythms.
Songs of this genre are often subtitled a such-and-such “lament,” but to our ears, each piece seemed to centralize and solidify on a closing major chord, quite unlike the plaintive nature of the originals.
“Yes, they do end in major keys,” she said. “However, I don’t interpret that as ending on a more positive note. He does these weird harmonic shifts, which leave the musical line more unresolved than in the original. To me, the arrangements are questioning. They end abruptly. There’s an unfinished feeling of letting things be unresolved.” She adds, “There’s a darkness to them this way, a resignation, which is part of their modernity.”
Another lasting note in Downes’ performance is her rendering of the old country standard, which observes, “You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles.” It’s been covered by artists of every ilk for at least a century. Once upon a time, a hundred miles was a very long distance indeed when traversed on foot, by wagon, or maybe astride a swayback mule. The distance doesn’t feel so impassable now, but the ache of being a long way from home persists.
Just as Flemons dressed for the front porch and Downes dressed for the ballroom on the night of their appearance, she has a considered opinion of the mix of country mouse and city mouse.
“Bringing folk music, especially the music of the Black Diaspora, into the symphony halls can lead to some uncomfortable conversations,” she says. “After all, those symphony halls represent in some measure the forces that participated in the American culture of erasure. So, this reclaiming is very much intentional, and all we’ve received are warm embraces from all sides.”
She adds, “And I don’t claim to be solving racism. My work is to bring back missing pieces of the puzzle, filling out the canon. Through music, I want to give a truer picture of what we know about America’s history. And I want the next generation of decision-makers to receive and understand this knowledge going forward.”
DEETS
- Check out the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra calendar, including other local venue listings and two April 2025 performances by Lara Downes.
- Follow laradownes @laradownesmusic
- Catch up with Don Flemons on The American Songster Tour 2025
