Dolly's Wildflowers: live music from the series

Summary

Dolly Parton's America: "Dolly's Wildflowers: Live Music from the Series" (November 26, 2019)

Episode Overview

This bonus episode of "Dolly Parton's America," hosted by Jad Abumrad, delivers a musical journey inspired by the series’ exploration of Dolly Parton's influence. In response to audience requests for more music, Jad presents live and recorded performances from artists featured in or influenced by the series. The episode celebrates Dolly’s role as a unifying cultural figure and highlights how her music connects people across continents and traditions. It features reinterpretations of Dolly’s songs, bluegrass numbers, gospel in Kikuyu, and innovative "coverings" of home-themed music by contemporary composers—all illustrating the universal longing for belonging and home.

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Key Discussion Points & Musical Performances

1. Introduction and Purpose (00:27)

• Jad Abumrad explains this is a bonus episode focused on music gathered during production, including covers and reinterpretations of Dolly’s songs and other meaningful musical performances.

2. Justin Hiltner: "Silver Dagger" (02:20)

• Background: Justin Hiltner, originally featured in Episode 6, performs "Silver Dagger," a traditional British ballad covered by Dolly.
• Emotional Impact: Jad notes the song “stuck so deep in my head” after first hearing Justin’s performance.
• Notable Quote:

  "That song kills me."
  —Jad Abumrad (05:17)

• Performance: Powerful bluegrass interpretation (02:20–05:17).
• Timestamps:
  • Introduction and context (01:30–02:20)
  • Performance (02:20–05:17)

3. Esther Konkara: Kikuyu Gospel & "Wildflowers" (05:28)

• Background: Esther, known as the “Kenyan Dolly Parton,” appears via Skype from Kenya, blending Kikuyu gospel with country/bluegrass.
• Dolly’s Influence: Esther shares her connection to Dolly’s song "Wildflowers" as a metaphor for personal resilience.
• Notable Quote:

  "I love Dolly's song that says that when a flower grow wild, it can always survive. So I grew wild and I've survived."
  —Esther Konkara (06:58)

• Performance:
  • Kikuyu gospel song (05:41–07:10)
  • A cappella singing of "Wildflowers" (07:37–08:50)
• Timestamps:
  • Esther’s introduction (05:28–05:40)
  • Translation and meaning (06:58–07:20)
  • "Wildflowers" excerpt (07:37–08:50)
• Jad’s response:

  "No, it's great. That's beautiful." (08:52)

4. String Trio: Instrumental Cover of "Marry Me" (09:25)

• Musicians: Steph Jenkins, Steph Coleman, and Courtney Hartman perform bluegrass-inspired scoring.
• Spontaneity: Courtney Hartman does a “spur of the moment” instrumental version of Dolly’s "Marry Me."
• Notable Reaction:

  "Total earworm, Sam."
  —Audience Member (10:59)

• Timestamps:
  • String trio intro and performance (09:25–10:59)
• Jad’s reflection:

  "I have listened to that one minute like 70 times." (11:41)

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5. National Sawdust "Covering Home" Event (13:15–31:03)

Event Context (13:15–13:45)

• Live Event: Held at National Sawdust, Brooklyn—musicians were invited to reinterpret traditional or personally meaningful “songs of home.”
• Jad’s Reflection: Links the concept of home to both his Lebanese roots and Dolly’s Appalachian heritage.

A. Shelley Washington: "Moingus" (14:44–17:23)

• Composer: Shelley Washington performs on baritone saxophone (nicknamed "Titan").
• Inspiration: Based on Mingus Big Band music given to her as a child.
• Notable Quote:

  "I immediately just tried to memorize every single line."
  —Shelley Washington (15:04)

• Performance: Excerpt from her piece "Moingus," blending jazz lines and improvisation.

B. Bora Yoon: "The Houses We Carry Within" (17:51–21:07)

• Composer: Bora Yoon shares a multimedia piece inspired by Do Ho Suh’s “Almost Home” exhibition.
• Theme: The immigrant experience, the feeling of not truly belonging, and the idea that "home exists in your memory."
• Notable Quote:

  "When he goes home to Korea, they're like, well, you're not from here either."
  —Bora Yoon (18:53)

• Performance: Uses unconventional instruments (Stroh violin, found objects, electronics), evoking memory, place, and transition.

C. Caroline Shaw & Andrew Yee: "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" & "I'll Fly Away" (21:54–29:55)

• Composer/Performer: Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw with cellist Andrew Yee, joined by other musicians.
• Song Themes:
  • "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand"—Exodus narrative, longing for the “promised land.”
  • "I'll Fly Away"—Classic gospel tune with undertones of liberation and hope.
• Notable Quote:

  "I keep trying to find what it means to go home in that song."
  —Caroline Shaw (21:58)

• Performance Highlights:
  • Rich, layered harmonies with cello, vocal, and audience participation.
  • Celebration of traditional American music through a modern lens.
• Timestamps:
  • “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks…” begins (23:05)
  • “I’ll Fly Away” starts (25:20)
  • Big finale (29:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jad Abumrad on the power of music:

  "That song kills me." (05:17)

• Esther Konkara on resilience:

  "I grew wild and I've survived." (06:58)

• Bora Yoon on the immigrant experience:

  "When he goes home to Korea, they're like, well, you're not from here either." (18:53)

• Caroline Shaw on complicated homecoming:

  "I keep trying to find what it means to go home in that song." (21:58)

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Highlighted Timestamps

• 02:20 — Justin Hiltner: "Silver Dagger"
• 05:41 — Esther Konkara: Kikuyu gospel & "Wildflowers"
• 09:25 — String Trio: "Marry Me" (Instrumental)
• 14:44 — Shelley Washington: "Moingus" (Live)
• 17:51 — Bora Yoon: "The Houses We Carry Within"
• 21:54 — Caroline Shaw & Andrew Yee: "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand"/"I'll Fly Away"

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Tone and Style

The episode is heartfelt and celebratory, emphasizing Dolly Parton's universal cultural resonance and the diverse meanings of home. The musical performances are interwoven with personal stories, reflecting themes of migration, adaptation, and shared humanity.

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Summary Takeaway

"Dolly’s Wildflowers" is an audio tapestry highlighting how Dolly Parton’s music—and the idea of “home”—connects people across genres, continents, and generations. Through inspired live performances and candid conversations, the episode cements music as a unique bridge in a divided world, echoing Dolly’s ethos of survival, inclusivity, and hope.

Transcript

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[Jad Abumrad]

Dolly Parton's America so I did say last week that the next episode would be in two weeks and that is true. Shima and I are working on episode seven as we speak. But consider this a bonus because during the course of producing and recording this series, we collected a lot of music. A lot of people came in and performed songs for us. Actually, a lot of people we were interviewing suddenly broke into songs and we ended up having a lot of music. And we've been getting a lot of emails saying play more music. Okay, so here we go. In this bonus ep, I'm going to present to you guys some of the musicians that we encountered, most of whom were interpreting Dolly's music. A bit later, I'm going to play you selections from a live event that I hosted that was loosely inspired by the series and by the music in the series. But for the moment, I just want to play you some stuff that people have asked for, starting with. Well, you know, last EP we did episode six about Jolene. We featured a guy named Justin Hiltner playing a song. His song Silver to Exe wasn't his song. It was an old British ballad that he heard Dolly cover on one of her bluegrass albums that became very important to him. It's a song called Silver Dagger and he played that. We had a lot of people ask to hear the whole thing. So here it is. And I'll tell you, when he first played this song for us, it stuck so deep in my head. Maybe we would want to reset for that. Yeah, let's reset for that. Okay. Yeah. So you don't have the two mics and everything. Justin was recorded by Tasha Lemle. Alright, here's Silver Dagger.

[Justin Hiltner]

Don't sing love song, you'll wake my mother. She's sleeping here right by my side in her right hand is a silver dagger she says that I can't be your bind are fools so says my mother they'll tell you wicked love and.

[Esther Konkara]

Lies.

[Justin Hiltner]

And then they'll go and court some other Leave you alone to pine inside My daddy is a handsome devil he's got a chain five miles long and on every link a heart does dangle of another man he's loving wrong Go court another tender maiden in hopes that she might be your wife For I've been warned and I've decided I'll sleep alone all of my my life don't sing love songs. You'll wake my mother. She's laying here right by my side and in her right hand is a silver dagger she says that I can't be your vibe.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Justin Hiltner with Silver Dagger. That song Kills me. Recorded by Tasha Laemmle. You can check out more of his [e-mail] all right, next, I'm invited to.

[Esther Konkara]

Perform my Kikuyu gospel songs, which I also now blend with country. I carry my guitar and do, like, two country songs. Then I do my other gospel Kikuyu songs.

[Jad Abumrad]

For episode three, we interviewed a woman named Esther Konkara, who's known as the Kenyan Dolly Parton. She performed over Skype for us from Kiambu county just outside of Nairobi, Kenya, and she sang a bunch of stuff for us. Some gospel songs in her native Kikuyu, and also some Dolly songs. We'll crossfade from one to the other.

[Esther Konkara]

So just to translate the song, say, I will sing this song to praise you, God, because you have always been my great deliverer. Despite the many battles in my life, you have always made me imagine. But I love Dolly's song that says that when a flower grow wild, it can always survive. So I grew wild and I've survived.

[Michael's Store Announcer]

Wait, what song is that?

[Esther Konkara]

When a flower grow wild. You know that song? It's called Wild Flower.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, sing it.

[Esther Konkara (singing)]

We were flowers and I was as wild Even wilder than they for at least I could run they just died in the sun and I refused to Just withered in place Just I went mountain rose needing freedom to grow so I ran flying caring not where I go When a flower grow wild, it can always survive Wild flowers don't care where they grow I grew up fast and wild and I never felt right in a wild so different from me I just never belong I just long to be gone so that garden one day set me free I hitched her with the wind and since she was my friend I just let him decide where I go When a flower grow I it can always survive White flowers don't care what it grew.

[Esther Konkara]

It's a long song.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, it's great. That's beautiful. That's Esther Konkara singing a bit of Dolly Parton's song Wildflowers, which is off of her album. Trio Esther was recorded in Nairobi by Tomas Brickhill. Speaking of trios, we actually got a trio to come in and play some scoring music for us. Three amazing musicians, Steph Jenkins, Steph Coleman and Courtney Hartman. Here's a little something they played for.

[Event Audience Member]

Nice.

[Jad Abumrad]

That sounded beautiful. We connected with Steph and Steph and Courtney through an event we hosted at Radiolab and then got them into the studio to record during that session, which we recorded at WNYC and which was engineered by the amazing Alex Overington. Courtney, who plays guitar, just sort of spur of the moment shredded through this instrumental cover of Dolly's Marry Me.

[Event Audience Member]

Total earworm, Sam.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's all she played. But I have listened to that one minute like 70 times. We'll be featuring more from that trio, Steph Jenkins, Stephanie Coleman and Courtney Harmon in the next few episodes. Gonna take a short break now and then we'll be back with some very different kind of music that I presented at a live event in Brooklyn that was loosely inspired by the series that's coming up.

[Michael's Store Announcer]

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[Jad Abumrad]

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, Democratic politician Zoran Mamdani. Donald Trump has threatened to punish New York if Mamdani becomes the mayor. I think that will be an inevitability. We have to treat it as such. This is an administration that looks at the flourishing of city life, wherever it may be across this country, as a threat to their entire political agenda. So Ran Mamdani joins me next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[Justin Hiltner]

Hello. Hello.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi everybody. Thank you, Elena. Thank you, national Sawdust for getting me back here and creating a place where I can do a weird thing. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad, back with a bonus EP of music we recorded live as part of the series Dolly Burns America. About two weeks before we released the series into the Wild, I hosted an event in Brooklyn that was sort of inspired by that visit that Shima and I took to Dolly's Tennessee mountain home, which I described in episode four, how we went up there to see the home. And it reminded me Very strongly of my dad, Lebanese Mountain Home. And so when we came back, I got to thinking about all the songs that we sing about home and how as we leave home, we carry those songs with us and we morph them and transform them. And so I ended up hosting this event at National Sawdust in Brooklyn as part of the National Sawdust plus series curated by Elena park, where I got together three incredible musicians, Shelley Washington, Bora Yoon and Caroline Shaw, who all played traditional music that they connect to that reminds them of home, that is from their home. But they all took that music and gave it a new spin. We called the event Covering Home, like covers of traditional songs of Home. And I'll play you some excerpts. Please give it up for Shelley Washington. Shelley Washington was the first one up. She's a composer at Princess. Her work has been performed all around the world.

[Shelley Washington]

Hello everyone. So I will be playing this large tube. This is a baritone saxophone. If you have not seen one before, it's also the one that Lisa Simpson plays. And it is.

[Jad Abumrad]

Shelley explained that her traditional music was actually a record that her parents gave her when she first started playing the sax. When she was about 12.

[Shelley Washington]

My parents gave me one of the Mingus Big Band like essentially albums that I immediately just tried to memorize every single line. I just obsessed with that entire album. So like every solo line I could sing all of them. And you can hear like the band chattering in the background and making these little like, uh huh, like different exciting moments.

[Jad Abumrad]

So you might hear that in the piece. What Shelley did is she took all her favorite Mingus lines, put them all together in the same piece, and then played it on her gigantic baritone sax that she's named Titan. Here's an excerpt of that piece called Moingus.

[Event Audience Member]

It.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was an excerpt of Moingus from composer Shelley Washington. You can check out more of her [e-mail] that's s h e l l e y washington.com Next up with composer Bora Yoon.

[Bora Yoon]

This is a piece that is called the Houses We Carry within. And it was actually in response to an exhibit at the Smithsonian American art Museum in D.C. last spring. It's a Korean artist named Do Ho Suh who makes these really beautiful fabric houses made of actually Korean Hanbok material, which is this kind of like stiff crinoline that's translucent. And he literally makes exact replicas of his Berlin apartment, his Lower east side apartment, the house he grew up in Korea. But they're all reconstructed from his memory. So there are these fabric houses that just hang in space and you get to walk through them. I mean, it's really OCD to the hilt. I mean, like radiators, like, crocheted together. So these are all kind of these suspended times and spaces. Because he talks about how as an expat from Korea, he goes to all these different cities and lives in all these different places, but his accent's too thick, so they always say he's not from there. But when he goes home to Korea, they're like, well, you're not from here either.

[Jad Abumrad]

You left.

[Bora Yoon]

It's this constant theme in his work. So the exhibit was called Almost Home. And this idea of home existing in your memory or in your mind or kind of that the house that we carry inside of us and that these architectures live in our memories and our archetypes.

[Jad Abumrad]

For the performance, Bora played about a dozen different instruments and found percussion objects and very strange things like a Stroh violin, which is a violin with a horn on it. And she played electronics, sang. Here's an excerpt.

[Event Audience Member]

Sam, it's a memory.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a memory of your child.

[Event Audience Member]

Sam.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was an excerpt of Bora Yoon performing her multimedia piece, the Houses We Carry Within. It's a. It's a beautiful piece that you really kind of need to see as well as hear. So I would urge you to go to bora.com, that's B O R A Y-O-O-N dot com. You can see a lot of her multimedia stuff there, hear a lot of her music. Okay. The final performer of the evening was Caroline Shaw, Pulitzer Prize winning performer, composer, collaborated with pretty much everybody from Kanye to the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. And she did a duet with cellist Andrew Yee. Series of duets. Actually, I'm gonna play you two of them. Okay. But so maybe just set up, set up the next song. And then I think our fellow composers, performers should join me on. On the stage because we're going to be Caroline's backup bowl band.

[Caroline Shaw]

Sure.

[Jad Abumrad]

So what are we about to hear?

[Caroline Shaw]

The next tune is called On Jordan's Stormy Banks, Banks I Stand. At least that's the first line. It's not really a title. And that was written. The words are written by Samuel Stennett of England in 1787. But it also is this essential exodus narrative of leaving a place, searching for freedom, crossing the River Jordan. And the function of the River Jordan is strong in a lot of these songs. And the last one is a very famous I'll Fly Away, which is also written by Albert Brumley In 1932, throughout all the history. It's an interesting history of the song, though, because he himself is kind of covering other songs that have to do with the Exodus narrative in the South. So there's I find the song kind of interesting and problematic, and I keep trying to find what it means to go home in that song.

[Event Audience Member]

Excellent.

[Jad Abumrad]

Caroline Shaw, Andrew Yee, give it up.

[Caroline Shaw]

I'm very happy to be joined by Shelley and Bora and Elena and Jad here, too.

[Event Audience Member]

On Jordan's stormy banks I stand.

[Caroline Shaw]

And.

[Event Audience Member]

Cast a wishful eye To Canaan's fair and happy land where my possessions lie don't you feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home? My home is in the promised land and I feel like going home oh, that transportive rapture scene that rises to my eyes Sweet fields arrayed in living green and rivers of delight.

[Caroline Shaw]

Don'T you.

[Event Audience Member]

Feel like going home? Don't you feel like going home? My home is in the promised land and I feel like going home Sam Some bright morning when this life is over I'll fly away to that home on God's celestial shore I'll fly away I'll fly away oh glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah by and by I fly away Saif are over I fly away Like a bird from those prison walls I'll fly, I'll fly away I'll fly away O glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah by and by I fly away oh how glad and happy when we meet I'll fly away no more cold iron shackles on your feet Fly away I fly away O glory, I will fly away When I die, hallelujah by and by I fly away Just a few more weary days and then I'll fly away To a land where joys will never.

[Caroline Shaw]

End and.

[Event Audience Member]

I'll fly away I'll fly away oh glory I'll fly away When I die, hallelujah by and by I fly away.

[Jad Abumrad]

Those are excerpts from A night at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, night I put together with curator Ellen park, loosely inspired by Dolly Parton's America, all those Dolly songs like Tennessee Mountain Home that are about trying to hold a feeling of home even while you're wandering far, far away. This was part of the National Sawdust plus series that Elena curates. I want to thank Jeff Tang, Charles Hagman, Garth mcalevy, who is the mix engineer for the night. Thank you to Jeremy Bloom for helping to mix this episode and all the musicians who appeared in this bonus ep Justin Hiltner, Esther Kankara, Steph Jenkins, Steph Coleman, Courtney Hartman, Shelly Washington, Maura Yoon, Caroline Shaw and Andrew Yee Shima. And I will be back in one week with another episode of Dolly Parton's America. Until then, I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening.

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