The Kentucky Industrial Workers of the World Presents!
Precious Memories
a new play by
Si Kahn
Starring
Sue Massek
Thursday November 20th
7:30 pm
Chapel of St. Phillip Divine.
230 Woodbine St.
Louisville, KY 40208
$15.00
contact
JP for more info
502-553-0495
SUE MASSEK STARS IN
SI KAHN’S NEW MUSICAL PRECIOUS MEMORIES
To hear Sue Massek’s high lonesome voice and frailed open
back banjo is to travel 80 years back in time.
When Sue takes the stage in Si Kahn’s new play with music Precious Memories, she time travels all
of us back to 1932, to the Bell County, Kentucky coal camp in which she was
born and raised.
But she doesn’t just transport us, she mesmerizes us. Long time folk and bluegrass DJ Jim Rogers,
who was in the audience when Sue performed Precious
Memories to open the first ever Northern Appalachian Folk Festival in
Indiana, Pennsylvania in September, 2013, wrote to Si Kahn the morning after:
“When one woman
on a stage can hold the attention of an audience for nearly 90 minutes, you
know something special is taking place. I believe you've created a
masterpiece, and you've found the perfect person to deliver it. It was
truly a privilege to be there.”
It’s no surprise that Sue Massek can generate that kind of musical
and artistic power. She’s a founding member of Kentucky’s award-winning Reel
World String Band, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this
year. No less an authority that Lily May
Ledford of the original Coon Creek Girls wrote:
“You don’t see
many people up on stage who’ve got fire.
But you girls have got it. Lord,
you girls are good!”
A master artist for the Kentucky Arts Council's Master/Apprentice
program, Sue Massek has taken her music as close to home as the Eastern
Kentucky coalfields and as far away as Italy.
Most recently, she performed Precious
Memories for a reunion of women coal miners. Marat Moore, author of the book Women in the Mines: Stories of Life
and Work and a former miner herself, wrote afterwards:
“Sue
Massek blew us away in her portrayal as Sarah Ogan Gunning. Our audience of women miners wept, laughed,
sang along, and rose to cheer Sue at the final curtain. We left inspired and
newly aware of the history of struggle and the power of ordinary people.”
Sarah Ogan Gunning certainly fits that description of “the
power of ordinary people.” A
self-described “miner’s wife” from Bell County, Kentucky, she watched one of
her children starve to death and another die of tuberculosis; she herself lost
a lung to the disease. One brother was killed
in the mines and another disabled; her first husband died of black lung when he
was 32.
It was the old time music of the mountains that helped keep
her going. She shared with her brother
Jim Garland and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson a great oral family
collection of traditional songs, many of which were recorded for the Archive of
Folk Music at the Library of Congress.
It was the music, too, that took Sarah, Jim and Aunt Molly to
New York City’s Lower East Side in the early 1930s, where for the first time in
her life Sarah found recognition, singing with Woody Guthrie, Huddie (“Lead
Belly”) and Martha Ledbetter, the 15 year old Pete Seeger, becoming friends
with some of the great writers and actors of that time, from John Dos Passos
and Theodore Dreiser to Sherwood Anderson and Will Geer, later to become even
more famous as Grandpa on The Waltons.
Precious
Memories takes place in real time on September 4th, 1960,
the day on which Sarah’s half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson was buried. By that time, Sarah was all but forgotten,
living in a basement apartment in a run-down section of Detroit, only singing
in church and to the four walls.
Three years later, on October 8th, 1963,
legendary folklorist and labor historian Archie Green, who had been searching
for Sarah, knocked on the door of her basement apartment in Detroit.
For the next 20 years, Sarah Ogan Gunning brought and taught
her songs, both old and new, to people all over North America. She appeared at the Newport Folk Festival,
singing from the same stage as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and her old friend Pete
Seeger. She sang at the Smithsonian
Festival of American Folklife on the mall in Washington DC, she sang at
Carnegie Hall, and she served as an inspiration and mentor to many young women
musicians, including Sue Massek.
On November 14th, 1983, during an evening spent
singing with family and friends, Sarah Ogan Gunning quietly and peacefully
slipped away.
With over a half century of performing experience, Sue
Massek’s journey has taken her throughout the United States, Canada, Italy,
Guatemala, and Nicaragua. She has performed as a solo artist and as banjo
player for The Reel World String Band since it beginning in 1977. For over 37 years Reel World
has used its music as a tool for social justice in venues as diverse as
community centers in the coal fields of Appalachia to the Lincoln Center in New
York City. They were the Kentucky
Conference for Community and Justice 2011 Lauren K. Weinberg Humanitarian Award
Honorees.
Sue
has worked as an artist in residence in schools throughout the United States
for over 3 decades including dozens of residencies in Kentucky through the
Kentucky Arts Council’s Artist in
Residence Program and Very Special
Arts Kentucky.
Sue
has completed several folklife resource surveys as Kentucky’s very first Community Scholar and she is now a Master Artist for their Master/Apprentice Grant Program. She also has apprenticed under several
legendary Kentucky artists including Lily May Ledford, Clyde Davenport and
Blanche Coldiron, as well as working with nationally recognized traditional
artists, Oscar Wright, Jimmy Driftwood, and Guy and Candie Carawan.
"Here's to Sue Massek,
consummate musician and social activist. Sue brings together a light touch on
the banjo, a fine representation of traditional mountain music, a polished
skill at songwriting and a genuine dedication to social justice. She is a
delight to hear and a pleasure to work with."
Guy
& Candie Carawan
Sue
has recorded three albums as a solo artist, Precious
Memories: The Songs of Sarah Ogan Gunning, Brave is the Heart of a Singing Bird
and Searching for Shady Grove. Reel World has recorded seven albums over the
years and appeared on several other compilation projects. As a songwriter, Sue’s songs have been played
in over 21 countries around the world. Her song Brennen’s Ballad was the inspiration for award winning writer,
Silas House’s book, Recruiters.
Sue
has worked as a cultural organizer for Kentucky Foundation for Women,
Appalachian Women’s Alliance and for the Kentucky Arts Council as a Circuit Rider.
Sue
has recently expanded her horizons, taking on the role of actor in a one woman
play about the life of Kentucky born and raised Sarah Ogan Gunning. The play, written by noted songwriter, Si
Kahn, is a 90 minute peek into life in the coal fields of Kentucky during the
depression. It brings back to life the
important music and work of Sarah and her siblings Aunt Molly Jackson and Jim
Garland. Their music, over looked by
most historical media for too long, was part of the repertoire of folk
musicians Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger during the early folkmusic movement.
“When one woman
on a stage can hold the attention of an audience for nearly 90 minutes, you
know something special is taking place. I believe you've created a
masterpiece, and you've found the perfect person to deliver it. It was
truly a privilege to be there.” Long time folk and bluegrass DJ Jim
Rogers
“Sue
Massek blew us away in her portrayal as Sarah Ogan Gunning. Our audience of women miners wept, laughed,
sang along, and rose to cheer Sue at the final curtain. We left inspired and
newly aware of the history of struggle and the power of ordinary people.” Marat Moore,
author of the book Women
in the Mines:
Sue
grew up in the flatlands of Kansas where she began performing with her mother
singing old time gospel and songs handed down from her grandmother. Her mother’s father called square dances and
her father’s father played fiddle for county dances. She continues to perform for local churches
with her 87 year old mother, who is an accomplished musical instrument maker
and carpenter.
Sue
has called Kentucky home for nearly 40 years and is deeply devoted to Appalachia
and the people who live there. She is a
flatlander by birth and a hillbilly at heart.
