A Musical Journey

American Routes gets to the roots
By Bradley Bambarger
Used with permission from Billboard Magazine
Copyright 2000 BPI COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

Radio listeners are often divided among those who prefer music and those who prefer news. Yet as Nick Spitzer knows, music has long been the vehicle for news. Whether Indian chants or urban raps, music has been the medium by which a society delivers messages about itself to itself.

"All the important ideas of a culture are voiced in its art," says Spitzer, host and producer of American Routes, a weekly program (which airs Sundays at 6 p.m. on WHYY 91FM) based [in New Orleans] in which the nation's content is examined in the context of sounds from blues to bluegrass, Tin Pan Alley to zydeco.

In one of his two-hour shows, Spitzer might examine the way in which cultural mores are reflected via the singer/songwriter tradition from Bob Dylan to Beck. Or he might explore the manner in which the field hollers of black slaves and the late '60s funk of James Brown each relayed information vital to the African-American condition. Similarly, he can turn the manifold musical signifiers embodied in an age-old holiday like Mardi Gras or a many-hued metropolis like New York into a sonic scenic tour.

Spitzer, though, doesn't aim for any one sort of listener, whether news hound or jazz junkie. "We don't want to preach to the choir," he says. "We want to spread the gospel."

But for all the revelations of American Routes, the program is neither Sunday sermon or grad-school seminar. It's a non-linear documentary in music. "Although the show can be accessed on a deeper level, it rides on sonic flow," Spitzer says. "It operates at that dual level because we know that the best stuff is always both entertaining and educational. We design the show so that you can tune in for the interviews or just roll with the music, whichever you're into most."

The key to the character of American Routes lies not only in Spitzer's long experience as a folklorist with the Smithsonian Institute and the state of Louisiana but in his formative years as a diehard fan of classic rock 'n' roll radio. Spitzer grew up in rural Connecticut, where he turned to radio as refuge from "parental authority." Along with affection for New York Yankee broadcasts, he developed an abiding love for such vintage rock DJs as Murray the K and Mad Daddy. Spitzer says their spinning of platters by the likes of Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis "helped me connect to a wider musical culture, helped me visualize a world beyond Connecticut."

Illustrating a wider world and a listener's connection to it has always been a prime mission of public radio, one to which Spitzer feels especially close. "There seems to be an increasing emphasis on fragmentation in our society, on reinforcing narrow interests," he says. "Particularly, a lot of American musical forms have historic relationships, yet have been artificially separated for the purpose of marketing to various core classes and ethnicities. That may be considered economically efficient, but it inhibits cultural sharing. I hope we help show people not only what distinguishes them from each other but what brings them together."

Local roots-music shows are common, of course, although most of those are genre-focused, concentrating on the regional affinity whether it be country or blues, for instance. When Junior Brown was featured on American Routes, his basis in both country and blues was underlined with aplomb. Likewise, a past show demonstrated George Gershwin's use of not only jazz but klezmer. And a recent taping had Dolly Parton discussing the roots of her Nashville art in Appalachian ballads.

But one of the peerless aspects of American Routes is its way of both setting a mood and discerning deeper meanings via apposite segues. One episode saw Spitzer highlighting the mythic and musical connections among an old Tejano ranchera, the vintage rockabilly number "Wooly Booly," and a contemporary Los Lobos track. And a Labor Day show emphasized the common cause in a trio of songs separated by considerable time and temper.

"We had Paul Robeson, a committed socialist, singing this labor movement anthem, 'Joe Hill,' in an art-song style," Spitzer recalls, "and we had Randy Newman doing his 'Mr. President, Have Pity On The Working Man,' which is this sort of retro Louisiana populism voiced in a West Coast version of Tin Pan Alley. Then there was Ray Charles singing his R&B and crossover pop hit 'Busted,' which is this romanticized vision of the working man. There are thematic and sonic threads that join each of those songs. And, of course, they all speak to nearly every listener, since most people know what it feels like to have been broke at one time or another."

A New England intellectual and adopted Southerner, Spitzer says he may not be a native, but he is " a local," speaking Louisiana French and knowing the area's Byzantine ins and outs from years of rooting around. He could have realistically based American Routes in Austin, Texas, or Santa Fe, New Mexico but it is for reasons both aesthetic and pragmatic that he has made the show the only nationally syndicated public radio program produced on the Gulf Coast.

"There is obviously a rich musical heritage in New Orleans and south Louisiana -- jazz, R&B, gospel, Cajun, zydeco, rock 'n' roll," Spitzer says. "Plus, we have national artists who are rooted locally, like Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers. There is still this ongoing mix of cultures as in the 19th century, with African and Latin and French influences. And I'm a big believer in the Creole ideal, of building new cultures out of the old. Also, the city is relatively isolated socially, which has its advantages and disadvantages, but it means that great music still happens at a party or parade here for the sheer love of it -- not with the idea that someone might get a record contract."

American Routes obviously goes against the grain in that most of the musical dial is taken up by the hot and the new -- the hits. "We are always open to making connections to current artists like, say, Lauryn Hill or Yo La Tengo," Spitzer says, "but we have the advantage of mostly dealing with enduring music -- the long-term American hit parade. Yet what is new for most of our listeners are the different genres, the kinds of music that they might never have heard even though they might inform some of the music that they listen to every day."