Vestapol 13103dvd reviewed in Blues Rag

Talk about incentive to grab the video cam and hit the road in search of today's Americana masters. Thankfully, filmmaker Yasha Aginsky and his camera did exactly that many moons ago. They bounded down dirt lanes, knocked on screen doors, and, ultimately, rooted out some of the then-living roots of traditional music that spread from back-hills Appalachia to small-town Louisiana. Front parlors, kitchens, porches, yards, a schoolhouse auditorium, plus a club or two became stages for such legends as guitar wiz Elizabeth Cotten, Creole fiddler Canray Fontenot, "high lonesome" banjoist Roscoe Holcomb, zydeco accordionist Rockin' Dopsie, old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell, and Cajun accordionist Nathan Abshire. Four American Roots Music Films lets them tell their stories and sing their songs -- from "John Brown's Dream" and "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" to "The Prison Bars" and "Lacassine Special." 1980's Homemade American Music is a prototypical forerunner to Kenny Wayne Shepard's recent 10 Days Out, where young fogies -- here multi-instrumentalists Mike Seeger and Alice Gerrard -- play and sing and learn their way on a musical exchange with elder heroes. Sonny Terry: Shoutin' the Blues tracks down the blind harpist in a 1969 California motel room, where he comes perilously close to inhaling the harmonica during one of his whoopin'-and-a-hollerin' feats of musical hyperventilation. Lastly, both of 1983's Les Blues de Balfa and Cajun Visits ride around the Bayou State, with the former focussing on renown Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa and his literal band of brothers, while the latter calls upon other old-school fiddlers Denis McGee and "Cheese" Read, as well as accordion squeezers Leopold Francois and Robert Jardell. A raw and real face-to-face with music's bedrock.