Music

Currently Playing: Murder Chicken - Dark Appalachian Folk Rap | Gangstagrass Style Blues

This is a delta blues rap song called “Murder Chicken”, performed by Stonewall Slim. It's spring in New England, and the trees are still bereft of leaves. It's been raining heavily, and there's been a strange blue light in the mornings. It got me thinking that it was probably time to remake the first song I wrote; this time as an Appalachian folk tale structured as a Presbyterian hell-and-damnation testimony (for reasons we will come to). The eponymous Murder Chicken is the sole remaining member of my original flock; Lizzie Borhen. Lizzie spends her days in comfortable retirement in my shed, which features heavily in this video. The reason she's my sole remaining chicken is straightforward: she murdered all the rest of her coop mates. In cold blood. She also maintains a set of extremely irritating habits; pecking my feet when I'm trying to grill outside, and terrorizing my children to the point where they refuse to go outdoors unless she's locked up. She is, all in all, a very strange pet. She also appears to be genuinely indestructible. We've left her outside at night by accident on multiple occasions, and the coyotes still haven't managed to get her. Appalachia is one of the great cultural powerhouses of America. An extraordinary number of musical traditions originated there - among them old-time music, bluegrass, country, gospel, and the string band traditions that fed directly into rock and roll. Much of this richness can be traced to the region's settlers, who were predominantly Presbyterian Ulster Scots, bringing with them the folklore, balladry, and musical traditions of Ireland and Britain. In Appalachian folk tradition (such as How Bobtail Beat the Devil), the supernatural is never very far away - and that gave me an origin story for the Murder Chicken. Those settlers brought a Calvinist worldview in which hell was close and judgment was near; which is exactly the register Murder Chicken inhabits. Clog dancing features heavily in this video, partly because of a fascinating piece of cultural history. When the Gaelic League was founded in 1893, it began codifying Irish step dancing as part of a nationalist cultural project — a process that eventually locked in the rigid, arms-at-sides style most people recognize today. But the Ulster Scots had already carried an earlier, freer form across the Atlantic before that standardization hardened. Appalachian clog dancing — with its relaxed upper body and freedom of expression — is widely considered closer to the original 18th century Irish step dancing tradition than the modern Irish form is. The style that emigrated froze in time, while the original continued to evolve. #murderchicken #bluesrap #deltablues #southerngothic #murderballad #appalachianmusic #folkrap #slideguitar #aimusicvideo #demonchicken #evilchicken #killerchicken #funnychicken #gangstagrass #newenglandgothic #appalachianfolktale