greetings and salutations. in order for us to better understand the present and even predict the future one must study the past history can be taught or learned and regurgitated through memorisation but to truly understand history it must be felt in one's heart and soul but where can one find the heart and soul of history. music and if you're searching for the heart and soul of the unwritten history of the united states the the people's history if you will you will find it in the notes chords lyrics and passion of the blues jazz band joe and ragtime of an early

america finding its way into the twentieth century. born from the men and women on whose backs these united states were built on these are the precursors to the rock n roll hip hop and country music of today. so let's let us peer into the beating heart of the real history of the united states as watching the hawks strikes a chord. if you want to know what still would know if you see a series of attacks like tire rails if you face what you see to analyze it to gauge the bottom see if you speak to my left shoulder that they like it or not i got to have a visit with that we film in the house three minutes and it is still going on in this world hope now you know and open up maybe we can open. to start to question.

in the old. play this percy laetoli. is a. sleeve inside last night we are now going. to change about the place. i do not hear the same. level this old dog and the little. boy.

was a happy time in maine was the. dogs you saw. going out with a little boy and what i do not play anymore. is all of us and of those. who played inside. the old dog and the little.

it is to the mean time changes council not the way. that's trying to be. so tell me what was the first moment your life or your you truly found your passion

for music. well i discovered my passion for old time music like after high school when i had been playing saxophone from the age of five until freshman year i started playing cello and bass in high school and i went to in a math and science engineering school and was like really i'm enjoying music like i'm going to take a year off from college and and in that year is when i discovered country blues and it was like ok i think i want to play music i think that's what it is for me and. it was like hearing skip james for the first time and thinking how otherworldly it was and not yet having any of the historical or social contacts yet but just like enjoying the music. and so that was like my my entry into the world of music bombed and all that kind of stuff. and it's sort of like inherent with old time music is is learning and learning history you know like you know it's not like pop

music where all the references are easily available and right therefore you just learn more about the music and start to learn. about the banjo being a black and about you know what really happened after slavery and how that contributed to our growth in music and. you know train lines and jim crow and you start learning about all these things in the song start having heated meetings and other meanings and. it's not just entrenched me in the music more and more what led you to the banjo and tell me a little bit about how the banjo is a black cancer because they don't think very many people know that history because i think most people assume you now that i. have had a nickel for a number of times you will ask me to play that yeah. so you know history the banjos you have slaves coming from you know africa mostly west africa cetera and they they either bring with the instruments like the a continent and other you know gourd instruments with

a skin stretched over it with strings or when they come here they end up making replicas of it. and so. slaves are creating the these instruments are these amalgamations of you know their string instruments in the creating the banjo and it becomes known as a black instrument as a slave instrument for whatever one hundred years or some like that why people don't touch it and it's like you know if you can find old texts of like oh i can hear the banjo melodies coming from the plantations at night or remember seeing an old article saying like oh you know the first holy american music is being made on the plantations right. we're slaves you know we're playing violin and are learning songs to entertain the masters and their friends but they're also you know combining it with their own thing and what is that thing that thing is patient you know that drone string that you see me playing that fifth string that i never fret that. that's that's africa that's black people's is that you know you have john philip sousa. we come along and we're like no it's you know if we change it and

that becomes kind of what american music you know grows into so the band too is a black instrument for a hundred years white people start getting into it. and of course they do it in the most are not of course rewind three to one. but you know they start doing it and a very racist way which is blackface michel c. you know part of it is you know an appreciation of the music and these early michel songs you find you know you know there's like this is a real negro song like learned from a real black person like you know at the end of shows sometimes they'd wipe off the makeup like surprise we're not black you know but it was you know appreciation for this music and it was while most popular form of american music for. ages generations because of that think of patient it was like rock n roll back then you know but it's all based on. you know the black experience and black music so

learning that fact really got me into the banjo made me want to be a part of it and i would hear like clarence actually or uncle dave make in. you know whatever recordings and be like i don't know what they're doing i don't get it at all and when i learned that fact of the banjo being a black it seems like i want to pick up a banjo and then someone threw one in my hands taught me how to claw hammer and i it clicks like i picked it up immediately and the banjo in me for life you know as we go to break watchers don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics we've covered and if you would like to learn more about the artist that was featured on the show today check us out on facebook and twitter and you too can see our poll shows at our t.v. dot com coming up we go deeper into the heart and soul of american music as watching the hawks strikes a chord. would

you have for breakfast yesterday why would you put those faces your wife. why do you need that now i didn't do due to. i think the average viewer just after watching a couple of segments understands that we're telling stories there are critics can't tell and you know why because their advertisers won't let them. in order to create change you have to be honest you have to tell the truth artie's able to do that every story. is built on going after the back story to what's really happening out there to the american public what's happening when a corporation makes a pharmaceutical chills people when a company in the environmental business ends up polluting

a river that causes cancer and other illnesses they put all the health risk all the dangers out to the american public those are stories that we tell every week and you know what they're working. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the navy the senate is full on awesome the only show i go out of my way to find you believe that this really packs a punch. yampa is the john oliver of party america is doing the same thing we are apparently better than blue. sea maybe you never heard of love redacted the night president of the world bank so paid. many seriously he sent us an email. please. welcome back. now let's head to the stage for more from happy jink.

oh my. oh.

thank you you. thank

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you know one of the big i think issues today with a lot of people and it's interesting you talk about the only players like that in your shows do you get pushback from from both sides saying like oh that that's you know that has a history of being a racist saw or you have the other side saying oh why are you you know changing the lyrics of a classic song that represents a certain year because i could see how both sides of that should be like we shouldn't play that song today because of that you know we're removed beyond it you know or the other side saying that we don't change the song or make it your own because it belongs to us and what are you know for father's wrong we thought at the time you know and maybe we still secretly do you know that kind of thing do you see that kind of pushback when you play excuse me yeah i get all kinds of responses playing even you know when i joined up with carolina chocolate drops the main tenant of carolina chocolate drops was you know this is black people's music the

banjo is a black instrument which was like not you know whatever eight years ago not widely known even within old time world and so we'd play shows and people come up to me hey my granddaddy played the banjo like you know f. you like you're wrong and so you just have to deal with that. as i've gotten older now like just that you know historically infiltrating and giving people the visceral reaction of seeing a black person play the banjo has become kind of normalized for me now and so it becomes more of it in integrating these more political ideas social attacking everyone of color and so when that happens i get responses like what was one of my favorites if we talk about it nothing's going to change hey this music is supposed to be fun and easy why are you doing that or on the phone. i'm glad you didn't get all angry about it i'm glad you can say nigger because i was great to hear. it's a girl gets mixed up i've had people leave shows. at

a show. like ten people left and tried to get refunds for we seem to got a place for it we know how to get angry we know that we can people can get enraged about what's happening and see things and get angry how do we use things like music and use the banter how do you see that going into communities and helping them deal with that anger and finding a productive way to help our community. ok have a few things say that. so you're so you're asking about like how do we use this music and this banjo stuff to get people really to grow and really to change their communities and hopefully change the country. and then also like you know. but the beginning of the course was like the response of the anger like response to the images and all that sort of stuff and i like to think about. you know. sorry given what's going to get my thoughts together. you know you have like the

turn of like nine hundred century twentieth century one thousand eight hundred and you know around the beginning one thousand nine hundred there are these work prison farms that are happening and this is a you know after the compromise of eight hundred seventy seven soldiers leave the south and the redeemers take over the south and they're able to just go hog wild fire all the black people from government and they start the black laws which are the birth of jim crow. and it's this is a legal way of who becomes legal but this sinister way of imprisoning mostly black men and you know farming them out to coca-cola dredging swamps in florida all these sorts of things around this time. there's a train of prisoners that breaks that going through florida and usually they transport these prisoners at night but they train breaks down they get there during the day and all these people mostly white people see all these prisoners who are about to go out and dredge the swamps and they're covered with marks and they remain seated and they're people like oh my god this is horrifying we have to stop doing this this is terrible so happens that fast forward thirty years lynchings

a big thing lynchings a problem people start seeing it you know lots of black newspapers are trying to put it out there oh my god this lynching thing is terrible we have to stop it. fast forward civil rights movement like you know oh my god cops are brutalizing people and all this stuff terrible bloody sunday happens white people are outrage rodney king happens l.a. riots. almost seems like every thirty twenty eight years this is happening and you keep going and i think this is that of our generation you know i mean i was about richard pryor where he tells his joke you know you know you get paid on friday night you take your girl out then you get pulled over by the cops you know hands up drop your pants spread your cheeks and he's like you know who feels like having fun after something like that because white people don't believe this happens because they know the cops differently that's a job from the seventy's that works today. so yeah you know. white people getting outraged by the injustice the black people had to deal with in this country for hundreds of years does nothing for me. doesn't aspire to me anyway

and it doesn't it's not something that i would bet on i wouldn't put my eggs in that basket. that being said i think that there is something to this thing that i like to. think that inspires me more or feel more optimistic about is a cultural shift this is an idea of you know this cultural shift towards like you know what pop music that i've been digesting forever i'm done with that you know watching a movie called the great wall starring matt damon i think i might be done with that i mean a movie or a show set in new york with no puerto ricans i think i'm done with and like that's the kind of thing that. i feel moved towards growing because it's changing the concept of how you look at a person yes everyone going to be outraged by seeing something violent but it's like how can i change my change your cultural shift so i hope you know when they see when the banjo craze sort of happening people start playing banjos you know

a lot of that credit went to like mumford and. taylor swift or and whatever well people might have been driving banjos up or they were they were playing their own things or running the. and things are starting to grow vegetables again in their backyards and canning or whatever it might be and so. i don't know i think. this is where you know i start to get conned conflicted but i think that it's. if you can. i don't know i just think if you can understand something culturally and understand its roots and like if i pick up a banjo and i understand that you know if i don't know to play it if i can destroy what i understand in a deeper level but that brings about some sort of change small ripples but whatever it is american to me in the music especially in the music you talk about is it's really about. poor are working class americans and it speaks to

a lot of different people it's one of those universal things like music do you see new forms of that or do you see that coming and the new music that's that's coming down the pike. there there are you know now americana music is kind of like this big all encompassing thing like. i was at the american awards like two years ago and like booker t. was there performing and like you know under that umbrella. and you have wads you know like dylan welch and. dave rawlings and up that stuff you know there are a lot of those guys in the americana john or were influenced by the people from the sixty's and seventy's who were influenced by a lot of this music that i you know feel more connected to and like to play old time country blues all that sort of stuff you know so it's not uncommon to hear. you know an old timey line or an old timey phrase in a modern song put into a modern context you know. i think. the

money was the question you asked me. that was a question of like how is this people today sort of creating are people still creating that new thing yeah and so like i think through you know the singer songwriter thing it's becoming a new thing you have like when i hear like electro swing at some point like in europe or if you were like making beats out of old swing music and. yeah you know i think i think that it is being it is. integrating and influencing people and i think you know part of my thing is you know yes know about black people like all day and but also just know the roots of your thing know the roots of what you believe and know the roots of what you're into. and then find a way to express it and so people getting into the old time a thing that old time thing does have that history of protests and activism and community. and telling the news and telling the stories and expressing it so you know people just get influenced by that that's great you know. where would you see

. the germans as a musician and then as a man in the future where do you see yourself going as a man. you know so you know every day changes you asked me yesterday the answer might it might be different you know. i like playing music i'd like to play more of it i'd like to add some point to get a way to get more instruments into kids' hands you know like music programs closing all over the place and doing things with that i also really like the radio. i actually like just before i came out here i've been working on a project of talking to homeless people in new york and like interviewing homeless people and trying you know more and more buildings are going up in new york city but the homeless population is rising so i want to do something like radio. at my old high school brooklyn technical high school has a defunct radio tower on top of it so my big like pipeline dream i hope no one

steals it it's like reopen the radio station and do something with kids and music on the radio stuff like that as a man. hopewell know how to like fix a diesel engine. on a car like i think that would be good for me and i've never like needed bread i've never like used east to make bread and i think it's a man those two things would probably get the whole thing. same same a. countdown time zone was going i. thought

i'd seen the same five maybe. get on back. restore my. scene seen my baby. since by. something known and. i'm going out on my. own that some. sun was shining. on my phone. and that. kept on top oh i. can't i.

can't on top of what's. called me. a payment. to gold. lot i'm going. going some way. on him. in the form saying now maybe. someone. on the. board.

and that is our show for you today remember everyone in this world we are not told we are loved and up so i tell you all i love you i am tyrone ventura and i'm top of the wall s. keep on watching those hawks and have a great day and night. to. leave something.

called the feeling of freedom. every the world should experience for me and you'll get it on the old the old. the old according to just. come along for the ride. if you want to slow down old expedience street it looks like the trails in the streets would be analyzing this case from the bottom it seems like what they like you are not i got. the. phrase this.