JOIN USBecky Poole is an artiste with a difference.
This Chicago-based actor, comedian, voice over artiste and saw player has been writing original songs, producing sketch comedies and performance pieces for over a decade now. But whether it is music or theatre, she chooses to highlight the feminist perspective through her work.
It has been 14 years since Poole first picked up the saw, a carpenter’s tool, to play music. “The saw is a simple steel and wood instrument that creates the most wonderful music when one bends it back and forth. I like its range and the fact that it has no frills,” she says.
While most people might find the saw a rather eccentric instrument to pursue, Poole animatedly talks about its rich musical history, “It is an American folk musical instrument with its roots in the early 19th century. Somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains a musically-inclined resident, who remains nameless, first took a fiddle bow to the bent blade of his hand saw that he held firmly clamped between his knees. Not before long, mountain music bands throughout the region had a member manipulating the blade of a common carpenter’s saw and stroking it with a well-rosined bow.”
Folk influences
Traditional Appalachian folk music has been derived from various European and African influences, including English ballads, Irish and Scottish traditional music, hymns, and African-American blues. It was the immigrants from England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland who brought with them the musical traditions of these countries when they arrived in Appalachia in eastern US in the 18th century.
According to Poole, the history of Appalachia is like a drama where the men played all the central parts while the women were the extras, hidden behind quilts and sun bonnets and confined to their tradition-bound domestic roles. They just lent support to their fathers, husbands and sons, who went about transforming the region and making veritable history.
“My interest is in their songs, especially in the murder ballads. These songs employ specific thematic elements, chronological events, and have several stock characters — there’s a female murder victim, her male lover-murderer, and the victim’s grieving parents,” she says.
Poole gives a glimpse of the story depicted in a typical murder ballad, “Just imagine this scenario. A young woman is lured away from home by her lover to a secluded spot either on the pretext of matrimony or to initiate a discussion on the matter. Presumably, she is pregnant. Once the couple is alone, the lover murders her either to ‘deal’ with her pregnancy or to ‘punish’ her for her supposed sexual philandering. In some cases, the perpetrator admits his crime and pays for it with his life. Usually, however, he gets acquitted after a trial or manages to escape legal retribution. To me, this one-sided narrative was never acceptable.”
So what did Poole do? She started a band of her own and decided to write murder ballads from the heroine’s point of view. “I met my friend Christine Stulik, who plays the banjo, and together we set up the band, Eileen. Today, Eileen produces murder ballads that tell the story of a woman’s survival and triumph instead of portraying her as a helpless victim. Using the banjo, saw, accordion and ukulele, we play original songs as well as tampered traditional fare,” she elaborates.
Feminist tones
Producing music for Eileen has helped Poole fulfil her long cherished dream of creating her own version of Omie Wise, a legendary murder ballad inspired by an actual incident. “Way back when I was living in Seattle, one afternoon a friend played Omie Wise. I was mesmerised by it. So I started doing more research into the song and realised that it had various versions with their own endings. I found that weird because I thought the piece was supposed to be based on a real incident that happened with a girl in North Carolina. Later on, I felt that if it’s a myth, then why can’t history give the woman a voice? So I decided to pen an adaptation where she’s not dead and told her story,” reveals Poole.How does she manage to balance so many projects? “I guess I want to be a complete artiste who has a lot of tools to choose from. Comedy, violence and tragedy — they all interest me and feed my imagination,” she shares.