Monday, November 25, 2024
7pm ET
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Somebody got murdered, Somebody's dead forever. —The Clash

Since time immemorial, people have written, sung, and shared songs about sudden death and devastating loss. In the past, such songs were shared by written or oral tradition and adapted by performers over time into complex genealogies. More recently, tragic ballads have been disseminated on record and radio. Many people have some awareness of the murder ballad as a motif in traditional folksong. However, fewer are aware that analogs exist well into the era of recorded sound in styles such as country, rock, blues, punk, and post-punk.

Why do people chronicle such bleak and disturbing events in music—specifically songs, those amiable bursts of lyric and tune linked with holidays, radio hits, and campfire singalongs? While answers vary, the richest songs, whether lurid or restrained, popular or esoteric, spring from a desire to connect with something tangible, felt, and lived in the face of unimaginable loss. And the song as a musical unit—concise and reductive, easily shared and learned—provides an ideal currency for this commemorative, cathartic exchange.

The speaker’s book Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark & Bloody Record documents tales of homicide, crime sprees, madness, illness, addiction, and war from ancient Child ballads to modern variants by Johnny Cash, Sonic Youth, Lou Reed, Van Morrison, and the Mekons. This talk will approach these songs in a way that's equal parts musicological, psychosocial, and genealogical in a deep dive into the human need to document the horrors of the world around us and their impact on our sense of mortality.

Steven L. Jones is an artist, writer, musician, and former instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kentucky-born, the son of a choir director and violinist, he lives with his dog, Queequeg, in his adopted hometown, Chicago.