Lili Marlene (solo dulcimer instrumental)

The intro pretty much says it...some guy banging away on a lap dulcimer. No snappy video FX, just a single still photo of me, and a song I played a long time ago captured on a Salvation Army tape recorder. It's a fluke that the ancient and nearly trashed audiocassette still works. While the song is a single take-- e.g. no overdubbing or edits-- I did go in and digitally clean up some of the tape noise and hiss with Soundforge Audio Studio. The photo is contemporary to when the music was recorded, circa 1967, and as I recall I was playing Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" at an outdoor wedding when it was shot. Dig the cool Seersucker jacket... ;) The instrument was built by Rick Van Krugel from Brazilian rosewood and ebony.

Richard and Mimi Farina were some of the best musicians who ever hit the folk scene in the sixties, and it was Richard Farina who turned the dulcimer from a traditional to a modern instrument. Extra half-steps, tensioning sliders, and a whole new playing technique. Farina is the person who inspired me to learn to play the dulcimer in ways that stepped beyond its Appalacian roots. While I got fairly good, I need to make clear from the get-go that I was never in Farina's league. I just liked to play. Mimi and Richard are dead now. Mimi died of cancer a few years back, and Richard checked out in 1966 riding his motorcycle following a publication party for his first novel "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me". Their words and music live on though, that's for sure.

The weird musical ramblings I introduced into "Lili Marlene" were inspired by Richard Farina, John Fahey (brilliant guitarist who as far as I know never touched a dulcimer), and Pynchonesque musings (you can tell from Pynchon's novels he has a musical head.) Pynchon dedicated "Gravity's Rainbow" to the late Richard Farina. Richard Farina wrote the song "V" as an homage to Pynchon's landmark novel of the same name. (Farina's "V", may be heard on the 1965 Mimi and Richard LP, "Celebrations for a Grey Day". If you want to connect up to the Pynchon version, be prepared to deal with some major league prose.)

Oh yeah, for you politically correct foofoos, I didn't play "Lili Marlene" to glorify Nazis. It's just a sentimental song about a soldier and a prostitute. However, the fact that everyone on all sides sang it must be revealing of something. But damned if I can figure out what it is.

Keep on truckin' --ES

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Lili Marlene
• Lili Marleen
• dulcimer
• Richard Farina
• Mimi Farina
• John Fahey
• Thomas Pynchon
• Elliott Swanson
• doc3d

[Daladun]

Wonderful thank you very much.

[LightSweetCrude09]

Thanks for this...what an odd little thing to find in my browsing. Is that the first dulcimer I built, i.e. in the shop of Je Titus in Berkeley, given to Mary upon my return to Santa Rosa?

Rick Van Krugel, Victoria, B.C.