Davido 5IVE Tour hits Adamawa as BBNaija Sultana confirms a homecoming. She hints at a live ticket splash. Read the full story below #ValidUpdates #Davido #Sultana #5IVETour #Adamawa #Yola #NigerianMusic

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The Highwomen Play “Highwomen”

Listen to this track by universally lauded country music supergroup The Highwomen, comprised of acclaimed solo artists in their own rights Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, Natalie Hemby, and Maren Morris. It’s “Highwomen” the almost-title track to the group’s 2019 self-titled record and featuring the powerful vocal talents of guest artist and honourary Highwoman Yola. This cut is a cover version cum answer tune to the Jimmy Webb-composed song “Highwayman” recorded first by Glen Campbell in 1978. It was perhaps even more famously performed by The Highwaymen in 1985, yet another supergroup made up of Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash.

Both that group and this song inspired The Highwomen and became the central fulcrum of their collaboration between the four principal members. Jimmy Webb approved of the re-write, adapted by Carlile and Shires as principal co-writers. This refashioned cut is a deeper expression of some of the themes in the Highwaymen version of the song, with new characters and their perspectives that preserves the spirit of Webb’s tune and equaling its gravitas. It also builds upon it, and renders up some new insights and powerful dimensions that lend vital contrast to the original.

The Highwaymen version tells the story of four characters from different points in history; a bandit, a sailor, a dam builder, and a starship captain. All of these characters are more than their single stories. They are symbols for daring and bravery, with a heavy dollop of outlawry for good measure. Seeing as Kristofferson, Jennings, Nelson, and Cash are the celebrated figureheads of the outlaw country movement, this is very on-brand. When they give voice to romantic figures who challenge the world as death-defying, risk-taking mavericks, listeners are reminded of the kinds of myths on which whole nations are built. It’s not the men who live forever. It’s the ideals for which those men stand that do. Their immortal spirit of heroism is recognized immediately.

When the re-imagined song by The Highwomen came out as a single in September of 2019, some quarters of the music press erroneously labelled it as a “gender-swapped take on the original”, meaning the Highwaymen version. This isn’t quite the case, although there are some common elements when one compares the two versions. As in the original, the refashioned song is broken up into four sections with each one dedicated to a character. Also much like the original, there is a whiff of the outlaw and defiant spirit about all of them. The immigrant mother and her family steal across a border. The healer is accused of witchcraft. The freedom rider defies segregation laws. And the preacher is simply a woman whose role in ministry leadership stands in opposition to patriarchal religious hierarchies.

Here’s where a comparison between the two sets of stories depart. Instead of being celebrated for their rebellion against the status quo, their lives are marked by external oppression, injustice, and isolation instead. Where the male characters in the Highwaymen version go out in blazes of glory as symbols of defiant bravery, the women characters in the newer version of the song go unheralded, uncelebrated, and unrecorded. No myths are built on their memories. No flags wave because of their resistance to oppression. So, the idea that this song is a simple gender-swap is much too simple to be true. In fact, when one compares one version with the other, the disparity of how rebellion and spirits of independence are presented and then processed through disparate cultural lenses can be striking.

This isn’t just about history and myth. It’s also about the modern world. One of the reasons that The Highwomen came together was the inequality each member found in country music’s establishment. Their existence as a group is in part a comment on and reaction to the existing landscape where “female singer-songwriters” have been pigeonholed and sidelined as a niche subgenre instead of being counted among the best representatives of the music. The larger picture here is about who is celebrated as a pioneer and example of the best the music has to offer and who gets lost in the shuffle as one who doesn’t know her place in the hierarchy.

Besides these troubling trends in the music industry, the song casts light on what we consider to be the best examples of rebellion and rabble rousing strength. It’s about how mainstream society embraces certain myths in history, and remains unaware of how diverse heroism can be and in what forms it can take. Is a man a hero when he lives by his wits by stealing from the rich along the coach roads? Is the woman who gives her life by getting her children across a border to flee political violence also a hero? Why might the first symbol of rebellion be perceived as a romantic outlaw, while the other is condemned as an “illegal”? If defiance of laws isn’t the difference between the two, then what is? The answer may be obvious.

One factor that is common between the stories heard in the two versions is the indominable human spirit that enables people and societies to survive, even in harsh and risky circumstances. In this, both songs are celebrations of the human capacity to overcome, even when individuals give their lives for the sake of the common good, in the protection of an ideal, or in defence of the innocent. Yet, that point about isolation is also common in the eight stories we hear in both versions of Jimmy Webb’s song. So is the suggestion that systems we’ve put in place over the course of history have made it harder for people to thrive. As much as we may celebrate the heroic and pioneering spirits found in each story, many of them are in the context of suffering and injustice.

As much as both songs inspire both rage and admiration, it makes one wonder why some heroes are celebrated while others go unacknowledged or even become demonized. If the spirits of courage that each character represents in the verses of each version of the song are immortal, then may they continue to inspire us to take risks and reach for greatness. But may they also make us think about what we miss when we fail to examine the passive violence of our devised systems that keep people in their place while those systems harden our hearts against the possibility of change. In pushing against this, and in seeing the irreplaceable value in every human life as a result, we have a chance at heroism ourselves.

The Highwomen is an open-ended collaboration between four country music exemplars and their musical guests. You can visit thehighwomen.com for videos, merch, and upcoming news.

To learn more about how the group came together, check out this 2019 article from Exclaim.ca.

For more on Jimmy Webb and how he wrote the original song , check out this brief history of “Highwayman” on grunge.com.

Lastly, check out Glen Campbell’s version of the song that came out before either version discussed here. In his take, Campbell sings all the characters himself, losing none of the song’s gravitas and emotional impact.

Enjoy!

#2010sMusic #Americana #CountryMusic #outlawCountry #Supergroups #TheHighwomen #Yola

Video ~ Nigeria Customs Sells Seized Smuggled Petrol At ₦630 Per Litre

Nigeria Customs Sells Seized Smuggled Petrol At ₦630 Per Litre #Economy #Adamawa #Customs #Katsina #NCS #news #Petrol #PMS #Yola ©October 12th, 2024 ®October 16, 2024 8:18 am Nigeria Customs Service, NCS has seized two lorries and one thousand, forty-six kegs of smuggled Premium Motor Spirit known as Petrol and deposited the smuggled petroleum goods at two Fuel Stations for onward sales of the…

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