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UPDATE 2002-2007:
The Smithsonian Network’s film “Play On, John: A Life In Music” explores John Cohen’s long involvement with traditional music, including vintage performances with the seminal old time string band “The New Lost City Ramblers,” and live music performances with Pete Seeger, Rayna Gellert and Bruce Molsky. “Play On, John” includes Cohen’s documentary photographs as well as selections from his documentary films, with a panorama of clips from his music films of Appalachia, including ballad singing in North Carolina and a parallel version from Scotland. His films of music from the Peruvian Andes are included with selections from the isolated Q’eros, and popular Huayno music of the migrants.
John Cohen has continued to produce recordings of traditional American music, including “An Untamed Sense of Control” (Roscoe Holcomb), “Dark Holler” (Dillard Chandler), “The Lost Recordings of Banjo Bill Cornett”, “If I Had My Way” (Rev. Gary Davis), and “Back Roads to Cold Mountain.”
He worked with T-Bone Burnett as music consultant to the film “Cold Mountain” and appeared in Martin Scorcese’s film about Bob Dylan “No Direction Home.”
In 2003, Powerhouse published “Young Bob: John Cohen’s early photographs of Bob Dylan.”
His photography is on view currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His films are available through:
Shanachie Films, Mystic Fire,
and Berkeley Media LLC
Saul Zaentz Film Center
2600 Tenth Street, Suite 626
Berkeley, CA 94710
Phone 510-486 9900
The
joint releases of powerHouse Books' There Is No Eye: John
Cohen Photographs and Smithsonian Folkways' CD There
Is No Eye: Music For Photographs, recordings of musicians
photographed by John Cohen, bring together several threads
of John Cohen's work over the past fifty years. Although he
is best known as a musician, his photographs and films have
been recognized by museums, galleries and at film festivals
worldwide. His campaign for the recognition of traditional
roots/folk music has led to the production of fifteen films,
hundreds of photographs and sound recordings. He has also
made more than twenty recordings with the New Lost City Ramblers,
along with related articles, liner notes and interviews about
music.
His
work crosses many disciplines - both in the arts and sciences,
and has been seen on NOVA PBS, at experimental film series,
art museums, anthropology film festivals, ethnomusicology
conferences, visual anthropology classes, Appalachian studies,
the politics of poverty classes, and Andean music & textile
exhibitions.
From
the late 1950s on, he was involved with the emerging Art world
in New York City, and photographed Robert Frank's production
of the film Pull My Daisy about the beat generation-
including Jack Kerouac & Alan Ginsberg. He also documented
the emergence of Pop Art, and the Cedar Bar, homeplace of
the Abstract Expressionist painters. He was part of the music
scene from which Bob Dylan emerged in Greenwich Village during
the 1960's. After 1960, the major focuses of his work include
Old Time Music (from the Appalachians) and Peruvian projects.
He has filmed, photographed and recorded Andean music in Peru,
and made an early study and collection of contemporary Andean
textiles.
John
Cohen's body of work has been recognized in a wide range of
fields: his photographs are in major museum collections and
publications, his award winning films have been shown on PBS
and BBC and at festivals worldwide. The sound recordings of
the New Lost City Ramblers have received several Grammy nominations,
and, along with his field recordings, have influenced many
musicians - including Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Ry Cooder -
and shaped the old time fiddle music revival.
John
Cohen's work invites interpretation. Although it has the appearance
of a "documentary style" it reflects his own viewpoint
as a visual artist. That his body of work is called cross-disciplinary,
and he has been labeled a "Renaissance man," doesn't
detract from the perception of his art as something which
emanates directly from his own personal vision.
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