Folklorist Dorothy Carter devotions were for ALL the people of the earth, their history and traditions. Taking a brisk tempo, hammering the Kora Dance syncopation upon her dulcimer, she evokes the holy qualities of the dervish, while her pious fluting evokes western medieval music. All in all, a hypnotic essay conveyed with an openhearted humanist polytheism.
The early avant-cosmic folk of American composer and master dulcimerist Dorothy Carter (1935-2003) follows a feral path that may be likened to the creative orbits of Alice Coltrane and Laraaji – a life given to music. Last year saw the first-ever reissue of her 1978 album Waillee Waillee (the title track being an interpretation of an 18th-century Scottish song), accompanied by a lovingly put-together 12-page booklet. Laraaji was among those whose insightful recollections helped build a picture of this remarkable ‘gentle-mannered’ woman who lived for music. He recalls how she met him while he was busking on a West Village sidewalk one weekday afternoon. They became friends, and she went on to influence his ‘early zither exploration and vocabulary’.
Now, for the first time – 46 years after its original release, 20 years after Dorothy passed, and 11 years before the centennial of her birth – her debut album Troubadour (she had been playing music for decades by this point) is to be reissued by Drag City on August 30th. Her life was as remarkable as her music, as hinted at in the notes for this reissue: In her lifetime, Dorothy Carter, a self-made travelling musician and folklorist, brought forth masterful evocations on hammered dulcimer and psaltery from a myriad of times and places. Following a childhood spent around New England, Dorothy Carter travelled abroad for her higher education and found herself in Mexico during the late 1950s, intent on becoming a nun at the Cuernavaca monastery. Instead, she fell in with a group of ex-pats, including David Demby, his soon-to-be-wife Constance Demby (her moment of New Age musical breakthrough still three decades hence), and aspiring artist and musician Bob Rutman (whose cavernous bowing of the steel cello features on Waillee Waillee). In the early ’70s, this bunch would together form Central Maine Power Company: a troupe of almost feral improvisers playing on a combination of self-made and found instruments, with live video feedback to boot, performing across the Northeast at planetariums and even MoMA.
With the reissue of Waillee Waillee and now Troubadour, her music will be heard by a far larger audience than she ever imagined. To celebrate the announcement, Drag City has shared a visualizer for the first single, “The King of Glory,” a hypnotic hymn hammered by Dorothy evoking Western medieval music.
The vinyl edition reproduces the original album package, adding an insert adorned with additional photos of Dorothy and her collection of instruments. It also includes notes from reissue producer Eric Demby exploring the era—his childhood—from a vantage point of some 50 years. After all, wherever his parents, David and Constance, took the family, there too was Dorothy, as she lived and breathed, playing her hammered dulcimer.
Pre-order: https://lnk.to/troubadour