This morning, I heard an item on NPR's Morning Edition that I found both sad and surprising. It was sad because it announced the passing of a venerated folk musician and scholar, Louisa Jo Killen. It was surprising first of all because who would think the passing of a folk musician would make it to national news, even on NPR? But what surprised me more was that I (and probably most folk music mavens) had known this performer only as Louis Killen. The fact that she was a woman, and that she had transitioned, was totally unexpected. It puts her work on collections of sea chanteys, whaling songs and collier's tales in somewhat of a different light.
What follows is a review of Killen's life and career.
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Killen was born in 1934 into a musical Irish family in Gateshead-on-Tyne in northeastern England. She took courses in cabinet-making at the Catholic Workers' College in Oxford, but abandoned the classes in favor of the thriving folk music culture there at the time. It was at this time that she learned to play the concertina. Leaving Oxford in 1958, she found work in Newcastle's shipyards and founded one of Britain's first folk music clubs. Following the philosophy of Ewan MacColl, who stressed locality in folk music, she began collecting and researching the folk songs of northeastern England. In 1961, she became a professional musician and rode the wave of the folk revival in the 1960s. In 1966, she came to the U. S., and though her focus was always the music of the British Isles, she spent most of the rest of her life on these shores.
In 1968, on her first American recording, Killen recorded the song with which she was most often associated: "Pleasant and Delightful."
This song became so popular in folk music circles in the U. S. that is spawned a parody: "Cosmic and Freaky."
In the early 1970s, Tommy Makem took a sabbatical from the Irish group the Clancy Brothers, and Killen stepped in as his replacement. Here they perform in a clip form the Mike Douglas Show in 1974. Killen is playing the spoons. (Trigger warning: John Davidson in bad 1970s fashions--though at the end you'll catch a glimpse of magician and debunker of psychics James Randi.)
After parting ways with the Clancys, she resumed her solo career. She contributed substantially to Pete Seeger's Clearwater project, an effort to clean up the Hudson River. In addition to performing, she began to lecture on folk music as well.
I saw Killen in concert sometime in the mid-1980s, I think during my brief tenure as president of the Cornell Folk Song Club. She was then about the age I am now. She had an incomparable tenor voice, and a technique that drew attention to the song rather than to herself. It was a memorable concert.
She eventually left the U. S. to return to Gateshead, where she was born. It was during the G. W. Bush years, and disgust for the Bush administration drove the decision. In her 70s, after many years of longing to live her life as a woman, she took the plunge and began the process of gender reassignment. From Britain's Telegraph:
Those who fondly recalled the bearded, beer-swilling figure lustily belting out sea shanties and telling bawdy stories were somewhat shocked when he quietly re-emerged as Louisa Jo Killen. But the reaction was generally positive and supportive and, although she was later diagnosed with cancer, Louisa Jo continued to lecture on folk song and perform with great courage and dignity.
As a man, Killen had been married and divorced three times, though her last marriage lasted more than two decades.
Having seen the film A Mighty Wind, I know that people could take pot-shots at Killen in the interest of comedy. I would ask readers to refrain from that. Killen was an artist and a scholar of folk music, and she will be much missed from that milieu.
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