Jonah Cross
| iZMO: |
Folk |
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| Sub iZMO: |
Folk Rock |
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My name is Jonah Cross. I am a folk musician, poet, and singer/songwriter. I play guitar, harmonica, and bass, with a sprinkling of piano, as much as I've managed to teach myself over the years of all of the above. My main well of inspiration is definitely the music of Bob Dylan, who I consider the greatest artist and the last of the authentic troubadours; through him I have delved into the roots of modern music through the 20s and 30s blues, jazz, ragtime, country, bluegrass, and gospel/spiritual music. The inter-textual nature of music in the 20s and 30s, its intrinsically cross-generic character, is something I hope to revive and re-create in my own music, so although I would consider myself a folk artist, that naturally includes within it country, blues, jazz, rock, gospel, etc.
These songs are for my kindred spirits; or, as Dylan wrote: "Oh, ev'ry thought that's strung a knot in my mind, / I might go insane if it couldn't be sprung. /But it's not to stand naked under unknowin' eyes, / It's for myself and my friends my stories are sung."
ON FOLK MUSIC: Folk music is the art of the imperfect -- a certain roughness and elasticity of phrasing, or the charming sound of crackle and hiss on some old recording from the 20s warming your spirit like a blaze on the hearth in Christmastime; it is the borderline between blues and country; the mystery and secret of tradition; the embers of the soul of music foundered in the heart of the American melting pot at the crossroads of time when the blues, ragtime, jazz, folk, country (real country), bluegrass, and spirituals all fused together in a furnace of sound.
