Genre: Classical/spoken word Year: 2004 Country: USA Official Site: Jonathan Elias Details: Tracks & Audio Label: Universal
While many spoken world albums habitate the realm of wannabe beatniks without the gift of singing or songwriting talent, Jonathan Elias's American River lifts the genre up several levels. Coupled with his melodious classical music and the talents of artists like the late Johnny Cash, Roseanne Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Emmylou Harris, what you get is a spoken word version of Appalachian Waltz.
Those unfamiliar with his name may nonetheless recognize his work if they've turned on their television set in the last twenty years: Alien, Blade Runner, 9 ˝ Weeks, Coca Cola and Levi's commercials. American River is hardly a "commercial" classical album, though it is accessible.
The crackle of Johnny Cash's voice is most welcome on "The Continuance", a poem that uses the American river as a metaphor about the struggle in America to maintain the ideal of freedom during a time when there are moves to squelch it. His daughter Roseanne then joins him, recounting the history of her family as descendents of mariners from Scotland who became farmers and then musicians. The line "American without illusions/a member of the world….the river and the ocean it flows into" reminds us that all rivers, no matter how large, flow into something much bigger and cannot survive without being a part of it, as America cannot survive without being a part of the bigger picture. Likewise Kris Kristofferson navigates similar waters on "The Source", in the setting of the Rio Grande and those willing to cross it for a better life. For Kristofferson, freedom and justice must be accompanied by mercy and what splits America in half is the fact that America "was built on the bones of slaves and the blood of the natives."
On "Mother Exile", Emmylou Harris recites a moving version of Emma Lazarus's poem, the one on which this country has been built and the one that seems to have been forgotten by many. "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
With Elias's haunting compositions, waters that have been muddied by a filthy political landscape and dark moments of history once again embody the source of rebirth, purity and hope, soothing long after the CD ends.
Jonathan Elias American River
