There are people who, with all their ability, with all the character that radiates from their work, do not come to the fore line of the successful.

They are recognized more by people in their field than by the general public.

The formula for them may not be found;

a catchphrase is missing.

Or maybe they're just more reluctant.

It is not easy to clearly assign Nanci Griffith to a musical direction.

Country, one could say, and would be pointing too much in the direction of Dolly Parton, the one hundred percent incarnation of all that we commonly understand by country.

Folk, you could say, and would be too much in the direction of Joan Baez or the Indigo Girls and only half hit it again.

Lorenz Jäger

Freelance author in the features section.

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Country would be the medium of a simple self-assertion of identity and a more traditional understanding of roles - “Stand by your man” is the epitome of this tendency;

Folk meant a preponderance of social protest and role reflection - but Nanci Griffith's idiom was again only partially suitable for this, as she fell into a proud southern chant when she spoke.

And that has to do with the fact that the spoken introductions of the songs themselves were almost the loveliest of singing at their live performances.  

Talent for cooperation

She was born on July 6, 1953 in the Texas provincial town of Seguin. For her generation, the genre boundaries became more permeable, and even if you came from deep in Texas, you had not only grown up with the sounds of Nashville, but also with Bob Dylan, you had seen the civil rights movement and an abundance of upheavals, later also from Breakdowns. Among them was the women's movement. The best songs by Nanci Griffith circle the life stories of women - never without a certain melancholy. “There's a light beyond these woods” was the title of her first album, which came out in 1978, and like most of the other songs, she wrote the title track herself. It should be watched and listened to in the easily accessible live version. Perhaps she has never written more beautiful.She received a Grammy in 1994 for the best contemporary folk album.

Nanci Griffith was interested in collaborations: she performed the song “Tecumseh Valley” with the legendary Townes van Zand (an idol of her youth), with John Prine, who died of the Corona virus a year and a half ago, and with Emmylou Harris. Above all, however, the two recordings from her later days should be mentioned that were made during the “Transatlantic Sessions” produced by Scottish television, when Anglophone musicians from the wider field of folk met. She sang "Boots of spanish leather" (by Bob Dylan) and, together with the Irishwoman Maura O'Connell, "Who knows where the time goes" by Sandy Denny. Isn't the passage of time the real germ of the poetic? In any case, against these recordings, where you can see them in the studio,and against the films of the early appearances, the actual albums from Griffith's later years, which spread an impression that was too perfect, behind which her personality threatened to disappear. Nanci Griffith died on August 13th in Nashville.