Dan Bern and Ellis Paul: Two (white) singer-songwriters riffing on race
by Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Oct., 15 1998) -- Addressing racism directly in the form of a four-minute pop song is as dubious a proposition as addressing any complex socio-political issue in such a format, but that hasn’t stopped Dan Bern and Ellis Paul, two young, white, critically-acclaimed singer-songwriters whose recent albums contain as centerpieces songs about racism.

While both songs obviously decry racism, they do so in diametrically opposed ways, which says as much about the depth and complexity of the subject as it does about the unique sensibilities of Ellis Paul and Dan Bern. Along the way, the songs serve as indications of their relative strengths and weaknesses as artists.

The title track of Boston-based Ellis Paul’s latest album, “Translucent Soul” (Philo/Rounder), is a kind of interracial love song, albeit one of friendship as opposed to romance. In the song, Paul sings directly about his friendship with his fellow, Boston-based singer-songwriter, Vance Gilbert, who is black (and incidentally, one of a very few black people in the contemporary folk world).

Paul begins the song by describing the nature of their friendship. Gilbert, he tells us, makes Paul laugh, especially when he pretends to be white (indeed, anyone who has seen Gilbert live is familiar with his trenchant, acute wit on the topic of black-white relations). It’s not clear if Paul is purposely pushing the stereotype of black man-as-comic sidekick in our face; there is nothing in his language or delivery to indicate that he is. Rather, one gets the sense that Paul’s purpose is to establish, without irony, that -- to paraphrase the oft-repeated cliché of genteel bigots -- “some of my best friends are black.”

Paul goes on to sing, in his gentle, wispy tenor, “There isn’t a thing in this god almighty world I wouldn’t do to help him out of trouble.” Again, it ’s a curious, almost unfortunate image. What Paul probably meant is that he would come to his friend’s aid if Gilbert were threatened in some way -- this interpretation is suggested later in the song when the spectre is raised of race riots in Los Angeles -- but instead it unintentionally suggests that Gilbert, a black man, might somehow need “bailing out” by his white friend.

In a funny way, Paul’s love song -- his expression of total support and friendship -- is also a protest song. By laying out the details of his close, personal relationship with a black man, Paul is protesting that he is a good guy, a liberal, not a racist. He is universalizing truths about black-white relationships from his particular friendship with one individual black person, thus unwittingly betraying the particularity of that friendship by casting it in the very black-white dichotomy that his refrain -- “…we’re friends and that goes deeper than skin can go, down to a translucent soul, deeper than color will show” -- wants to abolish. If Paul is indeed such good friends with Gilbert, why does he continue to see their relationship in racial terms -- white and black -- rather than man to man?

Contrast this with Dan Bern’s cynical, sarcastic, cutting song, “Different Worlds,” off of his latest CD, “Fifty Eggs” (Work). Atop some primitive strumming on a steel guitar, Bern begins in his nasal, Dylanesque voice, “When I go by black people’s cars, I always like the music from their radios better than mine/But I never get their stations in/I don’t think my car gets it.” It is a shocking opening image, teetering perilously close to racist stereotyping, but one that gains power over the course of the song.

The song then changes course, and for the next four minutes, in the rhythmic cadences of an old-fashioned work song, Bern offers a litany of examples proving that “we live in different worlds.”

“We live in different houses and we drive different cars/We live in different parts of town and go to different bars….We speak a different language and we wear different clothes/Go to different movies and we tie different bows.”

Bern goes on in this manner for another seven verses. Through sheer repetition, the cumulative effect of his litany is deadening, comic, archly pointed and ultimately chilling. Bern is not interested in painting a pretty picture of the way things could or should be, nor is he at all interested in singing about or justifying himself.

Rather, in the great tradition of protest-folk going as far back as Woody Guthrie and running through Bob Dylan, Bern builds upon a received folk form -- in this case, the work song, rendered with acoustic, industrial-like production and accompanied by splashes of dissonant notes and chords on toy piano (the song and album were produced by Bern’s fellow alternative-folkie Ani DiFranco) -- and invests it with new power. Bern is the deep, dark truth-teller, exploding the socio-cultural-economic chasm that separates the races even while “we live…right along beside each other.”

In the end, it is highly revealing and suggestive that when choosing to write about race, Ellis Paul approached it autobiographically, filtered through his own, limited experience, while Dan Bern approached it journalistically, unfiltered, stripped of all veneer and niceties. There is no doubt room for both approaches in the world. In terms of having any kind of emotional or intellectual impact on an audience, however, Bern’s approach -- echoed throughout his album on songs variously addressing celebrity, religion, science, family and male-female relationships -- is clearly more effective. This is why “Fifty Eggs” will undoubtedly rank near or at the top of most critics’ year-end lists, and why Paul’s album is for fans only.

Search by Artist Name Album Title

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Oct. 15, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]