KL in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Windhover Hall designed by Santiago Calatrava. Ann Peterson photo.
Kevernacular (Kevin Lynch) is a veteran, award-winning arts journalist, educator and visual artist. He won The Milwaukee Press Club’s 2013 gold award for “Best Critical Review of the Arts” for the Culture Currents blog “Edward Curtis Preserved America’s Vanishing Race for Posterity.” The Aug. 22, 2013 posting reviewed a photo exhibit at The Museum of Wisconsin Art by Curtis, who documented the passing of America’s original Native American culture and society in the early 20th century.
Lynch was a long-time staff arts writer for The Capital Times in Madison and The Milwaukee Journal, where he was lead writer of a Pulitzer-nominated Newspapers in Education project called “That’s Jazz,” which was used in Milwaukee Public Schools and The Milwaukee Jazz Experience.
Kevernacular (right, in black Robert Johnson T-Shirt) with Jim Verdin, outside of Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, for Tedeschi-Trucks Band concert, June 2013. Photo by Kris Naab Verdin.
Among other publications, he’s written for Down Beat, The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, New Art Examiner, Rain Taxi, American Record Guide, CODA (The Canadian jazz magazine), Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine, Scene PBS TV magazine (Minneapolis), Graven Images: A Journal of Culture, Law and the Sacred; The Shepherd Express, OnMilwaukee.com and a featured blogger on roots music for NoDepression.com. Lynch has taught cultural journalism, English rhetoric and composition (while earning half of the credits for a PhD. in American Literature), and film studies. He’s been a music program host for WLUM-FM and WMSE-FM in Milwaukee. Lynch is working on a novel, Melville’s Trace or, The Jackal. He’s also a visual artist and studied jazz piano and theory at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. He lives in Milwaukee.
STATEMENT: In blog writing and reporting, I strive to maintain and espouse the same journalistic standards of professionalism cultivated in over 30 years as a working arts journalist. Given the freedom of the blogosphere, misinformation compounds and spreads at an alarming rate. So, maintaining such standards is more important than ever, even as I welcome the new freedom and vibrancy.
My blogger’s moniker suggests a particular hybrid quality as a cultural observer. My sense is that meaningful distinctions between fine and vernacular art blur in the cultural currents — aside from functional genre names. I’ve covered and researched both realms plenty and categories help identify and clarify — fine vs. folk vs. pop art – but there’s no hierarchy of quality among genres or traditions, in my mind. As Duke Ellington said, “There’s two kinds of music, good music and bad music.”
“Vernaculars speak” implicitly nags the old culture-class question of, say, who’s better: Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas? Pop culture poet/songwriter Bob Dylan is taken seriously today by intelligencia, of course — almost to death. But I think that beyond Bob, and because of him, the craft and art of songwriting has spread and grown almost exponentially in many vernacular idioms, often in new hybrids. And that phenomenon is important and noteworthy.
KL at the Blue Plum Music and Arts Festival, Johnson City, Tennessee, June 2012. photo by Sheila Lynch
Culture Currents Theme Photo CREDIT: The sinuous flow of the Delaware Water Gap in the Appalachian Mountains is courtesy of www.mooncruisegallery.com.
The previous theme photo — a stormy, panoramic image of The Tetons, the iconic mountain range in Wyoming — was taken by Michael Melford of National Geographic.
Interesting article. I don’t remember hearing about your trips to the Tetons. I seem to remember you mentioning a climbing trip where you felt you may not return and took a picture of yourself and then found the refuse from a previous climber’s Polaroid shot of himself in the same predicament. Is my memory correct? When did you go to the Tetons, how long were your stays, what kind of climbing, and other pictures? How did you get involved with Bill Briggs?
Steve
Steve, Your memory is correct. That one was a truly crazy solo climb all by myself at dusk in Door County during my climbing years. The rocks on the cliffs in Peninsula State Park are very loose and bad for safe climbing. But they’re very alluring. I had my itch too much. A few months later Deliverance was released and I said “That was my climb!” — of Jon Voight’s desperate climb. Maybe I’ll tell that whole story some time.
I would stay in the Tetons for a least a week. Get some training w Exum to get my climbing chops geared up and then do several climbs. My toughest climb was the one I fell twice on which, I wrote about in a big front page article in the Journal’s Discover section in 1980. Kathy would’ve remembered that. I may revisit that too on CC.