Hadestown
Anais Mitchell
CD, Righteous Babe Records
The 鈥渇olk opera鈥 Hadestown is an interpretation of the ancient Greek myth of the poet Opheus鈥 doomed quest to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld. It is set in a near-future post-apocalyptic US, beset by ecological and economic disaster.
Orpheus, representing all poets, believes in the healing power of nature, but his wife is seduced by the promises of the huckster Hades.
In Hadestown the workers toil endlessly building a wall along the River Styx. The most powerful song has Hades in call-and-response with the labourers. 鈥淲hy do we build the wall?鈥, he intones. The workers chant back: 鈥淭he enemy is poverty, and the wall keeps out the enemy, and we build the wall to keep us free.鈥
Hadestown is a fractured vision of today鈥檚 US, with its Mexican border wall to exclude Hispanics, or 鈥淔ortress Australia鈥 with its refugee concentration camps.
The imaginative musical setting prevents this from being laboured. Anais Mitchell is clearly a master of many American folk genres. Even if you have never heard of her, you may be familiar with Ani Difranco, who appears on several tracks. Righteous Babe Records, Difranco鈥檚 company, has invested a lot of effort into beautifully packaging the CD.
This CD is a cultural weapon, a damning indictment of US society straight from the belly of the beast!