© 2024 Boise State Public Radio
NPR in Idaho
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Apple's latest iOS (17.4) is preventing our livestreams from playing. We suggest you download the free Boise State Public Radio app & stream us there while we work to troubleshoot the issue.

Buffalo Nichols, 'Another Man'

This #NowPlaying discovery comes to us from the Best Music of October podcast on All Songs Considered.

We still need protest songs. Carl Nichols, once of the Milwaukee duo Nichols & Rose — and now reviving the country blues as Buffalo Nichols — resisted that fact for a while before speaking to the elders and realizing he, too, had to testify.

Grounding himself in Vera Hall's immortal mid-twentieth century field holler "Another Man Done Gone," Nichols pulls that song's stark fatalism into a 21st century that still hasn't seen justice for Sandra Bland or Breonna Taylor. Nichols, part of a thrilling reclamation of the blues by young artists of color including Jackie Venson and Adia Victoria, has found a way to make a worn-to-the-clichéd nub style fresh through his intimate vocal delivery and ace resonator guitar playing. "It's hard to write a song while folks get murdered every day," he moans. Embracing the role of witness, he takes us with us as he finds a way.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ann Powers is NPR Music's critic and correspondent. She writes for NPR's music news blog, The Record, and she can be heard on NPR's newsmagazines and music programs.

You make stories like this possible.

The biggest portion of Boise State Public Radio's funding comes from readers like you who value fact-based journalism and trustworthy information.

Your donation today helps make our local reporting free for our entire community.