Can Tribal Cultures Survive?

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 02, 1998

Head: John Fogerty

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest, John Fogerty, was the lead singer and songwriter with the band Creedence Clearwater Revival. Between 1968 and '72, the year Creedence broke up, they had several gold records as well as eight top 10 singles including "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Green River," "Down on the Corner," and "Looking Out My Back Door."

For many years, Fogerty refused to perform the songs that made him famous because his old record company owned the rights to those songs. But Fogerty returns to those songs on his new live CD "Premonition." VH-1 will air an hour long tribute to Fogerty, followed by the concert which is featured on the CD. It will be shown June 10, 12, 14 and 27. Before we meet Fogerty, let's hear one of his signature songs, the song which opens his new CD Premonition.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "PREMONITION")

JOHN FOGERTY, SINGER, SINGING: Now when I was just a little boy
(Unintelligible)
My papa said son
"Don't let the man get"
(Unintelligible)
Get you right now, now
Well, I can remember the Fourth of July
Running through the back (Unintelligible)
I could still hear my old houndog barking
Chasing down a (Unintelligible)
Chasing down a (Unintelligible)

Born on a bayou
Born on a bayou
Born on a bayou

(Unintelligible)

GROSS: That's John Fogerty from his new CD Premonition. John Fogerty, welcome to FRESH AIR.

JOHN FOGERTY, SINGER AND SONGWRITER: Well, thank you. Hello.

GROSS: The songs on this CD are songs that, you know, you haven't been performing for years. What are the reasons why you didn't perform your old Creedence songs for so long?

FOGERTY: Hey, got a minute?

GROSS: Yeah.

FOGERTY: Well actually there are pretty well known reasons. I had an awful lot of trouble with the first record company. You know, the record company that Creedence Clearwater recorded for, which was Fantasy Records in the Bay Area, and even though the band broke up, they owned my contract, and I ended up with lots of legal fees and being in court all the time and suing, and you know it was just kind of a nightmare.

And all of that got attached, in my mind, or in my being, to the very songs I had written. It becomes a situation where the thing that you loved most also becomes the thing that caused you the most pain, and it's really hard to deal with. So for many years, I tried to divorce myself from my own legacy, you might say, from my own life's work, but -- well that was the reasons for not doing the songs.

And then much later, a lot more recently really, I had a kind of -- well I want to say premonition, but that wasn't exactly it, but I came to a point where I had healed emotionally to -- enough to where I felt like reconnecting with my own past.

GROSS: Did you miss the songs in the years you weren't singing them? I know that there was a lot of negative stuff attached in your mind to those songs and a lot of contested money. On the bright side, a lot of performers who are best known for their work from the late '60s and early '70s are sick and tired of those songs, and feel so sorry that they're forced to do it whenever they perform, (Unintelligible) for you, those songs are really exciting and fresh to do now.

FOGERTY: Yeah, very much so. It may be something like the famous Mohamad Ali rope a dope, where I was saving myself, you know, for later rounds or something. I enjoy -- well these songs are so much a part of me. They reflect my personality and things that I love so much. I still feel that way.

You know, Proud Mary very much reflects my love of Americana, a time, let's say during Mark Twain's era, when there was a lot of romance about the West and the Mississippi and that sort of thing. I tend to romanticize things, but you know that -- a little of that can go a long way.

GROSS: I understand that you spent some time in the Mississippi Delta while preparing your previous album. What impact did that have on you and on writing new songs and thinking about your old songs?

FOGERTY: Well, as a matter of fact -- the fact that I became emotionally healthy and more willing to do my old material is a direct result of those visits to Mississippi. And it's a really strange thing. I mean, this isn't something I totally understand, but I'm really glad it happened.

I started getting this very strong urge to go to Mississippi around 1988 and I really -- I ignored the call, you might say. I couldn't understand why I was feeling like I should go. I don't have a clue what I would do when I got there. Like I say, I just kept putting off the urge, but the urge was very clear and very strong.

So I finally went for the first time in 1989, I think, and I still didn't know why I was going, but eventually, what happened was I found myself at the mythical gravesite of Robert Johnson. There was no big neon sign or anything, you had to kind of weave through folklore and a lot of, you know, books and stuff to figure it out, but I got to where I felt he was probably buried and there was a tree that's in the stories that you hear.

Anyway while I was standing there and pondering Robert, I started wondering who owned his songs. In other words, Robert is gone, but the songs live on and they are great songs. And -- some reason it was a curiosity to me, well I wonder who owns these songs? And finally I decided I doesn't matter who owns the songs. Robert owns the songs. You know, I'm standing here where these songs came from, and I'm standing here at Robert's resting place, and as far as I'm concerned Robert Johnson is the spiritual owner of his songs.

And this is a long -- kind of a long anecdote to say that the minute that thought passed through my mind, I realized there was a great parallel with myself. You know, I'd come a long way to visit Robert's grave, and I thought wow, you know, this is kind of like me, except it would be a shame if 50 years from now some guy standing at my gravesite going, gee, I wonder what ever happened to John Fogerty? I wonder who owns his songs?

And then that guy would probably say, it doesn't matter, John is the spiritual owner. And the minute I realized that there was a bit of tragedy in all of that I started thinking I should do something about my own connection with my songs. After all, I am the spiritual owner of my songs, and most other people from the outside think of me as the owner, regardless of the real legal or financial ramifications.

GROSS: You've written a lot of songs inspired by the South, like Born On The Bayou, you were actually born in El Cerrito, California near Berkeley, and I'm wondering why, in some of your songs, you wrote first person in the persona of a Southerner?

FOGERTY: Gee, that's a good question. I think I was trying to place myself in this mythicize and romanticized territory. It's a mythical world, kind of, that I created. Certainly musically, it's a mythical world, and why I use the device of first person, I think -- well to say it another way, I think I realized that talking about the main street of El Cerrito probably wasn't going to be something that was widely understood or even cared about.

It didn't seem very interesting to me anyway, and the South has always fascinated me, and that's really the reason. But -- the reason that I placed myself that way in my own songs -- but if you want to ask me why am I so fascinated about the South I really have to confess, I don't know.

GROSS: Because of the music?

FOGERTY: Most of what I know about the South came through music, particularly the early forms of rock and roll, meaning rhythm and blues, country blues, and country music. And again, all those versions I believe were pretty romanticized. They -- you know, they were sort of rainbow-colored visions of the South in most cases.

GROSS: Would you father have ever said what the father says in Born On The Bayou? Papa said, son don't let the man get you, and do what he done to me.

FOGERTY: Yes he did say that a few -- a few different ways. My dad was a dreamer, unfortunately. He wasn't much of -- he didn't become -- he didn't find great success in this world. But he was quite a dreamer and pretty literate.

He read all the time and he was inspired by all kinds of people that he passed on to me in kind of little snippets. I can remember when I was very very young my father reading the story of "Dangerous Dan McGrew" (ph), over and over. He loved that particular poem. He really loved Ernest Hemingway.

You know, he was a product of the '30s and '40s I guess. My parents certainly were Depression era people and now -- I learned a lot of those lessons at their knee, and I think just by the way my dad ended up living his life, just by example really, he was telling me, don't let the man get you and do what he done to me.

GROSS: John Fogerty do me a favor, can you say two words for me: turning and burning.

FOGERTY: Well when I'm sitting here quietly in a library atmosphere it is turning and burning, but when I sing, it always comes out turnin' and burnin'.

GROSS: Yeah. It's very New Orleans, isn't it?

FOGERTY: Well you know what, I didn't know where really. Although I've noticed -- because I just did it naturally, when I wrote the words, I wrote them to sound that way.

GROSS: And this -- the song in question is Proud Mary.

FOGERTY: Right. I've also noticed, though, that Howlin Wolf (ph) has very much that sort of dialect in his music. I only spoke to him a couple of times, but in his singing, you know, in the great songs that he did, he pronounces those words that way. But yes, down in New Orleans, a lot of people will say, turnin' and burnin'.

GROSS: Well why don't we pause here and listen to your new recording of Proud Mary from your new album Premonition. My guest is John Fogerty.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "PREMONITION")

CROWD: One, two, three, four.

FOGERTY, SINGING: Left a good job in the city
Working for the man every night and day
And I never lost a minute of sleeping
Worryin' 'bout the way things might have been

Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

(Unintelligible) a lot of place in Memphis
Pumped a lot of pain down in New Orlean
And I never saw the good side of the city
'Til I hitched a ride on a riverboat queen

Big wheel keep on turnin'
Proud Mary keep on burnin'
Rolling, rolling, rolling on a river

GROSS: John Fogerty from his new CD Premonition. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

Back with John Fogerty. On his new CD he does the songs that he first recorded with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

The members of Creedence started performing together I think in 1959 when you were all in high school. Do I have that right?

FOGERTY: That's correct. Actually we were still in the eighth grade, three of us.

GROSS: Junior high school.

FOGERTY: Right.

GROSS: What were your early songs? What was the band like back in eighth grade?

FOGERTY: Well we were mostly an instrumental band. I patterned myself and my band very much around Dwayne Eddie and we did several Dwayne Eddie instrumentals. We also had probably 10 or more instrumentals that I had written, not remarkably original really, but, you know, they were -- I would play the -- taking the pattern basically from Dwayne, I would play the melody on the guitar and Stu, who was not yet playing bass, was playing piano, and I kind of showed him the rudiments of, you know, three-note cords and a little bassline, so the -- you know, at that level of our development, we were certainly learning the rudiments of music, but always with a rock and roll flair, you might say.

Rock and roll has some pretty strict parameters that you -- when you step outside those parameters, every one kind of gives you that crossed-finger look like they're holding back a vampire. So you -- you know, it was -- I've always kind of based everything from the center of rock and roll.

GROSS: The band's first name was Tommy Fogerty -- that's your brother, Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets, and then the band was called -- what was the second name?

FOGERTY: Well actually -- originally the three of us were the same age in the eighth grade, so we were just the Blue Velvets. And then we got the lucky happenstance to make a few records for a little local Bay Area label, and under that guise Tom would join us -- Tom by that point, I think was out of high school and of course we were still in high school. And you know, under that recording name we were Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets.

GROSS: And then what was the next name that you used?

FOGERTY: The next name on records was the Galiwags (ph).

GROSS: And what was the Galiwags supposed to mean?

FOGERTY: Well, this is one of those deals, because you're young and everybody else is supposedly older and wiser, and it's their record company. The real story is we worked on a -- the first single -- the first song for about nine months. I mean, we had gone in there and recorded it, and we kept pressuring the record company -- when's it coming out, when's it coming out?

This was all of 1964, and then finally they tell us well the record's here, the pressings are here. So, we rush over -- actually I rushed over to San Francisco and I pull one -- you know, it's your first real record on a supposedly national label, Fantasy Records, and you want to look at this thing.

And you take it out of the box, and I looked at it and -- oh my God. It said the Galiwags, so Max was the -- one of the brothers that owned the company then. I said well geez, Max, there's a mistake here. There's like a typo. They put the Galiwags. No, we decided to rename you guys. Oh, well why? See a Galiwag is -- in England, a Galiwag is like a voodoo doll. It's this doll that comes from Africa. It's really a hip thing.

It's really cool, and it's black too. It's like from the black culture, and it's really cool, it's like a voodoo doll, and in England it's really a hip thing. Of course in 1964, the British had arrived in America and all things English and British, mod, et cetera, were very cool. Unfortunately, no one in England had every heard of a Galiwag either.

GROSS: How did you come up with the name Creedence Clearwater Revival?

FOGERTY: Well of course, after struggling under that name for several years, the ownership of Fantasy changed and the very first thing we wanted to do was change our name. And the guy that had bought the company, the new owner of the company, agreed with us that we could change the name. I think he hated it too. And so, we set about for many months trying to come up with a name, but none of it was very suitable or remarkable. It's -- the whole process started to bog down I think.

It was Christmas Eve, and I was watching television and two commercials came on television, one of which was a beer commercial that really promoted its use of the water, and they were showing this lush green woods and this flowing river and, you know, the place looked enchanted, and there was this beautiful music in the background.

And right after that was a black and white commercial, it was an anti pollution commercial, and it showed all kinds of pollution and garbage in the water and that sort of thing. And at the end, it said if you want to change things write to Cleanwater, Washington, and I was really taken by the two things back to back, the beautiful clear water and the, you know, terrible polluted water and Cleanwater struck -- stuck in my mind. I started playing with that.

Cleanwater didn't seem like a very good name for a band, but I evolved to clearwater and I remembered back to when we had toyed at some point with the name Creedence. It's not true that I ever knew this person, but we did know of a man whose first name was Creedence. Pretty unusual name, and of course I shuffled that around. Clearwater Creedence, Creedence Clearwater, oh, I kind of like that. But it still didn't sound complete.

Remember, this is during the era of Jefferson Airplane and Strawberry Alarm Clock and Buffalo Springfield. So, I kept playing around with different words and I thought that what we were really doing was having a revival. The guys -- the group, we had been together a long time, but we were now experiencing a revival, or at least I hoped so.

So finally after about, probably 10 minutes of thought or even less, I had come up with the name. And I must say that the name was much better than we were at the time.

GROSS: John Fogerty, he'll be back in the second half of the show. His new CD is called Premonition. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with John Fogerty. His band Creedence Clearwater Revival had several top 10 hits between 1968 and '72, including Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising and Down On The Corner. He does new versions of the Creedence hits on his new concert CD, Premonition.

Creedence Clearwater Revival had it's biggest hits between 1968 and 1972, a bunch of top 10 hits, and you were based in the Bay Area around San Francisco. San Francisco at that time was dominated, you know, in the public mind, by groups like the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, the kind of psychedelic bands. Where did you see Creedence fitting into that California scene of the time?

FOGERTY: Well, since I had grown up so much with a fondness for blues and R&B and particularly rock and roll, my work ethic, you might say, was somewhat different than what I perceived the work ethic, if you can even use that term, of people like the Grateful Dead. And so, I noticed that our music, or our approach to music was -- or at least mine, was far different than the other bands that were becoming famous in San Francisco. But politically, I felt very much a part of the feeling of people in the Bay Area or San Francisco, or really my generation in general.

GROSS: You wrote some politicized songs that pertained to the draft and to the war in Vietnam, like "Fortunate Son," which is a song about how privileged people make wars, but the sons of the privileged are exempt from fighting them. And Who'll Stop the Rain, I think was perceived as an anti-Vietnam song. I know you were in the reserves for a while. How did you end up in the reserves?

FOGERTY: I was a very lucky guy, really. A local sergeant in a reserve unit had -- took pity on me and basically let me join his unit when, you know, the unit was full and there was really no place for me to go. He took -- he basically took pity on me and let me get into his reserve unit at the time.

GROSS: So, what year was that that you were drafted?

FOGERTY: 1966.

GROSS: So, you were already recording then.

FOGERTY: Oh yeah.

GROSS: And you didn't want to go to Vietnam, so you ended up in the reserves. I'm wondering if being in the reserves affected your attitude toward the war or toward the kinds of songs you wanted to write.

FOGERTY: Oh I would say very much, because, you know, you quickly learn when you become a grunt in the military that you're just a number, you're just a piece of meat, you're nothing, you have no rights, you have no privileges, you have no power over what happens to you. And that's a very debilitating feeling, and I can remember -- you know what, I can remember the night I finally arrived at my boot camp after being shuffled around for a couple of days, really.

And a -- you're still -- it's your first day, and they keep you awake forever. It seems like you've been awakened somewhere around midnight or one in the morning, the -- I know all my guys got marched off to get our hair cut, and you kind of come back, you feel like you've been sexually abused.

You know, they say, OK, go back in there. And you go back in your barracks and there's like 30 other people in the same boat and you're all a bunch of ugly eggheads, and I laid down on my bunk and I must confess, a few -- my eyes certainly watered is -- I guess what I'm trying to say. Of course, you get over that because you're suppose to be a man. It was probably the most forlorn felling I've ever had.

GROSS: Did you see your song Who'll Stop the Rain as an anti-war song?

FOGERTY: Yes.

GROSS: Why don't we play that now. We'll play the new version from your new concert album Premonition. Do you want to say anything about writing this song before we hear it?

FOGERTY: Well of course the rain is a metaphor the gobbledygook that comes down from the places on high, and I was feeling pretty much powerless at the time I wrote this song. And I was trying to reflect that really it seems to be -- has gone on since the beginning of time, and even at the time of the Vietnam War, when there was so much protest in the air it -- I had a very fatalistic point of view. It seemed like all the protesting in the world wasn't going to change anything.

GROSS: This is Who'll Stop the Rain from John Fogerty's new album Premonition.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "PREMONITION")

FOGERTY, SINGING: Long as I remember
The rain been coming down
Clouds of mystery pouring
Confusing on the ground

Good men through the ages
Tried to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain?

I went down Virginia, seeking shelter from the storm
Caught up in the (Unintelligible)

Wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder
Who'll stop the rain?

GROSS: That's John Fogerty, a new recording of his song Who'll Stop the Rain on his new album Premonition.

Did you hear from people who were fighting in Vietnam, that they played your records there a lot, and that your records mattered to them while they were in the jungle?

FOGERTY: I would hear that off and on, right around the time of the 1970-71, but I heard about it a lot more later, as I began to become an adult and guys who were now back and settled into the community would tell me all kind of stories about Vietnam and the music that they experienced there.

GROSS: And what did that mean to you?

FOGERTY: Well, in some cases it was very uplifting. I am proud that the songs meant so much. You know, I realize of course that all the music at the time meant so much, and especially to Americans off in a foreign land, in a juggle fighting for their life. I mean, anything -- these are kids, these guys 20 and 21 years old. Anything that is a touch of home is a very welcome memory at that time.

GROSS: The records that we've heard today are all new versions of your early songs. On your new CD, you have one new song that you haven't recorded before, called Premonition. I'd like to end with that recording. Would you tell us something about the song?

FOGERTY: In my mind, this is just a rock and roll sing, it's not really from personal life, on my part any way. It was -- at least to me, a really fun song to play live. It was a good vehicle for the band to play in front of people, and it was something you could get right away. It was a song that wasn't real difficult to get on one or two listenings, and that's really what I was after.

GROSS: John Fogerty, a pleasure to talk with you. I want to thank you very much and wish you good luck with the new CD.

FOGERTY: Thank you so much.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, "PREMONITION")

FOGERTY, SINGING: I got a feeling
Way down inside
I can't shake it
No matter how I try

You can't touch it
You touch no one
The earth is gonna shake
And the wind is gonna blow

Well, that's all right
This premonition is killing me
But that's all right
I must be crazy
I must be seeing things

Out on the highway
Picking up clues
So much is missing
So much to lose

You must be different
(Unintelligible)
Can't pin it down
But I know it's not the same

Well, that's all right
This premonition is killing me
But that's all right
I must be crazy
I must be seeing things

Hit me

GROSS: John Fogerty, from his new CD Premonition. Coming up: a tribal culture selling art instead of selling the rights to develop the rain forest. This is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: John Fogerty
High: Singer and songwriter John Fogerty. He has just released the double CD "live" concert album "Premonition." Featured on the recording is many of his biggest hits with Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Who'll Stop the Rain," "Down on the Corner," "Bad Moon Rising," and "Proud Mary." Fogerty won a Grammy Award in 1997 for his album "Blue Moon, Swamp." Fogerty will also be featured on this month's VH-1 biography.
Spec: Music Industry; John Fogerty; Creedence Clearwater Revival

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: John Fogerty
Show: FRESH AIR
Date: JUNE 02, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 060201np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Tapa Style
Sect: News; International
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Tribal cultures are faced with the ultimate dilemma, how to exist in the contemporary world while still maintaining their traditions. Take the Maisin for instance, a tribal culture in Papua New Guinea.

They've received financial offers from companies that want to buy the rights to log and develop the rain forest. The Maisin have refused the offers, because their whole way of life revolves around the rain forest, but they've been looking for alternate ways to raise the money they need for healthcare and education.

One alternative is to sell their tribal art, Tapas. Tapas is a cloth made of bark which is painted in ritualistic or decorative patterns. The Maisin have had several Tapas exhibits in the U.S and are even discussing distribution with a well-known catalog company. The fabric workshop and museum in Philadelphia recently brought in several Maisin artists. Their art will be exhibited through June 22.

My guests are John Wesley Vaso, who's secretary of the Maisin's conservation and development group, and Larry Rinder, the guest curator of the Philadelphia exhibit and curator of an earlier show in Berkeley.

Larry Rinder traveled to the Maisin land. I asked him to describe how it looked to him as an outsider.

LARRY RINDER, CURATOR, TAPA STYLE EXHIBIT, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS, CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF ARTS AND CRAFTS: Well it was quite extraordinary coming in. I expected an adventure and I wasn't disappointed. It's quite long and arduous process to get to the Maisin lands.

You fly through Australia, then you come into Port Morsbey (ph), which is a rather rough and tumble town, and then you have to fly on a small plane, and I have a fear of flying, so I flew with great trepidation...

LAUGHTER

... I got into this tiny little plane, off we go over the spine of New Guinea, which goes up to about 12,000 feet, the mountains there, which times had snow on them, despite the fact of being very close to the Equator. And you come down the other side and we -- sort of dive bomb the runway to get the cows off of it once, and then finally land.

And from there you get into a dinghy, motorized dinghy that goes through the ocean about an hour. There are no roads into the Maisin lands, and some of the Maisin people who can't afford the fuel or don't have boats will actually walk for hours through the mangrove swamps, but we weren't prepared to do that.

So we came in our dinghy and surfed into the mouth of a river and there are these beautiful palm trees and you can see the houses which are on stilts and have beautiful thatched roofs, and I had -- I saw along the river they had built a beautiful ceremonial gateway made of palm fronds with flowers attached to it.

But at first, I couldn't see any people there, and suddenly a group of men dressed as warriors came through this gate and -- with great vim and vigor proceeded to hurl spears at our little boat, and I had been standing up snapping pictures with my camera, and suddenly fell backwards into the boat and everyone laughed and had a great time. I learned later that this was the ceremonial way to welcome people to the village, only they usually don't throw the spears.

GROSS: Did you think you were about to sacrifice your life for art?

RINDER: Yes I did.

GROSS: John Wesley, can you explain that tradition to us of welcoming people with spears?

JOHN WESLEY VASO, MAISIN TRIBAL LEADER: Well, that's been part and parcel of our life and the tradition, and our culture and our society. And that is how the people are really committed to the type of welcome that we're really looking forward to, and the people who are coming, this is our respect for the guests who will be coming. So this is really...

GROSS: But he thought you were trying to kill him.

VASO: I think he admits that the in actual fact people told his that it was just a way of -- a form of welcoming our guest into our society, in our community.

GROSS: John Wesley, you are the secretary for a group known as MICAD (ph) and that stands for the Maisin Integrated Conservation and Development.

WESLEY: That's right.

GROSS: And so you're one of the intermediaries here in deciding what to do when someone like Larry comes to the village and makes a request, we want some art. I believe that selling art has become one of the alternatives you've come up with to selling the trees.

I mean, you've had a lot of big money offers from loggers, who wanted to come into your village, which is in a rain forest, and cut down the trees, and you said no to that. Your community said no to the loggers. Why?

WESLEY: Well, there are various reasons behind our saying no to logging and the monster called development, and because -- well our reasons being that our wildlife would be affected. The forest -- I mean when people take away the forest, we will have our wild life that would be taken away, and that -- and the timber would also be taken away, with which are able to build our houses and of course provide our own firewood out of.

We don't have gas stoves and all that. That is part and parcel of our livelihood, and of course our freshwater streams would be polluted, because of logging, and most of all, we would not want to give away our heritage. It's been passed on from generation to generation, and that is the utmost important -- the reason why we want to maintain the forest.

GROSS: Is there a line between what you're willing to sell in traditional art and the kind of art that you want to just keep within the community -- art that's perhaps too sacred to be marketed?

WESLEY: Well, we have our clan designs and art within our own clans. There are 36 clans in the community, and each individual clan holds onto his own clan designs and art. This one -- the one that we're trying to sell, the art, is the everyday art work that is put only Tapa -- out of persons -- artist's own mind, transformed on the Tapa itself. So, it's not taking away the sacredness of the culture and the actual artwork.

GROSS: So, is there actually some kind of law in your community that you can't sell the clan designs?

WESLEY: Well there are no -- there is no law that says we cannot, but the whole thing is -- it is sacred, it belongs to the clan, and it will stay a clan heritage. It will never be exchanged, I -- within the Maisin community, the society, one clan does not -- clan heritage and clan art and design is not transferable.

GROSS: Now, I understand that there hasn't been a word in your language for art. Is that right?

RINDER: Well, I -- in my last visit to the community, I asked a lot of people this question, and as best as I could determine, there isn't a word for art exactly that corresponds to our word. But there is this word seremond (ph) which -- and seremond, as far as I can determine means a combination of thinking and doing, a confluence of thinking and doing.

And when they talk about Tapa making, Tapa making is seremond. It is something that exemplifies seremond, thinking and doing. But only the non-clan designs. The clan designs which are conventional, that is the design is repeated generation after generation, these are not seremond, because they don't require thinking to do, that design's known in advance.

So it's -- because the Tapa that -- or the type that we have at the fabric workshop or the types that are being done on the new -- in the new fabrics, because the artist is thinking in the process of doing and there's a kind of a concentration -- it is seremond, and I think that actually it's a much more subtile invocation of the creative process than our word for art. Our word for art is actually -- our word art is pretty clunky and indeterminant, and this seems much more refined.

GROSS: Larry, as a curator of contemporary art exhibitions, you mostly deal with living Western artists. Many of these artists I'm sure take a fairly intellectualized, analytical approach to their art. What has it been like for you to work with a tribal tradition of art? Has it changed your personal sense of what art is, or the place you want art to have in your personal life, or your community life, or your professional life?

RINDER: Yeah. Well actually in terms of -- on the level of aesthetic production or intellectualization, I don't find the attitude of the Maisin artists that different from, say, abstract painters in the West.

GROSS: What's the connection?

RINDER: What's the connection? If you ask a Maisin artist where does this come from, they say it comes free, it's from my imagination. I know painters -- and they don't particularly like to talk about it. They don't like to go beyond that, in terms of saying what the inspiration is. I know artists -- one of my favorite artist's studio is on Chamber Street in New York City, could say the same -- she could say the same thing. You know, it could be the same sort of description, the same hesitancy to apply words or analysis to the process.

For me personally, one of the things that would say was most transforming about this experience is that when I first went to the village in preparation for the Berkeley exhibition, one of the things they said was -- they said in our culture, you don't just come in and do something and then leave and that's it.

When you make a commitment, it's a commitment for -- you know, for life. It's a commitment from your heart. And this is -- completely antithetical to the way things are done in Western society, particularly in the art world.

The way my exhibition work had been going, I think by the time I got to the Maisin I had done probably 50 exhibitions with 50 different artists from all over the world. I'd meet them, we'd work intensely and then, you know, that would be it. And so -- you know, I was sort of taken aback by this, and really had to reflect on what that meant. And here I am again, with them five years later so, so far so good.

GROSS: My guests are curator Larry Rinder and Maisin tribal leader John Wesley Vaso. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

If you're just joining us, my guests are John Wesley Vaso, and he is from the Maisin tribe in Papua, New Guinea and the tribe is now marketing some of their art to the West, and this is an alternative to raising money through logging the rain forest that they live in. And Larry Rinder is with me as well, he's director of Exhibits and Public Programs at the California College of Arts and Crafts. He curated an exhibition of Maisin arts in California and he also curated the exhibition at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

Larry, art and commerce are always a little controversial when they come together, and they're coming together in a very interesting way in the Maisin community, because the Maisin are using art as a way of funding the community, and as one of the alternatives to selling out the rain forest to loggers, and I guess I'm wondering what you think of this intersection of art and commerce in a traditional context?

RINDER: Well, I think it's really fascinating. There is a double standard in the worlds of museum practice and in terms of the art market. That is to say for Western art -- for something to be -- to be valued as art, it has to be useless, it has to be something that is just intended for sort of pure aesthetic delectation and, generally speaking, it's something that needs to be -- have been made for the market, otherwise it's craft or you know, untrained art or something like this. It gets some sort of lesser denotation.

For non-Western arts, it's precisely the opposite. For something to be art it has to be -- to end up in a museum or to have this sort of great value placed on it, it has to have been something that is useful, something that was made for -- say a carved canoe or for a sacred use for example. And it can't have been made for commercial reason.

So, it's actually the absolute opposite, and I think that the world is becoming a much too complex place, much too hybridized for us to maintain this distinction any longer. I mean, it really is an odd distinction to begin with, and I think at this point it's something that is just not useful any longer.

GROSS: Is this changing your idea of what the definition of art should be or how art should be valued in the market place?

RINDER: Yes, absolutely.

GROSS: How?

RINDER: When the Maisin came to Berkeley and we were conducting market research and we were faced with the question of where is the market niche for this Tapa cloth paintings? Is it as tourist art? Is it something we want to sort of put in airport shops? Is it something that's best for museum stores? Or is it something that we could market as fine art? Do we price these things at $10 or $10,000?

Because there was virtually no exposure of this material in the West, we had this whole range of opportunities and it immediately raised the philosophical question, you know, what is this, what is the value of this material as art, as craft, as, you know, what have you.

And the decision ultimately was based more on what was best for the community than on how we're going to define it in the West. That is to say, in conversation with the Maisin representatives who came over, we decided that if the value of the individual pieces were too high, say in the $1,000 to $10,000 range, that would create a kind of inequity in the community, it would perhaps create the kind of star system of celebrity status that you talked about, and would endanger community stability.

On the other hand, we didn't want to place the value so low that it -- it just demeaned the practice, and so we came to a sort of an intermediate level. And I think that that's fascinating to sort of establish the definition as of what kind of art this is, based on the community's needs.

GROSS: John Wesley, I understand one of the things you wanted to see while you were in the United States was a car factory and you were taken to the Chrysler plant, to a Chrysler plant. Why did you want to go there?

VASO: We've heard sermons about the cars being made there in the states, and we decided that we'd go and see the automobile factory and -- well, it was really fascinating. Amazing, at how many cars -- how many cars were turned over in a matter of day, and it was really interesting to note how, you know, instead of the man working, it was the robots working.

And even before we got to the finished part of the plant, the cars that we had seen, you know, being assembled, had already been -- you know, gone through the process and were parked outside. And when we came back, they just opened (Unintelligible) we were just looking at the cars and it was really amazing how many cars these people could make. They said it was about 48 cars in an hour.

GROSS: Are there any cars in your village?

VASO: No roads, no cars.

LAUGHTER

Maybe one day.

GROSS: Thank you both so much.

RINDER: Thank you.

VASO: Thank you very much.

GROSS: John Wesley Vaso is an Maisin tribal leader. Larry Rinder guest curated the Maisin exhibit at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

Dateline: Terry Gross, Philadelphia
Guest: John Wesley Vaso; Larry Rinder
High: We'll hear from two people who worked on a new Maisin tribal art exhibit "Tapa Style" now showing in Philadelphia. The goal of the exhibit is to promote Maisin culture as an alternative to selling logging rights to their portion of a rain forest in Papua New Guinea. John Wesley Vaso is a Maisin tribal leader. Larry Rinder was the curator for the exhibit and is Director of the Institute for Exhibitions and Public Programs at the California College of Arts and Crafts.
Spec: Business; Economy Arts; Papua New Guinea; Maisin

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Tapa Style
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.