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April 16, 2019
Molly Dektar's Playlist for Her Novel "The Ash Family"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Molly Dektar's stunning debut novel The Ash Family is propulsive and captivating.
Booklist wrote of the book:
"[A] lyrical debut...Dektar’s deft construction of the Ash Family’s world and their environmentalist values brings a meaningful new story to the canon of cult narratives. Perfect for fans of Philip Roth's American Pastoral (1997) and the film Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene."
In her own words, here is Molly Dektar's Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Ash Family:
My first novel, The Ash Family, is about a girl, Berie, who runs away from home to live on an off-the-grid community in the Appalachian Mountains. Berie is seeking community and a closer connection to nature and the sublime, but she ends up being drawn into committing violent acts to support the family and its leader, Dice. In short, it’s a cult book. But it was important to me that the family be utopian, in a way, too, and that its ideology—love of nature, promotion of close and intense relationships--have something admirable, even enviable, to it.
While I was writing this book, I became obsessed with an American communal singing tradition called Sacred Harp. I wanted the feeling of Sacred Harp to run through the book: the songs, which are mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, are characterized by dispersed harmony, open chords that are strange to modern ears (with an emphasis on fourths and fifths), and lyrics that are frequently morbid (“death is the gate to endless joy”). Since I started writing this book in 2013, I’ve listened almost exclusively to Sacred Harp, and also sung regularly with the group in New York City, even though I don’t have a very good voice. By the way: there are groups all over the world, no experience or religious views necessary; if you like the sound of it you should give it a try.
Anyways, now that I’ve gotten my very earnest Sacred Harp recommendation out of the way, I’ll note that this playlist includes a few Sacred Harp songs as well as some other songs that occur in the novel, and then a few Appalachian tunes.
Plenary—Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp
This is usually the first song I play for friends when I’m trying to convince them to come sing with me. (My success in this endeavor has been mixed.) I have the family sing it in my book, and Berie, the narrator, notes that it’s the same tune as Auld Lang Syne, though the harmonies are unfamiliar. These are voices singing from the grave: “Hark! From the tomb, a doleful sound/ mine ears attend the cry/ ye living men, come view the ground/ where you must shortly lie.” One of the forces that motivated the book was my intense longing to understand what it felt like to be alive in past centuries. This arrangement, from 1839, really does put us in contact with generations dead and gone.
The Grieved Soul—Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp
Here is another favorite Sacred Harp song. The cult recruiter, Bay, teaches Berie this song in the second paragraph of my novel. I love it closed-open-closed melody, especially the beautiful split-open chord that happens on “try”--the lyrics are “Come my soul and let us try/for a little season.”
In the Pines—Leadbelly
This much-beloved song was even covered by Kurt Cobain on MTV Unplugged. But I love the Lead Belly version. It is an interrogation—“Black girl, black girl, don’t lie to me, tell me where did you sleep last night”—about what seems to be an abduction. And what about the decapitated head? It is a simple song that is full of menace. I put this song in the very last pages of my novel, when Berie hasn’t even yet begun to process what she’s experienced.
Thinking Bout You—Frank Ocean
This song plays on the radio during one of Berie’s few trips away from the farm. Its smooth, synthetic, slightly seasick throb—and the way Ocean’s voice floats up out of radio static, though Spotify doesn’t capture that—felt like the perfect counterpoint to the life Berie lives on the farm, which is strictly non-digital and which forbids the consumption of any media. At the same time, the aching lyrics—“I’ve been thinking ‘bout forever”—pull the song in very close to Berie’s life.
Swingin Party—Kindness
Even after Berie has made the decision not to return home, she is still, at times, overcome by nostalgia and uncertainty. Swingin Party—the Kindness cover was what I was thinking of, though I don’t specify in the book--is one of the songs that she remembers when she’s dreaming about her former life. It has the same tragic point of view as many of the Sacred Harp songs, full of self-loathing debility, but it’s a dance song.
The Beer—Kimya Dawson
This Kimya Dawson song is not in the book but it has such amazing lyrics it has been an influence on my writing for years. It is really a short story of a song. It’s goofy, angry, surreal, wounded, loving, and defiant. Like a cartoon character, the narrator keeps dying and coming back to life. I listened to this song so many times in high school and it still brings tears to my eyes.
Peg and Awl—Carolina Tar Heels
This is a lament about automation, about having one’s trade replaced by machines. Berie and the members of the Ash Family feel alienated from the contemporary world, and in particular, the way that the pressure for economic growth has led to environmental degradation. My mother and father (who are nothing like the bad parents in the book) used to play this song for me when I was growing up and I think its tragic resignation scarred me for life.
Bonaparte’s Retreat—W.M. Stepp
This playlist is tending towards the lugubrious, but I also love the folk music tradition that is playful and lighthearted and meant for dancing. This fiddle tune was made famous by Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo.”
Soldiers Joy—Nashville Washboard Band
My mother is a folklorist in North Carolina, and traces of the folk art she introduced me to occur throughout the Ash Family, most explicitly in some of the trips that Berie recalls taking with her ex, Isaac: “We’d driven to Bynum to see the wooden giraffes with silk-flower eyes and to Lucama to see the forty-foot whirligigs.” The creator of the first is Clyde Jones, and the second is Vollis Simpson. The inclusion of this song is also thanks to my mother. She writes: “Who were these guys? Street musicians comprised of (in folklorist Alan Lomax's words) ‘two blind men and three day laborers.’”
Son of God
This song appears in the Sacred Harp songbook, but here Tim Eriksen sings it without the other harmonies. I love the sea-shanty, pirate feel of the tune and its stark minor beauty.
I Am A Stranger Here Below
Another version of this song is called “Conflict,” a shape-note song which the family sings during their harvest festival. I love the version by the Ephemeral Stringband, whose members I’ve had the pleasure of singing with at some Sacred Harp conventions. As is true for many debut novelists, my narrator Berie is a version of me, and the lyrics, which are full of self-doubt, are such a vivid reflection of Berie’s experiences, and the experiences I drew from to write about her. “Tis seldom I can ever see/ myself as I would wish to be/ what I desire I can’t attain/ from what I hate I can’t refrain.”
Molly Dektar and The Ash Family links:
the author's website
the author's newsletter
Booklist review
Kirkus review
Publishers Weekly review
Raleigh News and Observer interview with the author
also at Largehearted Boy:
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