As Hurricane Katrina bears down on New Orleans and the people there brace themselves for what may turn out to be the most horrendous natural disaster in my lifetime, I’m struck by the shared nature of the emerging catastrophe. Most of us are glued to the TV watching the coverage of the news nets who for the most part have been sober and restrained in their commentary while at the same time giving frequent and informative weather updates from the National Hurricane Center for the millions of people whose homes and loved ones are in the path of this “hammer of God” as our ancestors may have put it.

It makes one feel pitifully small indeed to realize the enormous forces at work that in a very short time will knock our silly pretensions of being omnipotent for a loop. This storm will destroy in a few hours what it has taken man centuries to achieve. Things we take for granted – electrical power, sanitation, all the accoutrements of modern living – will be taken away with just a few breaths of the earth’s cardiovascular system. Scientists tell us that hurricanes are necessary to maintain balance in the atmosphere and the oceans. And as we’ve learned the hard way, the only thing you can do is get out of the way.

The focus of the entire nation is now on those cities and towns in the path of the monster. And as the disaster develops, we will be united as a community in our outpouring of support and sympathy for the victims. This is possible because our country is wired wall to wall with communciations technologies that our ancestors would have found almost magical. Not only will television and radio be covering this disaster, but bloggers also will be giving us frequent updates on the storm’s track and the local efforts to deal with the tragedy.

All of this got me thinking of how our ancestors dealt with events like this. The answer to that can be found in American folk music traditions and how songs about disasters became like tabloid news reports that informed the country of what it was like for the victims to live and die during events like hurricanes, ship wrecks, floods, and mining disasters.

Examples of such disaster songs can be found throughout the American songbook. Revell Carr who writes for the New York Journal of Folklore, found that songs of disasters have six basic elements:

1. The song describes actual historical events
2. The event features significant loss of life
3. Themes and motifs include unheeded warnings, human culpability, and divine retribution.
4. Stock formulae—most commonly the date of the tragedy, which usually appears at the beginning—are used both as mnemonic devices and as keys signifying the performance frame.
5. Voyeuristic and sensationalistic details give the song a tabloid quality:
6. The song conveys empathy for the victims and the survivors

The hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900 offers an example of folk music at its best; telling a story with narrative power while evoking an emotional response to the victim’s suffering. The song “A Mighty Day” was recorded by the Chad Mitchell Trio:

The trains they all were loaded
With people leavin’ town,
The tracks gave way to the ocean, Lord,
And the trains they went on down.

Now death your hands are icy.
You’ve got them on my knee.
You took away my mother now.
You’re comin’ after me.

That last verse is evocative of a more famous disaster song, Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald:

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it’s too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it’s been good to know ya.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.

These songs were used in lieu of the nationalizing of grief that we take for granted today. Professor Carr:

Disaster songs like “The Lexington” serve as catalysts for communitas and help heal psychic wounds in the disaster’s aftermath, and they capitalize upon the common human urge to bear witness—all part of the same process of coping with the chaos and confusion of traumatic social dramas….

Disaster songs function as redressive action, communicating shared sentiments and emotions, through which a social bond with others can be solidified in the days and weeks following a disaster. The power of the ritualistic performance of the disaster song is linked to the profound experience of communitas inherent in the social drama of disaster….

Does the power of song still hold sway today? Following 9/11, a huge outpouring of emotion rocked American letters and the performing arts. The event was so transcendent that it could be said that only the Civil War brought more emotion to the surface through artistic expression.

The Civil War lasted 4 years and colored a generation of American artists for decades afterwards. But the effect of 9/11 has sadly been more transitory. In a very large way, the American artistic community has let the country down. Even though 9/11 colors our politics and affects the very definition of what America is and what it will become, it does not affect much of our cultural life. Execpt perhaps in the visual art of photography, there have been precious few artistic endeavors that have sought to explain 9/11 and make it part of our national narrative. Are we too close historically for that to happen? I don’t believe so. And what little has been written or displayed about that horrible day has largely taken the form of petty political shots at the President – not very elevating but typical of an artistic culture that seeks acceptance at Upper West Side cocktail parties rather than dealing with that event as the cultural earthquake it proved to be.

As I write this there’s a chance that the worst of the hurricane’s destructive power will miss New Orleans – good news for the city but bad news for someone else. And if the past is a guide, I’m certain that someone will be putting words to music in order to give voice to the powerful emotions engendered as we all witness the titanic forces of nature once again reminding us how small and insignificant we truly are in the scheme of the Almighty.