Rooting Around
Himons goes back to his youth's calling
By Michael McCall
JULY 13, 1998:
Last fall, local Nashville musician Aashid Himons received a call from a
government official in his hometown of Huntington, W.Va. The request seemed
simple enough: Would he return to headline a city-sponsored outdoor
concert?
For the dreadlocked singer, the offer couldn't have been more
surprising. Himons hadn't been back to Huntington since 1971. But it wasn't
because he didn't want to visit--it was because he feared he'd be arrested
if he returned. Prior to his departure, Himons had organized several
protests aimed at finally ending desegregation in the area. Eventually, a
covey of city leaders conspired to arrest him on trumped-up charges. He was
given an ultimatum: Leave and don't come back. If he was seen in town
again, he'd be jailed.
Apparently, things have changed in the last two-and-a-half decades. Last
year, to combat a planned Ku Klux Klan march in Huntington, city leaders
decided to put on a concert promoting racial harmony. Officials hoped the
event would dispel tensions by providing a focal point for those wishing to
show unified resistance to the Klan. Himons performed at a waterfront
location, far from the Klan gathering. More than 3,000 people attended the
concert, compared to the minuscule group of Klansmen who assembled across
town in a park.
Himons' eight-piece new-age reggae band provided the perfect
counterpoint to the Klan's message of hate. By encouraging a sense of
serenity and community, Himons' performance proved to be a master stroke.
"It was real peaceful," he says. "The whole thing had a positive vibe."
For Himons, connecting with his Huntington roots had personal
reverberations as well. At the time, he had been considering a change in
musical direction. His return to the West Virginia mountains told him that
his instincts were right: It was time for him to explore the acoustic music
of his youth.
The result is Mountain Soul, Himons' new 16-song album. Merging
Appalachian string-band music with a variety of blues styles, Himons has
assembled a mesmerizing collection that is as powerful as it is surprising.
The sweep is vast: His guitar style incorporates Merle Travis, Mississippi
John Hurt, and Son House, and some of the best songs on the album feature
him playing down-home acoustic duets with a fiddle, a harmonica, a bass,
and a hand drum.
The album's centerpieces are one-of-a-kind covers of Jimi Hendrix's
"Voodoo Child" and the traditional country gospel tune, "Will the Circle Be
Unbroken." Both tap into a deeply felt grace and a joyous communal spirit
that runs through the best of Himons' music.
"Mountain music is what it is," the singer says of the self-distributed
album, which was released last week and is now available in major Nashville
record stores. "It's my roots. I used to do these little licks and tunes
onstage, when I was messing around between songs. And every once in a
while, I'd do gigs where I'd be hired just to bring my guitar and sit down
and sing. But I'd never put [those songs] on record until now."
Over the years, Himons has played a variety of music under an equally
wide array of personas, including Little Archie, a '60s soul singer; West
Virginia Slim, a Delta and urban bluesman; and, of course, Aashid, leader
of the '80s Nashville reggae band Afrikan Dreamland.
But acoustic mountain music speaks to Himons because it's at the core of
his raising. "Because my mother was an evangelist, I traveled all over
Appalachia when I was young," he says. "I'd hear this music all around the
hills of West Virginia and Kentucky and Southern Ohio. This music is the
basic sensibility I grew up with."
It's also the first music he performed. "When I was living in West
Virginia, a lot of the black musicians and the white musicians would get
together and just play and exchange things," he says. "That's what mountain
music is--it's the music of the Scotch and the Irish and the Africans, and
later the Germans, who settled in the mountains there."
After all of his musical explorations, Himons now feels drawn to play
it. "Something in me told me I have to be doing this," he says. "I don't
know if it's the ancestors working on me or what, but it just started
popping out."

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