January 27–February 3, 2000

movies

Sing a Simple Song

Robert Mugge’s documentaries aren’t flashy, but he’s filmed some of the best musicians in the world.

by Sam Adams

A modest townhouse in Secane probably isn’t where you’d expect to find a man who’s consorted with musical geniuses from Sonny Rollins to Sun Ra and traveled everywhere from Mississippi to Maui. But it’s where you’ll find Robert Mugge, the internationally renowned filmmaker who’s been making documentaries, most with musical subject matter, since 1976.

At least it’s where you’ll find him this week. Not only is the house littered with boxes in preparation for a move to West Chester (Mugge’s wife and two children have already moved), but Mugge’s about to leave for New York, where The Screening Room and Cowboy Booking have mounted a six-film tribute to his 18–film oeuvre (similar to the Prince’s retrospective last fall).

The Screening Room’s tribute coincides with the video release of Mugge’s Deep Blues (1991) and the brand-new Hellhounds on My Trail: The Afterlife of Robert Johnson, which bring the number of his films issued by Winstar Home Entertainment in the last year to nine. The films range from Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise (1980), which features a concert filmed on the roof of International House, to Hawaiian Rainbow (1987) and Kumu Hula: Keepers of a Culture (1989), a fascinating pair of films on Hawaiian culture. Although Winstar’s reissues leave out most of Mugge’s ’90s work, they’re still an impressive testament to the dedication and commitment of a man who was capturing music on film before MTV’s moon man got off the ground.

"You really have to see making these kinds of films as a mission," Mugge explains from a living room overflowing with videotapes and CDs, "because you can’t make any money doing this, as my wife keeps reminding me. That’s as much as anything why you’ll see people make one or two films of this sort and then go on to other things. It’s sort of feast and famine, but the famine is all too much of the time."

Mugge’s movies are supremely unselfish, and it’s almost a shock to hear him talk about his lighting plan for this or that film, since the films seem almost effortless, as if the camera happened by pure chance to be in the right place at the right time. Of course, that’s the essence of documentary filmmaking, and Mugge has captured some extraordinary sights: Al Green testifying before a packed Memphis church, hula dancers swaying beside a stunning ocean vista, Deep Blues’ Lonnie Pitchford pulling ancient blues out of a piece of wire nailed to the side of a house. Next to more ornate performance films like Stop Making Sense or Buena Vista Social Club, Mugge’s films look almost quaint, slightly old-fashioned. But there’s a lot to be said for the straightforward approach, and there’s no arguing his ability to condense entire genres into a 90-minute film, and to do so with wit, intelligence and generosity.

Toward the end of the period covered by the Winstar films, you notice a shift in emphasis. While every movie up until Saxophone Colossus (1986) is a portrait of a single musician, the movies that follow are, without exception, portraits of regional scenes, genres, or, in two cases, record labels. That is, instead of profiling individuals, Mugge shifts his focus to the communities from which those individuals emerge. "What I would basically do [with the early films] is start with the specific and work my way out to the general," Mugge explains. "I’d start with a specific artist, and I’d use that artist as a leaping-off point to deal with various themes, to deal with a certain style or genre of music. But as things went on, I found fewer artists that I felt warranted 90 minutes of screen time, and I started thinking more in terms of genres that I hadn’t worked in. If I was going to do Hawaiian music or Hawaiian dance, I couldn’t really do it justice by focusing on a single artist. I had to show the whole landscape. The same with Mississippi blues. Just doing Junior Kimbrough, just doing R.L. Burnside wouldn’t have told the whole story. With those latter films, I start with the general and I work my way back to the specific." Even in his early films, though, you can see Mugge pushing to evoke a sense of place. Black Wax (1982) intercuts performance footage with Gil Scott-Heron’s walking tour of black D.C., and The Return of Rubén Blades (1985) vividly conjures the turbulent political climate of contemporary Panama.

There’s an argument to be made that, like the musicians he profiles, Mugge is a practitioner of a dying art, or at least one that’s been marginalized to the point of obscurity. The irony is that while nonfiction filmmakers like Mugge fight for funding every time they start a film, there’s more nonfiction work than ever being produced for outlets like the Discovery Channel and A&E. It’s a situation of which Mugge is acutely aware, not least because he’s in the process of suing the History Channel for allegedly using footage he shot for an aborted project without his permission. "There’s an enormous amount of nonfiction work being done because of cable television and PBS," he points out, "but I find most of what they’re commissioning just to be dreck. It’s all this recycling of old footage telling you the same stories again and again, paying young filmmakers as little as they can and keeping all the rights, giving them barely enough to live on while they’re making it and then nothing for the future. I really don’t like those people."

But for all the frustrations of the documentary life, it’s clear enough why Mugge has stuck to his guns all these years. Merely mentioning a given film provokes a litany of names and experiences, and Mugge’s eyes drift off as he relives all the unique musical moments to which he’s borne witness. "As much I enjoy finishing the films," Mugge says, "the real excitement, the real joy is having the experience of going to these places where you might not otherwise be let in the door, seeing people who wouldn’t be performing if it weren’t for you." From seeing Junior Kimbrough burn down a Mississippi juke joint to watching Al Green wax romantic from a few feet away, it’s hard not to envy the scope of Mugge’s experiences, which if not financially have certainly left him rich in other ways.

"I always intended to make feature films and do fun little music films on the side," Mugge recalls, "but the features kept not coming off in terms of funding, and the music films slowly did." Though he’s written several feature scripts over the years — the latest is called Zydeco Rose — as well as an unpublished novel, Blues Country, inspired by the filming of Deep Blues, Mugge gets most animated talking about the film he’s editing now. Called Louisiana Bus Ride: The State of American Music, it’s a survey of Louisiana music so full of great performances he wants to turn it into a multi-part series. (He’s also working to fund a film on Mississippi juke joints.) Although Mugge never intended to specialize solely in music documentaries, and still has other things on his mind, he’s fairly sanguine about the prospect of being identified first and foremost with music. "[The documentaries] just got bigger and bigger until they gradually took over," he muses. "I guess if I’m going to be typed as something, at least it’s something I enjoy doing."

A guide to Mugge releases on video