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In the current era of industrialization and intelligence, craftsmen can be described as the best interpreters of the "craftsman spirit", and they are "lyric poets in the era of developed capitalism". The recent book Guitar Makers: Craftsmen in the Age of Industrialization presents a panoramic view of the unique world of the hand luthier. Their adherence to the tradition of craftsmanship has injected the soul of Pinocchio. In a sense, creating your own musical style is the importance of the existence of a handmade guitar, and the unique sound it emits helps the artist to achieve a faithful inner expression. It is this desire for uniqueness that has kept the craft industry alive to this day.
Guitar Maker: Craftsman in the Age of Industrialization
By Catherine Dudley
/ Translated by Tan Yu Mofan
Gravity, Guangdong People's Publishing House
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At the age of 10, Michael Millard landed his first job at a shipyard in Branford, Connecticut. On his father's sailboat, with a piece of wood and a piece of sandpaper, he offered him the opportunity to work in other "professional, secret" jobs during the summer and school holidays. "The '60s were the beginning of the era of fiberglass and plastics, and all the young people, the university students, thought they were the coolest things," he recalls. "But Millard hates these new ships and their smell. He was sheltered by several "old qualifications" who were over the age of sixtieth and would love to share their wisdom with "this kid who loved wood." Over time, he discovers that he is like-minded with John Miller, a young man a few years older than him, who also has a wooden boat in his family. Miller was a guitarist and became Millard's mentor and inspiration:
[Miller] came to the dockyard with a record player and a couple of vinyl records under his arm. Soon, I heard Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Bill Bruenzi, Blind Willie, and all these guitarists. It's no exaggeration to say that it's like putting a 400-watt clear glass light bulb [above his head]. It's like "Oh my god!" woodworking, guitar, music, all at the same time. In these ways, it was as if I had awakened as an adolescent. So during my formative years, I was immersed in the local old people and the culture of wooden boats, and these old people didn't use a lot of jigs or fixtures when they did carpentry work - all things that were not limited in form, they just tried to figure out how to make it, and they did it very, very, very well.
Millard's adolescent epiphany coincides with a generation's political authenticity that transcends racial boundaries and establishes a way of being that is strong enough to challenge the normative limits of white masculinity. Whether it's the high-quality products produced without "jigs or fixtures," or the percussive rhythms and rustic voices of African Americans playing or singing blues music, the self-actualization model adopted by Millard and his companions is not only out of place with reality, but also with the dominant tendencies of others of their time. The revival of folk songs, the civil rights struggle, and the anti-war are intertwined emotions that light up the "light bulb" in everyone's heart, which is a momentary awakening. For those who struggle to adapt to establishing their identity in terms of race, class, and gender, the guitar can be an organizing principle for self-formation, "all at once."
Unlike other classmates at prep school, Millard did not go straight to college. Instead, he chose to participate in a political campaign run by a local congressman who opposed the Vietnam War. The following year, he enrolled in Southern Connecticut State University, but his studies were abruptly cut short — he received a notice to enlist. Rather than applying for a deferred enlistment on the grounds of a university, Millard applied for an exemption as a conscientious objector, but despite this, he was granted a "rubber stamp" permit for deferred enlistment. He complained about this categorization, arguing that it was a "politically biased system" and discrimination against minorities and the working class. Several letters of complaint were sent, and in the end Millard's application for conscientious objection to military service was denied, and he was drafted into the army. Later, he refused to swear allegiance to the enlistment committee, and more legal battles ensued. In the last official letter he received, he was reclassified as 4Fa based on a migraine history. While this was not the moral triumph he hoped for, Millard remained steadfast in his rejection of the arbitrary cultural categorization that others of his generation found very convenient.
Entering college, Millard found that the Delta Blues guitar he had learned from Reverend Gary Davis was "unable to play with other people" — and the same thing happened again. The kind of country blues he loves, with its "incomplete beats, distinctive rhythms, and syncopations," is not the "smooth blues" that school rockers like to play. Millard had no choice but to develop his own solo style rather than join a ensemble. Reflecting on "the whole concept of getting things done without a mold," Millard observes that for some people, it is necessary to prepare a personal specialty repertoire:
You can imagine blind street singers like Willie McTyre, or blind Willy, or Gary Davis, who put a hat or a mug on the bus. If someone else were to play the same piece on the next street corner, the best you can imagine would be to end the day with half the money in their hats. [For them, playing the same tune] is a complete no-no. For the most part, these people are very cautious about what the repertoire they play can present. You can probably count with one hand — well, maybe two hands — how many people have been able to play Gary Davis's pieces as well as he did. In those days [the 60s of the 20th century], almost no one could do it.
Millard believes that cultivating a style that cannot be imitated is both original and unique, as well as proving that one is business-minded. Millard, who performed as a professional musician throughout the '70s and early '80s, also identified with the Delta Blues player's outsider role. One night, at a bar in Massachusetts, Millard met a table of drunken guests who asked him to keep playing the tracks of Grateful Death nonstop, and from then on, he decided to give up playing and devote himself full-time to guitar production. The rustic blues undertone is on the frog motif on the headstock of each "Frog Butt" brand guitar — the brand name of the guitar is reminiscent of the lowlands of the Mississippi, where black sharecroppers farmed, which are often flooded and thus serve as a mating ground for amphibians. While Millard doesn't explicitly mention the luthier industry when he speaks of competing musicians, I've heard him comment on the competition among guitarists. He believes that the knowledge of making guitars can be accumulated through study and practice. But at the end of the day, like music, luthier knowledge is a reflection of an individual's taste and talent, neither of which has to be obtained from information sharing.
Not surprisingly, Millard was rarely involved in the world of luthiers. He dismissed the conventions and guitar shows as "a lot of tiresome chatter," saying he preferred to "go to the Vermont mountains" alone or with close friends. "I don't like to waste my time talking about this, that, and whatever. He didn't feel the need to sell himself — he believed that the guitar he made "could talk" — so he kept a low profile and appeared regularly in magazine ads. In this regard, Millard clearly expresses a misanthropic negativity, which is also shared by a considerable number of craftsmen, who are not active in the social rituals of the luthier-making world. These artisans, euphemistically expressing the need for "vigilance", offer an opposing narrative to the dominant origin story of the luthier-making community.
On a crisp autumn day, I sat with William Campiano in his workshop in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the first floor of an old industrial building. The workspace was full of guitars, and as we talked, I was intrigued by the unusual stringed instruments in the workspace. My eyes were drawn to an armadillo shell, which was placed on a shelf near the ceiling, and I later learned that it would be used to make a traditional South American musical instrument called Charango. Bilingual and culturally influential, Campiano is an authority on stringed instruments in the Caribbean and co-founder of the Puerto Rican Quartro Guitar Project, which has a research team dedicated to collecting musical and oral history material on the Quartro guitar, a country instrument with five sets of two strings of two for a total of ten. I was struck by Campiano's enthusiasm and sincere attitude, and understood why his guitar making lessons were so popular. What we are going to discuss is why he gave up his career as an industrial designer in 1972:
It was a folk revival movement, and the new generation was advocating doing it themselves, doing their own thing—and so on. At that time, people began to go off the beaten path. When I left the field of industrial design, I experienced something similar. That's when I went back to [Michael] Gurion's workshop, holding a strangely shaped, ugly, glaring, crumpled thing that just looked a bit like a guitar. It was a guitar I made in his class, but he never saw it because he barely showed up in class. The sound of this guitar is either clicky or buzzing, and it is impossible to play at all. I didn't know how to assemble it, and he never taught us about it. He just said, "Put the strings on." "Assembling proved to be a crucial and difficult process, and it was only after this hurdle that the wooden box could be turned into a musical instrument. I want him to fix the guitar so I can play it. Gurion looked at the guitar I made, and I guess he was very surprised, because I was already doing really well in terms of what little he taught us, so I must have been very motivated to make guitars, so he offered me a job and said, "I'll only pay you the minimum wage." ”
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