Buhle's oral history class reclaims stories about Rhode Island's underground

by Mary Jo Curtis

When Joann Seddon and partner James McGrath founded The Rocket nightclub in 1986, they faced some daunting challenges. Theirs is the kind of story that might be told in a late-night gathering of old friends, but one that would likely be lost to succeeding generations of musical entrepreneurs and patrons if Seddon hadn't shared it with Paul Buhle's oral history students.

Instead, her account has been recorded, and it can be heard in "Lost and Unknown: Stories from Rhode Island's Underground," an exhibition on display at the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization.

The exhibit - which was displayed at the Newport Art Museum and Art Association this past summer - features the personal stories and memories of those who shaped Rhode Island's culture throughout the 20^th century. Visitors can hear Seddon, now the owner of The Decatur Lounge, describe giving up her apartment and living - without a shower - above the space that would become The Rocket. Elaine Lorillard, a founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, discusses how that venue and her husband's "social background" brought jazz a mainstream acceptance that was hard to win when the music was offered only in the poorest of clubs. Artists John Peck and AS220 founder Umberto Crenca tell their stories, as do Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, jazz drummer Duke Belaire, Black Repertory Company director Don King and former Trinity Rep actor Peter Gerety, among others.

Buhle, a senior lecturer in the Department of American Civilization, launched the project in his oral history class in 2002, when his students began interviewing Rhode Island's counterculture artists and leaders. Last year his class collected the stories to share with the community at large; this past summer four students - Megan Hall, Krista Ingebretson, Micah Salkind and Julia Wolfson - won an UTRA grant and took the project to the next step, creating the exhibit.

Salkind spent much of his time arranging for loans of the photographs, newspaper clips, posters and postcards, T-shirts and other ephemera that make up the visual component of the exhibit.

"The important part of oral history is giving back to the community it comes from," Salkind said. The participants were willing and eager to share their treasures, Buhle added.

"This is a way of putting their past on display, a past that doesn't get much recognition," he said. "People don't realize what an active music scene there was."

That scene broadened in the 1970s to include performing and the visual arts, according to Buhle. Providence gained recognition when the ACLU successfully defended a First Amendment case involving a RISD art exhibit that had been shut down by city officials who deemed it pornographic.

"What was less respectable became a calling card for Providence. We were seen as being on the cutting edge - not a dead city," he said. "That's the kind of atmosphere that makes something like WaterFire possible."

It's also the kind of atmosphere Buhle believes draws students to the state and inspires them to remain after graduation. Students tell him, "This is why I came to Providence. It's where the artistic, creative people are."

The exhibit will come down in November to make way for one being created by students in this semester's class. But Buhle said the exhibition will be on permanent display when his students launch a Web site on Underground Rhode Island this month; it will be linked from the Department of American Civilization Web pages.

"There's no end in site. Every new interview will be added to the Web site," he said. "This will last as long as undergraduates are interested in Providence ... I've encountered something with its own dynamic, and that doesn't happen often in a teacher's career."

The John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization is in the Nightingale-Brown House on Benefit Street. The exhibit is open to the public Thursday and Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. or by appointment. Tours of the historic home are offered to the public at the same times. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for seniors and free for those with a Brown I.D.