"On the subject of the modernisers: your task is to create some classic songs. Either new one or versions of old songs, that will become tomorrow's standards. The traditionalists have theirs already. It's a tall order."
I've already begun the process with "Superstition." I played my solo version out in 2009. By 2010, Rachelle Plas was performing a version. I humbly submit that I gave her the idea. But of course she might have been doing it before me; I wouldn't know, but that's an ascertainable fact. And there are other versions on YT these days. The German OMB does a version that's much better than mine:
Search YT for "superstition harmonica" and you'll find that a fair number of people are now working that song, which is a natural on cross harp.
One of the modernizer's tasks is to create new songs; another is to update old songs, as Sugar Blue has done with Chicago Blues standards like "Messin' With the Kid" and "Hoochie Coochie Man," and as Billy Branch does with "Son of Juke." His version of that song is EXACTLY what I've been talking about since I began this thread. Make it new. But keep the juice and the funk:
I've always thought that it would be a cool idea to throw "Juke" across a funk groove. Maybe some day. My only real compositional addition to the blues harmonica songbook will have to do. It meets the standard I've elaborated above, since it was intended as a funky inversion of the Sanford and Son theme. I keep waiting for somebody to cover it, but nobody has. I think that our own Ridge has come closest to nailing it, but for the most part the few attempts on YT miss the boat.
Is it just....too hard to play? I'd love to hear Iceman attempt it. I will be the first to bow down, if an adequate (or superior) cover is achieved and say, "You are the man, Icy."
Or maybe Senor Ricci von Mooncat will descend from the mountaintop and whallop "Thunky" out of the park. Nothing would make me happier.
As for the old guard, whom I've mentioned earlier in this thread: I just don't think they're interested in this newfangled stuff. Overblows! The sort of stuff Mooncat uses in "Mr. Satan," which has a weird time-signature to boot. Make it new.
i have been jamming to that song since the 70's. when playing in an ensemble it is not necessary to play all the parts. less is more. just the riff and a solo. i find it annoying when harp players play all the time. a little goes a long way.
we always play it in E...
Last Edited by 1847 on Dec 04, 2017 1:24 PM
"Son of Juke" - great intro - real contemporary, then it settles into a decent "Juke" type groove.
If I had a band like this, I'd try that funk version that Kudzu mentions. Unfortunately, in my area of SE Coastal GA, there is no rhythm section nor individuals that would be up to real funk....right now I'm just teaching - not playing out. ---------- The Iceman
the track thunky thing rides again is a killer track. the foot drum is flat out amazing. this disproves any and all naysayers. i really had no idea you could play drums like that with your feet.... WOW!
The funky thing is kinda cool, but the tone is just so blaring and relentless I can't listen to it. Even at very low volumes it causes ear fatigue. It's not unlike the endless brutal sirens busting through midtown Manhattan. Makes me cringe my shoulders and plug my ears. ----------
Last Edited by JInx on Dec 04, 2017 3:53 PM
If a person was “born under a bad sign” you could say that that person was superstitious by nature.
So let’s take a look under the hood at that song. "born under a bad sign"
So we have the first 4 bars of a 12 bar blues. Then it skips the next 4 bars….. to the 5 chord, then it turns around the beat back to the one chord. Next We have 4 bars of the one …then it simply repeats the one chord for 4 more bars :} Then back to the 5 chord to the turnaround. …Then they camp out on the first 4 bars of the one chord add nauseum. “vamp”
Both songs omit bars 5 6 7 and 8
A 12 bar blues is a parental form…. Not sure I have ever heard the term breakaway.
These two songs are very similar. I would not be surprised if jeff beck and Stevie wonder were jamming to albert king when they came up with the song superstition. That’s what I hear…
Last Edited by 1847 on Dec 04, 2017 6:30 PM
Here's a song that argues against my thesis: Israel Tolbert's 1970 hit, "Big Leg Woman," covered by a blues band that cultivates a traditionalist look. I like it! Very funky song in an early 70s way. So there IS life beyond 1965, for those willing to get down with the funky blues.
By the date 1965, are you referring to the Newport Folk Festival and Alan Lomax's dismissive comments about Paul Butterfield - questioning whether Butterfield was even in the same league with traditional African-American blues musicians? Also, as a new member of this forum, I have to ask whether your remark "Why NOT Superstition" was in response to a previous post? Did someone actually object to a version of Superstition that included blues harp? I can't imagine why.
1) No. If you read back through my various posts on this thread, you'll see that I explain why I think 1965 is a fairly good demarcation. The specific year, though, isn't particularly important for the point that I'm making
2) No. And no. Again, I was simply using one song from the early 70s to make a general point, and the point remains valid regardless of what one says about this particular song. And judging from what 1847 writes about jamming to the song since the 1970s--well, I'm happy to know that, 1847. Back then, at least, you were clearly NOT a traditionalist! How about now?
Not sure I have ever considered my self a traditional blues harp person. I grew up like many people, with the beatles and the stones. Love me do..rocky raccoon... Midnite rambler... Sweet virginia. CCR keep on choogalin.
Not your standard blues repertoire. It wasn’t until eric clapton did, born under a bad sign, and at the same time BB Had the thrill is gone did, did I get an inkling of what a blues song was. Contrast that to someone like rod piazza, Who will be 70 in a few days. That would put him in the mid fifties listening to jimmy reed and muddy waters.
I had to go backwards, I would see song credits... Elias mcdaniels. who the heck is that? Willie dixon. It seemed like he wrote all the songs I was listening to. when J geils band came on the scene they blew everyone’s face out When I heard jerry portnoy with muddy waters I was blown away. I drifted more and more to blues And a little less to hard rock music. But I still to this day love the classic rock period of my youth.
I cannot for the life of me, play like rod or william clarke. But I am ok with that. I can play like me, for what its worth. I have tremendous respect for the people that can. My hat is off to them.
I learned superstition on guitar in 76. Someone showed me the riff. That beck album is an all time favorite. It was years later before I ever attempted it on harmonica. And I am sure I was not that good at it.
To play authentic chicago blues you have to immerse yourself in it, its hard to take it somewhere else if you haven't worked out all the details.
One thing rod would always say.... Take it further.... Heck, he had a record called, beyond the source.
Last Edited by 1847 on Dec 09, 2017 9:11 AM
kudzu says--"it's because I think that a blues harmonica traditionalist mindset tends to drop the curtain in 1965,"
Quite frankly, I don't believe I've ever met a person of that description in all my 45 years of playing. I've met real bluesmen like Smokey Smothers, Calvin Jones, Pinetop Perkins, etc. but they can't be who you mean. They'd be hard to find too. :-)
Off hand, I can think only of academic blues journalists from a loooong time ago who fit that description. Alan Lomax rings a bell. Something about a fist fight w/ Butterfields promoter/turned manager at a blues festival comes to mind.
Living Blues magazine had sort of that kind of mindset if I remember correctly. ---------- ---------- Reasonably priced Reed Replacement and tech support on Hand Made Series Hohner Diatonic Harmonicas.
'Making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time. Click MP for more info. Aloha Mark .
MP: Methinks you doth protest too much. But I'm willing to learn. You sound like a guy who knows the Pinetop Perkins discography fairly well. So do tell. Give me a handful of songs, NOT shuffle blues or slow blues or old-time two-beat blues--that Pinetop Perkins composed and/or performed, in a style that is plainly indebted to 1970s black R&B or funk or post-1965 blues-rock--or, god forbid, black music from the 1980s and beyond.
Smokey Smothers: same challenge. He's a pretty down-home cat who very much worked a traditional style:
So, did he cover Stevie Wonder, James Brown, The Crusaders or, god forbid, Earth, Wind & Fire or the Brecker Brothers? Somehow I doubt it.
But here's the thing: you just MIGHT find that he did, in fact, cover one or two of those songs, just as Little Walter covered (badly) "Watermelon Man." Sometimes those older black artists sought to adapt to the changing tastes of their largely black audience, which enjoyed a somewhat wider latitude of musical styles within a "blues" context. Unfortunately, some older white blues artists have hardened still further, reducing the tradition to "traditionalism," a stubborn insistence on looking backward--and they've been abetted in this by a significant segment of the blues audience, which prefers the old-timey songs.
Here's what it sounds like, btw, when a blues artist actually adopts the sort of approach I'm advocating for. "Hoodoo Man Blues" was 1965; this is 1968:
In 1971, Howlin' Wolf did an album of contemporary R&B that was popular with young black audiences at the time. The title is Message to the Young and the full album can be heard on youtube.
I remember when the Legendary Blues Band albums first came out in the 80's. They had a bunch of original tunes, but not a lot of unfamiliar grooves. As a listener, I never really had much of an issue with artists who aren't learning and performing the newest stuff. I like it when Elmore James records sound like Elmore James or when Magic Sam records sound like Magic Sam. Some sounds are classic and should be screwed with. People should play the music that moves them and let the market sort out what people like and don't like.
Quite often when people attempt to stretch out into unfamiliar (for them) or uncharted territory, quite often their music sucks because the person isn't being true to themselves. Additionally, I know a multitude of great aritsts who can play all sorts of genres of music, but they play Blues because that's what moves them and that is their passion. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Someone really needs to be cutting edge and work up a harmonica lead version of this fine tune as it is super contemporary and many of the kids sing it.
Dan P: Thanks for that! I was unaware of the album, but it deserves to be better known. It definitely meets the challenge that I posed. The first song, for example, is straight out of a Rolling Stones white-blues-rock bag. Wolf was trying to connect with a youth audience--more white than black, I suspect, but maybe he just thought of all of them as hippies. He uses old grooves to preach contemporary messages. He's definitely trying to modernize--but he's got his distinctive vocal style, with the moans, too, and so he's bringing the past into the present. As to the question of whether the experiment succeeds: most experiments fail to some degree or in some way, so I'd probably ask: Was it an experiment worth making? and: Which parts of it are most successful? I look forward to listening back to the whole album when I've got time. But thanks for putting it on my screen.
@kudzurunner. You're very welcome. When the album came out, the blues purists, of course, did not like it. It is different and the musicians were different from Wolf's band (Hubert Sumlin is not on it), but its still 12 bar blues for the most part and its still The Wolf. The album's biggest flaw IMO is that the lead guitar is too loud in the mix but I like the record as a whole. Thanks for importing the album to the thread. If I knew how, I would have done it.
Last Edited by DanP on Dec 12, 2017 6:26 PM
Yep, thanks, Dan. In some places it's old schtick over a new backing, but on the whole it's fabulous, and I just ordered the CD. ---------- Andrew. -----------------------------------------
Last Edited by Andrew on Dec 13, 2017 6:18 AM
@ kudzu "Out,damn spot!" That would be me Adam. :-) One of the disadvantages of Cyberworld is that one cannot see facial expressions, body language, nor hear tone of voice. If you could, Adam- then you would see I mean no serious criticism and see the entire thread w/ only a peripheral interest. That being so, I apologize as I am your guest and seem to have forgotten my manners. I'm sorry if offense was taken. I have no interest in homework. Was it the academic crack about Alan Lomax? Being only two years older than you I'm sure you know that Pinetop replaced Otis Spann, joined the Legendary Blues Band, and played w/ everyone and anyone from duets w/ Bob Margolin to god knows who. Last I saw Pinetop he was on a couch w/ Calvin Jones and we were trying to get them out of the beach house, off Oahu, and on a plane to where ever cause the concert was a flop- and we were charging $20 at the door to fix things. Now Smokey Smothers of bare feet and pith helmet took an interest me and Madison Slim while we were trading JT-30s cuz I had a black one Madison coveted. He particularly liked the Hohner Blues Blaster, was surprised that I knew he played w/ a stint Butterfield. Unfortunately all I can produce is a note of friendship in block print with friend spelled fiend-he passed to me. He was much thinner, not imposing, and not very tall as in that video suggests. Long story short, Madison lost his harps in a girls car, and all were flown back to somewhere at least 2200 miles away but I suspect it was closer to 5,000 miles. So, I'll see you around and I really think music is music and no one is trying to hold anyone back creatively or mislead anyone. Take it w/ a grain of salt. Oh, I can imagine us as teens listening to Alan Lomax. Being both educated and silently dis-agreeing w/ the old ethnomusicologist. One more thing. You are the heir to that very same tradition. A lot more liberal in your views though. ---------- Reasonably priced Reed Replacement and tech support on Hand Made Series Hohner Diatonic Harmonicas.
'Making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time. Click MP for more info. Aloha Mark .
Last Edited by MP on Dec 13, 2017 3:30 PM
A brave post, this is more akin to my kind of msg the sort I get slaughtered for, but the thing is I never see mark Feltham mentioned here, check out his solo on once twice three times and thts enough from the don't point your finger album with nine below zero, I remember asking if anyone could help me with the Paul Jones solo from someday baby with the blues band, nobody could, I'm sorry purists but the sonny terry, little Walter, rice miller days are taken when you can here guys in your local pub playing these solos, but I never here John popper being replicated. And if you Google the canned heat solo for on the road again, there is talk for nobody knowing how it was achieved.
Here's an interesting clip, one I didn't expect to find: Kim Wilson & band playing "Watermelon Man." Really nice groove. In the solo, he keeps things very mellow. It's not really a showcase piece for him; not quite in his sweet spot. The song that follows in the video, of course, IS in his sweet spot. Interesting.
I think part of this discussion emanates from one trend that I've noticed for a while: a lot of contemporary blues players aren't trying to be in touch with the music that has taken the place of the blues in its desire to push social boundaries and level commentaries (tacit/coded or otherwise) on establishment ideologies.
I'll give you examples from two different genres. First, here are two songs from the band Algiers, who have fused soul with industrial sounds and something that recalls punk:
And here's Big Krit, bringing a gospel and funk sound to hip hop:
If you think that people who are interested in the blues shouldn't be listening to this stuff, I don't know what to tell you.
My point was that the distinction between "blues" and "black music, in all its beautiful forms" is entirely specious. It's actually a very "white" thing to say. It's a fairly common understanding among those who study African American music, in fact, that black audiences have a much broader conception of what blues is than white audiences--including you, apparently. They fold many more things into the mix, including things that you would parse out: R&B, soul, jazz, gospel. Just read Larry Neal's essay "Any Day Now: Black Art and Black Liberation." It's a spirited defense of the importance of the blues. He names dozens of black musical artists whom you would cast into the "not blues" category as vital carriers of the energies of the blues god.
Next to this sort of integrative, inclusionist conception of the blues, your approach seems narrowly scholastic. It's pointedly at odds with the tradition you claim to love--as least as understood and philosophized by African Americans themselves.
It's this same attitude, frankly, that has many self-styled blues lovers insisting that soul-blues "isn't blues"--even though it's a contemporary music made and embraced by black Mississippians (and others in the Deep South) that those people CALL blues, and even though the lyrics repeatedly invoke both enduring blues themes and lyric figurations sourced deeply in the "other" Mississippi blues that you no doubt love.
That's one point I've tried to make.
A second related point is that the blues harmonica players we all claim to love drew on a somewhat broader range of material--material that plainly lies OUTSIDE your narrowly-drawn "blues tradition"--in order to create the music that they created. Little Walter, notably, drew heavily on the music of the jazz players of his time, including Joe Liggins and the small-ensemble jump sound of Louis Jordan and others.
See Rhartt's postings in this thread: http://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/5494319.htm
We also had a spirited discussion about possible zydeco influence on Walter's warbling approach here a couple of years ago. In that case, you very much agreed with me that "another" black music helped shape Walter's approach:
Big Walter, as we know, pulled various sorts of music into his blues orbit, including spirituals ("Trouble in Mind") and Mexican ("La Cucaracha").
Blues players have always done this. There's nothing the slightest bit original about my transformation of "Superstition" into a one-chord instrumental groove blues--except, as I noted, for the fact that many blues and blues harmonica people these days seem to have forgotten the underlying expansionist principle that has always driven blues creativity.
I honestly don't expect to change your mind. You've got your core ideas; you've got long-established boxes called "blues" and "black music," and they make it impossible for you to hear my version of "Superstition" as blues. I, on the other hand, hear James Brown's version of "Night Train" and "I Feel Good" as funky blues, and I hear "Mustang Sally," an R&B hit for Sir Mack Rice in 1965, as a blues. I like the fact that Sharde Thomas takes that latter song and makes it a one-chord North Mississippi fife-and-drum blues. She takes "Wild Thing"--nobody's idea of blues!--and does the same thing: makes it a part of the blues tradition, broadly conceived:
She could, if she wanted, do the same thing with "Superstition." And everybody in her audience would get it: bluesing up a familiar melody. That's all I've done, with Brandon Bailey's help. We've made "Superstition" into a blues breakdown, an uptempo two-beat suitable for dancing, to those so inclined.
But again: you've got settled opinions about all this, and I don't expect to change your mind. You've contributed a lot of wisdom to this forum over the years, regardless, and I've learned a lot from your many postings.
Touche´, Goldbrick. I'd forgotten about Jimi's version. But it helps make the point: When a blues person chooses to cover/adapt/mess with a song, it becomes part of the tradition.
Here's how my mind works: I heard a snatch of a song in Walmart today, and it instantly grabbed me. I remembered it. It was bluesy. I tried to find it on YouTube, but the words "got to believe in magic" just didn't bring up anything I wanted to be associated with.
Later, at home, my wife sang the line and I said "Yes! That's it." She sang something like "nothing can stand in our way" and that helped YT find it. Olivia Newton-John, "Magic." It's a classic early 80s pop hit, but it has a bluesy and haunting part to it, and that was the part that grabbed me. My next project will be to reconfigure the song in such a way that I can get rid of the silly parts and make something bluesy and worthwhile out of the bluesy part. If and when this can be done, it will sound nice.
Here's the best adaptation I can find. Something to work with:
I love that two-chord vamp up front. It's New Wave, but bluesy.
Here's the original, lip-synced by the artist Herself:
I hadn't heard that song in years. Remembering the chorus I would have guessed (incorrectly) that it was Heart. Probably confusing it a bit with Magic Man.
And now I want to play 'Barracuda'. One of the down sides of apartment living is when you get an itch to play something sometimes you have to wait until morning. Oh well.
Rob Papparozzi covered the Shirley & Co's "Shame , Shame , Shame" and turned it from a disco burner to a swinging blues standard . It's almost like blues chamber music, so polite and flawlessly executed by some serious hipster cats! And did you notice Mr Groovemaster Brenard Purdie just kicking it with one foot in Van McCoyville and the other in Swingville?
And then, Chili George Stackhouse gets a hold of it and deconstructs it into a bar room funky brawl. If you ever fantasized what "William Clarke Goes Disco" might look like, here's a preview! That's the amazing Nashville drummer Bart Lingley playing and Steve Bigelow on bass !!
Nacoran: Glad you liked them! The Big Krit in particular made me sit up.
I think Adam is right in calling the formalization of the blues into question -- formalization is what happens after an art form has been divorced from the material conditions that have prompted its outpouring. That is to say, formalization is a result of other people coming in and studying the art.
Clyde Woods talks a lot about how the blues is a relational epistemology by which singers were/are able to represent a spatial, temporal and social structure internal to black culture. The blues, he claims, has always been diverted into distinct local and regional schools that continue to influence one another (I should note that other folk forms -- like flamenco -- are the same in this way). As a result, the ones who codify form as an exclusive litmus test for what is or isn't blues are the ones who are coming in from outside the blues epistemology, and are thus not equipped to navigate its dynamism. Woods also says the following: "Black musicians have created a vast cultural region of global proportions through the spread of the blues and blues-influenced genres such as jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country and western, reggae, soul, funk and rap." In other words, the blues epistemology encompasses all of these genres, and by separating them from blues, one denies the power of the same spatial and social interchange that allowed regional blues variants to influence one another. As a result, you turn the living language of a very-much thriving mode of relational thinking into a codified, rigid and dead language.
I remember reading a great story about a flamenco musician from Morón de la Frontera (a relatively isolated town in Spain) who came to the Bay Area for the first time to play some shows. While he was there, he was taken to see a Ray Charles concert, and when Charles was really belting out a ballad, the flamenco musician got to his feet and exclaimed, "eso es flamenco!" At the end of the day, it's about recognizing a particular way of seeing the world in the music (not just in the lyrics -- in the music) and not about whether it has 8, 9, or 12 bars or cycles through the I, IV, V progression -- even if much of the music in question still has a lot of that.
Cool Ray charles story-however Morón de la Frontera has a big air force base and even a NASa recovery center so not hardly isolated from American music But I get your point==also Hit the Road Jack is sort of a Flamenco chord progression so it would be a familiar sound
Anyway-good discussion-even tho I am a 1 4 5 guy when it comes to blues
That might be true of the wider population of the town (and is probably true of everyone by now), but in the 60s the Gitanos of Morón were very much doing their own thing, and most Spaniards were not super in touch with what was going on in the rest of the world due to Franco's dictatorship.
I've never thought about "Hit the Road Jack" that way, but it does resolve into the root in a way that is reminiscent of flamenco, now that you mention it. Of course, it's not in compás (i.e. a rhythmic pattern associated with flamenco), which is more important to that music than even note choices. That's why a lot of the virtuosic guitarists get away with adding in jazz chords here and there -- for a relatively recent example, see Diego del Morao's "Pago de la Serrana."
I'm not knocking I-IV-V, and I think it's totally fine to only play that stuff, so long as one recognizes that the progression exists within a larger 'blues language.' Seems like we're in agreement about that!
This is a very interesting discussion that I have been checking in on and appreciate the thoughts and the valuable introductions to new music, as well as the adorable Olivia Newton John lip sync video. Simpler times. It may have been stated previously but I firmly believe that just pasting "modern day" lyrics on an Albert King groove does not make it "modern blues"...or even contemporary, necessarily.There has to be something else going on. I can do a song called "Fax Machine Blues" over a Jimmy Reed shuffle and it'll just sound like retro blues with a pandering lyric, it may be great, but it aint modern. The John Lee Hooker Jr. song had a bit of that going on. I have not seen Black Joe Lewis mentioned:
A former band of mine covered "I Will Survive", complete with harp. We played it mostly straight, though our singer was a big burly guy with a deep smoke-and-whiskey-johnny-cash voice, so it often surprised audiences. The best rendition of it came the night his divorce was finalized.
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Last Edited by garry on Jan 08, 2018 2:38 PM
I was just listening to Big Walter's album "Fine Cuts," most of which isn't blues at all: "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" is Duke Ellington. Wonder what he would have said about this discussion? La Cucaracha? I would love to hear more latin jazz on the harmonica. Maybe the name of this site should be changed to "Modern Harmonica" - omit "Blues" and embrace all types of music played on the harmonica. Let's all get under the big tent, as they say in politics.
I'm gratified by where this thread has ended up at this particular moment--simply the fact that it's gotten THERE, with invocations of Clyde Woods. Not my favorite blues theorist, but I may have to revisit his DEVELOPMENT ARRESTED (which sits on my shelf) after reading tf10's really interesting and relevant invocations of his blues epistemology.
As for flamenco: there's one academic who used to attend every blues conference I went to and essentially give the same paper, which was a point-by-point comparison of flamenco and blues, laying out the case that flamenco basically WAS blues. It was a sociohistorical as well as musicological and cultural-practice case which had something to do, as I recall, with the Moorish/Arab incursion into Spain.
Google "flamenco blues" and you get all kinds of ear-candy. At the top of p. 2 you get a PDF for an in-process documentary called "Deep Blues / Flamenco Jondo." And you get this:
Flamenco crossed with "Summertime," and called "Crossroads Flamenco"!
I'm still in the beginning stages of my engagement with Clyde Woods (hopefully my characterization of his position was credible!), but his ideas seem compatible with the ways in which I'm thinking about the relation between epistemology and cultural mediation. Ultimately I'm interested in how all this stuff can suture an ontology to a metaphysics (to repurpose the terminology of the French Structuralists). I'm dealing with disparate subject matter, and, since it's an abiding love of mine, I've been looking into incorporating some sort of examination of blues prosody. In any case, Woods is the first person I've read who really theorizes the blues in itself -- I've read other people doing that with jazz, but not blues. I imagine that this is a result of my own ignorance more than anything else. You mentioned that Woods isn't your favorite blues theorist -- who is? I'm always looking to learn!
As for flamenco, that paper sounds like it would interest me. Did your colleague ever turn it into an article?
That said, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a one-to-one comparison between flamenco and blues, despite their similarities. To begin with, they each invoke a very different kind of historical memory, and while Gypsies were certainly oppressed, their history in Andalusia is pretty different from the history of black people in America. I'd say that at first glance the reception history of flamenco makes it look more similar to blues than it actually is, since there have been ethnographic debates about cultural ownership both in the blues community and the flamenco community. The difference is that in blues, it's about 'who can/is allowed to play it,' whereas in flamenco it's about 'who brought it,' 'who played it first,' or 'to whom can influence be attributed.' That alone points to a significant difference in the way the two folk forms are positioned.
Personally, I think that it's the differences rather than the similarities that might allow me to think the particularities of a blues poetics and a flamenco poetics. If they weren't quite similar, I think the differences would be far less telling. There is a recent article on flamenco that does do a little bit of that, and defines flamenco poetics relative to traditional American structurations of blackness.
To tie all of this back in with the original topic, one notable similarity between blues and flamenco is that they both possess a certain elasticity. The oldest (and most prestigious) forms in flamenco are known alternatively as "cante jondo" and "cante grande," but there are plenty of newer forms taken from classical melodies and other sources that are known as "cante chico." For a competent flamenco musician, it is essential to be conversant in both. Similarly, loads of flamenco artists have done albums that fuse flamenco with other styles. Some of the most well-regarded flamencos are 'guilty' of this: Paco de Lucía, Manolo Sanlúcar, Pepe Habichuela, Enrique Morente, Tomatito, etc, etc. We see this same flexibility in the blues, where blues artists themselves have been willing to incorporate other styles to varying degrees. I remember seeing Junior Wells and R.L. Burnside posted somewhere in this thread, and they're great examples. Perhaps Otis Taylor is another. Robert Johnson and Lonnie Johnson both did a fair amount of that in their time, to my ear -- taking elements from swing and big band, and even from gypsy jazz (in the case of Lonnie). I don't think Robert Johnson's "They're Red Hot" would have become a standard if the blues had been a rigid folk form.
Also wow, while that CROSSROADS FLAMENCO BLUES video doesn't necessarily sound like what one would expect from either flamenco or from blues, it's goddamn great music!
@Adam "Google "flamenco blues" and you get all kinds of ear-candy."
Don't have to. I can imagine, with horror and encroaching ear-diabetes, exactly what you mean.
For a long time I've been trying and failing to put my finger on what it is about "fake genres" in the modern world that I hate.
"Gypsy jazz" pisses me off, 'cos it's nothing but people imitating Django Reinhardt.
And "Magical Realism" is just people imitating Marquez.
Problem is that, although I suspected there were far more examples, I couldn't think of any more offhand (and it was unpleasant to me, so why be a masochist), so I never gave it much thought.
"Flamenco blues" at least gives me something else, if I cared.
Is that all it's about - people pretending they are not derivative by saying that what they do is a genre? ---------- Andrew. -----------------------------------------
Yeah, in an ideal world boundaries would be expanded, but this world is more flailing than ideal. ---------- Andrew. -----------------------------------------
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