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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Harmonica popularity
Harmonica popularity
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bluzlvr
240 posts
Sep 14, 2009
2:44 PM
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It seems that every other week I'm discovering a new harp website, this site has grown huge, every other week there's news of a new harp to be released, there are so many more customizers to choose from than there used to be.
Is the harmonica undergoing a surge of popularity, or has the internet just brought out of the woodwork all the players that were already there?
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congaron
131 posts
Sep 14, 2009
3:24 PM
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It's like when you buy a new car and it seems like everybody has one just like it. I hear harp in more music than I ever realized. My wife hears it too. It's everywhere..has been for years.
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jbone
146 posts
Sep 14, 2009
3:29 PM
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the internet has proven to be a huge plus for people in virtually any field to come together and spread their wares, messages, philosophies, etc. so it does have its place in the recent surge in popularity of the harmonica.
but i think too, all on its own, with the dedicated craftsmen and artists who love the harp, it was bound to happen. add to that the constant seeking by many of us for an atomic powered unbeatable harp, and the leaps in technology, and the study on a molecular level of every asset of the harmonica, and the efforts of those craftsmen, and also of willing manufacturers to try and improve production methods, and it's easy to see that it's all right on time.
that makes us some lucky people!
imho of course!
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LeonStagg
22 posts
Sep 14, 2009
6:19 PM
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I was actually pondering a similar topic earlier today. I am only an intermediate player, but without the internet,it would have taken much longer to get to this level. This site and others like it are a wealth of information and insight filled with shared experiences that represent lifetimes of seasoning. Lessons, backing tracks, gear,etc. are all so easy to access. No substitute for actually getting out and participating in the live music scene,and cultivating relationships, but technology has really increased my development and enjoyment as a player.
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
193 posts
Sep 14, 2009
9:17 PM
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If it were not for the internet, I would still be playing Hohner.
I never met more than one harmonica player before I got on the internet. This is true. I would have no idea what is out there. I never would have known about Seydel, which led to that fateful day at Buckeye when I saw Wally Peterman with a 48 chord and knew I'd play one someday.
Without the internet, I would be blissfully unaware of most things harmonica.I would never have heard of an overblow, or throat vibratto. None of that stuff.
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MagicNick
8 posts
Sep 15, 2009
12:22 AM
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There's no way I'd have even heard of this web site if it wasn't for the internet.
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apskarp
32 posts
Sep 15, 2009
2:33 AM
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I'd include one more thing here besides the internet etc. The center of the world is Yourself. When You put your focus into something, it tends to affect the phenomenon - many times it increases it. Even though there are other "you's" around there with different focus points, You are literally the center of universe for yourself. So in the universe You live in, the harp for example is very important thing and thus it is gaining more visibility.
I've seen this in many, many things in my own life. It very often has happened that something that has been a hobby for very small group of people has become very big thing in a year or two after I've started to practise it.
I'm not suggesting that there are paraller universes for each of us, but rather that there are room for countless universes in this one that we are living in. This moment is a creation of mind, this moment is the mind.
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MrVerylongusername
513 posts
Sep 15, 2009
2:39 AM
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I'm like ElkRiver, before the net I only knew 2 other harp players locally. Neither well enough to discuss harp with. I learned by reading Tony Glover's book and playing along to records.
I agree something is definitely happening in the industry. I agree with Congaron; the harp has always been there in the background, and I don't think it is any more poular in the mainstream now. What I do think has happened is that there are forums like this where people are actually talking on a global scale about what they like/hate/want in a harp. Harp-L created a global community of harp players and events like SPAH bring them together (oh I wish I could afford to go one year). This site, harmonicaspace, harmonicaclub, Bushman forums, umpteen blogs. The point of all this is that there is far greater exchange of information. Players are not isolated anymore. Hohner has lost its monopoly and there is now a competitive market for harmonicas that is driving up the quality and the variety. The manufacturers are listening to us. we 've never had it so good. Now let's just sort out the weak dollar and Pound so that those Japanese and European prices don't seem so crazy!
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bluzlvr
241 posts
Sep 15, 2009
2:17 PM
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Before the internet, I used to get all my info from a funky little monthly publication called "American Harmonica Newsletter".
I don't think it's being published anymore...
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kudzurunner
687 posts
Sep 15, 2009
2:29 PM
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Very interesting thread here.
Many people spoke about a harmonica renaissance in the early/mid 1990s when John Popper and Blues Traveler exploded on the scene. "Runaround" was a huge hit, if I'm not wrong--not exactly a pop hit (i.e., not as big as Whitney Houston) but still very big on that college/alternative market.
Blues per se had experienced a surge of renewed popularity a little earlier, in the mid-1980, when Stevie Ray blew up big. Blues clubs opened. There was lots of club and festival work for harp guys like Cotton, Piazza, Harman, Portnoy, William Clarke, Sugar Blue, Paul Oscher (he surfaced a little later), Paul Delay (his whole in-and-out-of-prison thing), Billy Branch & Sons of Blues, Phil Wiggins, Sugar Ray Norcia, Darrell Nulisch and of course Kim Wilson. Plus Magic Dick resurfacing with Bluestime. I saw each of those guys several or numerous times in NYC.
Meanwhile, the presiding harmonica genius of our time, Howard Levy, was out there for the entire period, making his presence felt in various sorts of world musics. He certainly wasn't popular, but I believe his influence was strongly THERE, at least among the subculture of harp-folk that we belong to. He opened up a huge space within which the diatonic instrument could begin to move forward, and he elevated the general level of the musical conversation. It makes a difference to other composers when Mozart is alive and well and on the scene. Howard is a world-historical harp player. He's at least as important to the diatonic harmonica as Coltrane was to the tenor sax. You might even argue that he's as important to the diatonic harp as Louis Armstrong was to the trumpet. (This doesn't mean that his aesthetic is or should be every harp player's aesthetic. It just means that his presence, as far as I'm concerned, divides the diatonic harmonica world into a Before and an After. BH and AH.)
Take those three things--Popper, Levy, and the surge of touring straight-ahead blues harp guys--and you can begin to make sense of the harmonica's history over the past two decades. Toss in Kim Fields's definitive history, HARPS, HARMONICAS, AND HEAVY BREATHERS. Then, in the last five years, toss in a raft of insurgent harmonica manufacturers and customizers; a half dozen mad YouTube video gurus (Jason, Buddha, Ronnie Shellist, moi, etc.); Dennis Gruenling doing new things with the low harps; and Jason himself out there touring like mad..... Plus L.D. Miller on "America's Got Talent" and Jon Gindick putting on 25-30 harmonica jam camps in the past six years.
And you get something that really does begin to qualify as a bona fide surge of interest, stoked by a bunch of kindling on all sides.
I'm happy to think that this website has played a small role in furthering and focusing the conversation over the past several years. I think that we may actually still be near the beginning of what, ten years from now, will look like a great leap forward. A number of years ago, in an interview, I said that at some point in the not too distant future, blues harp players would take for granted that some facility in overblowing was needed. For a while after I said that, I looked like a fool. The evidence--or lack of evidence--mocked me. But I think things are finally moving in that direction. Or at least it feels that way, and I'm glad.
Last Edited by on Sep 15, 2009 2:48 PM
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Oisin
341 posts
Sep 15, 2009
4:03 PM
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One huge influence on me and my peers in the early 80s in Ireland was the Blues Brothers. Up until then the blues was a very vague old guys playing harp and guitar in the cotton fields type thing to me but I can remember as if it was yesterday my brother and I coming out of the cinema after watching the Blues Brothers and deciding that we both HAD to learn how to play the harp (or the mouth organ as we called it in Ireland or even the Swineophone...don't ask me why)
Pre-internet, the Blues Brothers was the biggest harmonica/blues influence on me.
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walterharp
60 posts
Sep 15, 2009
11:05 PM
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yup, internet makes it so new young guys can pick up all the technique that the old guys like me will take forever or never to develop, and makes me realize how average of a harp player i really am. it makes me better at the same time as making me realize how many fantastic players there are out there.
in the old, old days, there was one good harmonica player for 100 miles around and he was the best till somebody came touring through, but once that guy was gone, it went back. then came radio, and more info spread around and accelerated so eventually people making music locally got supplanted by the studio geniuses, or at least who the industry promoted at the moment. so now most people can get the "very best" in the world at the touch of their fingers, but never go see the music actually played live.
i am happy that i am in a college town where a live band gets people to hang around and buy a few more drinks so gets paid to play a while on a saturday night. my feeling is the average person who is not a college student hitting the bars just listens to country or 70's rock or hip hop on the radio, and buys the same songs for their ipod.
so, the internet at the same time makes harmonica more popular to a minority, but washes it out with noise for the general public.
thread jump, to me it is interesting that john mayall brought blues music so far into popular music, his band was so influential in modern rock through the british connection that spawned the start of modern rock and was mirrored here by bands like the grateful dead, and yet these same musicians that were so influenced by mayall and the old blues left harmonica out of the equation and put us in a situation where popular music is played by 2 guitars, a bass and drums.
enuf rambling it is the beer talking now....
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Andrew
613 posts
Sep 16, 2009
12:29 AM
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Pre wide wide world of web, Captain Beefheart and my work-mate Big Tom Edwards were my only influences, and I didn't act on those for 20 years! (but I said that before, didn't I)
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bluzlvr
242 posts
Sep 16, 2009
1:06 PM
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I'm reminded of the fact that in the 70's, there were TWO bands touring featuring harp players that had hits on the radio: J.Geils Band and War, but it didn't seem to create a surge in popularity for the harp at all.
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