Geez Elworm get your panties in a wad? The reason i dont post more is because im out playing in a band, in a nite club, making real music and not posing like some. Ive been on stage with B.B,Son Thomas,Son Seals,and many more you probably would fail to recognize. Nobody mentioned your name in my post so when you get personal with me ... out.Only reason im here is i thought i could relate with my kind...Harp Players.....equipment, jobs,playing styles,songs, etc.And i have been playing for 50 years come May.Oh Yeah and im an African American from the Mississippi Delta.
I'll bet that a lot of the people on this forum are like me. They heard the blues when they were very young and something about it just grabbed them and wouldn't let go. I remember hearing early rock and roll (Chuch Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis ect. and thinking that all this music has something in common but I don't know what it is. Later on I found out it was the I IV V change. Later on when I was trying to learn harp and I first hear Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me" I just about went insane. I HAD to learn how to do that. I had no choice. (Still trying to learn how to do that!) That's the way I feel about it now. All intellectual arguments aside, I really don't have a choice. I gotta play the blues.
Delta... You're right, I basically got my panties in a wad. I'm sorry, that comment was way over the line.
Honestly, I still find your views frustrating (as I'm sure you do mine) but... I forget that internet wisdom: "After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it."
Its alright Elwood, your alright in my book friend.I know im guilty of coming across crude on this computer and i apologize too. I have met quite a few South Africans who have come to the Delta during parts of the growing season to work. All were stand up guys. Glad to have met you here even though its just the internet.
That's any easy one...Lonney Donnegan. But he left it to us all in his will.
What I'd like to know is if all those Whales get any royalities from those new age music cds? I bet they'd be pretty pissed off if they knew those hippies used their songs to calm down stressed out execs.
Adam...I have a question for you. I have re-read this thread again and it has only reinforced my first statement above about this being a pointless subject.To quote one of your statements...
This DOESN'T mean that a tousle-haired guy from Yorkshire or Buenos Aires can't learn how to play some really great blues harmonica without guilt. It DOES mean that the moment he starts trying to defend his actions by making a cultural argument that tries to avoid serious engagement with the issues I've raised, he's not being serious.
Why would anyone try to defend playing the harmonica? And isn't what we are trying to do here on this forum to make palying the harp fun? Why do we have to be serious. And why would I want to feel guilty about playing a harmonica.
I have nothing but respect for you Adam and what you've given us here but I do think that people like yourself and Elwood and a few others over-intellectulaize something that the vast majority of us here just do as a hobby and for fun.
Had the original performers of what we know as 'Blues' had no talent, it wouldn't have mattered what genre of music they played; we simply wouldn't be listening to them today. And there still are many untalented blues musicians playing the same circuit. To say that authentic blues results from the dreadful lives its progenitors were literally forced to endure is to miss the point that the performances we love today have survived through merit, by making a deep connection to the minds of people who may have no idea of their literal meaning. Chuck Berry is one of the greatest songwriters in the 12-bar format, but he started out as a hairdresser, not a sugar cane cutter. Howlin' Wolf was the most esoteric bluesman of the 50's and 60's, while remaining quietly prosperous. Everybody 'owns' the blues: some are better at it than others, whatever their habitus. Same with Bluegrass, HipHop or AOR.
Last Edited by on Nov 27, 2009 1:40 AM
@Isaacullah: Thank God it wasn't me who injected Bourdieu into this discussion! If forced to weigh in, however, I'd probably say, "It's all of those things."
@Delta Dirt: I'm happy to allow you to remain nameless, but I have to ask a question, which is based on the first name (but not the last name) of the email address that you used when you registered for this forum. My question is: Did you attend my MBH get-together in Memphis during the International Blues Challenge last February?
The reason I ask is because an African American blues harmonica player from the Delta DID attend my get-together, and at one point toward the end, after we'd talked shop, I played him a Big Bill Broonzy song called "Hell Ain't But a Mile and a Quarter." I suggested one possible meaning for the song, having to do with hard times in the Jim Crow South. This player quickly suggested a meaning I hadn't thought of, one that connected the song even more plainly to hard times down South.
Was that you? If so, thanks for the insight. It certainly made clear that I'm not a fool for thinking that it's a good thing to listen deeply to the blues, and to hear the deeper resonances.
If that wasn't you--well, the blues are a big tent, and there's room for all of us.
I was once sitting at free open air concert put on by the city. I was starving, not in the sense that I was going to die, but in the sense that I had no food, I hadn't eaten, and I had no money on me or in my bank account and no prospects for money in the immediate future. It was on or around the first of the month. I know that because the gentleman across the table from me was flashing around his Welfare check money. I'd never seen him before. He'd bought fries and spilled them out on the cheap plastic tray. He offered to let anyone have all they wanted. At first I took one, then another. He was drunk. So drunk in fact that he was literally throwing money around. He seemed to be upset at what a small amount of money he had. He knew he'd be out by the end of the day. He through his money up in the air, 'Free Money, here take it.' His friends around him picked it up and put it back on the table.
I picked up one dollar bill, and I put it in my pocket. An old lady, I don't know her name, only that she lived in the same roach motel I did, saw. She didn't say anything, but she gave me a disapproving look. She'd always seemed friendly before, and never seemed trusting again. He said take it. I bought a loaf of bread.
Can I haz the blues?
Last Edited by on Nov 27, 2009 11:57 PM
You've certainly got some opinions now to think about. Have they changed your thoughts on the subject in any way? Fancy offering a summary on this long and interesting thread, if you have the time? ---------- YouTube SlimHarpMick
Education cutting in the higher levels. meanining merging the Historically black colleges together to make room b/c of the budget cuts.Also music programs getting the heave ho. South NOT AIN GONNA RISE AGAIN. AT AT OLE MISS AND OTHERS!DAT NOTE SOUNDED LIKE ME THO WERE HERE TO TAKE OUR GOVERNOR FOR A RIDE A SLOW ONE. kUDZUU DOES YOU HAVE ANY BAIL MONEY? ANYONE ELSE?IM AN ANGITATAOR WITH A SMILE KUDZURUNNER !!!!!!
Mickil Do you mean another blog post? Interesting idea...
I'm not sure I could do justice to everyone here, although I could certainly try. Wouldn't want to lump together people who arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.
It does seem that a few people might have misunderstood the original point: "white people have no right to play the blues" was not the take-home message. If anyone reading this felt like that was the point being made, I encourage you to read again. The arguments Gussow lays down are far more complicated and rewarding than that.
The discussion here has given me new ideas, new lines of argument, and also a few new ways of arguing the same old thing. I've been impressed with the way people on this forum have drawn from their life experience to challenge the views in Whose Blues and in my article on Harp Surgery. But if my basic point hasn't shifted, it's because I haven't found a satisfactory case for ignoring or simplifying the complicated politics of producing music.
At some point I would like to do a post about musicians who appropriated the blues in north africa... Very interesting stuff. (There's a hint of it in Whose Blues already.) Now that's appropriation I can believe in!
Blogward, you mention authentic blues. Do you disagree with the argument made earlier that authenticity is fiction? (Forgive me if this sounds like a challenge - I'm genuinely interested.) And with regard to hip hop - what about those accused of being fakers? In British hip hop, rappers who speak with refined well-schooled accents but rap in 'Mockney' (a caricature of a working class Cockney accent) are criticised for faking the aesthetic of poverty. Perhaps for good reason. It's not dissimilar from the cringeworthy regional sales managers who howl about havin' dem bad ole cotton-pickin' blues.
Do I mean another blog post? Not necessarily. I suppose that in the above, you've done more or less what I was suggesting. Though, not as thoroughly as I think the mass of comments warranted. Still, that's a big, time consuming job.
Anyway, glad you brought up the topic; makes a nice change from stuff about broken reeds and things like that - no offence intended to anyone, I know it's a pain if it's your reed reed that's gone tits up. ---------- YouTube SlimHarpMick
Elwood, I don't consider myself a stupid person but for the life of me I really don't understand what the point of this post is. Can you please explain...in plain english? Is it about who is allowed to play blues? If that is the case then it really is pointless as anyone can play the blues. If it is about other peoples opinion being only so and so people can play the blues then who cares what they think...you can't stop someone playing music and peoples opinions are just that...opinions.
"Who owns the blues?" - The subject is too broad to be answered in a thread, if it can be answered at all. But it's nice to think about and to hear a couple of opinions. I think everybody agrees, "you can't stop someone playing music and peoples opinions are just that...opinions." - I think that's what it boils down to.
I repeat the links because www.harpsurgery.com webstats indicate that many of the people who took the time to comment here have not clicked through to read the article to which it refers - and many who read that article did not click through to read Gussow's essay, Whose Blues. (There's no way to tell who accessed the essay via the link I provided in this thread.) If you haven't had the chance I recommend it. This is not so much a shameless punt as it is an attempt to provide some crucial context to the discussion -- particularly reading Whose Blues.
The title of this post is perhaps misleading. "Who owns the blues?" is a very simple question to answer for many people, even if they may provide a host of different answers between them.
Oisin, without going into the details and specifics listed by Gussow in 'Whose Blues' or in the rest of the essays of Journeyman's Road, here's the best summary I could offer:
Although 'The Blues' means different things to different people, in some variety or another 'the blues' can probably belong to anyone - to their way of thinking, anyway. However, the way a person claims ownership of 'a blues' can be clumsy, disrespectful, or sometimes just plain creepy. Note that you've grouped 'owning the blues' and 'playing the blues' together. Gussow and I both argue that they are sometimes separate things, and a person who's serious about taking ownership of the blues needs to think very carefully about her/his approach. In doing so they can ponder the question 'Who owns the blues' - more importantly, they can ask themselves, 'And how?'
Many people here have expressed very strongly that this approach is overintellectualising, or turning a fun hobby into a chore, or pointless navel-gazing, or an outright attack on their deeply felt connection to the music. We would argue that the intellectual and philosophical aspect is a crucial complement to the physical/technical practice of playing harp and the emotional/spiritual aspect of feeling the musical. For my part I find the process as challenging and rewarding as any hot harp riff I can think of.
I'm sorry I can't provide the simple summary you asked for. If anything, all I've done is given you another lengthy and unavoidably vague ramble. The point (our point, I think) is that simplifying this process robs us of decent answers.
Last Edited by on Nov 29, 2009 5:39 AM
Some thoughts: 1) If you ask someone my age who the best blues musician is, you get two answers: B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Unless you took an interest in the blues, people my age never heard of most old blues greats. So, in my generation's mind, they own the blues, and how well you imitate them shows how good you are at blues (Not that I agree).
2) When someone plays a genre of music very well, you can say "man, he OWNS that Sh*t." So, in this sense, ownership depends on how well you play.
3) When you play, you, in a very real sense, you own your music. Unless you have signed that right away, or are playing something someone else wrote.
Here's what the question in the title-line of this thread might mean (and it certainly means more than one thing):
Who created the form of music known as the blues? What is the origin-story of the musical genre? Who tells it? Does who tells it matter? Do black people who feel a need to tell the story of the blues tell the story differently than white people who feel a need to tell the story of the blues? (These people might include musicians, academics, docents of blues museums, people who run blues societies, DJs, your average blues fan, your aficionado-level blues fan, people in the music-production-and-sales-business, etc.) Do the blues "lead" naturally to rock-blues by Clapton, the Rolling Stones, etc.? Or do the blues "lead" to contemporary soul-blues by people such as Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Marvin Sease, etc.? Does the answer to that question depend on the race of the person answering it?
What cultural work does the ad line, "No black, no white, just the blues," accomplish? Does the line express an antiracist sentiment? Or does it reflect a white desire to claim significant ownership of the blues in the face of historical evidence about the overwhelming preponderance of African American blues performers in the pantheon of blues greats? (e.g., Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, B. B. King, Bessie Smith, Sonny Boy Williamson, etc. etc. etc.).
Do black people still "listen to the blues"? I.e., do black people still form a significant part of the audience that buys blues recordings and listens to blues radio? Should answers to this question restrict themselves to the "mainstream blues world," or should they encompass the world of so-called soul blues or Southern soul? Is it fair to say that there are, at least in America, TWO contemporary blues worlds: one overwhelmingly white, one overwhelmingly black, each largely unknown to the other, each with somewhat different aesthetic standards and preoccupations? (The second world might, for example, be represented by Rev. Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It.") If this is true, how should this social fact inflect our answers to the question, "Who owns the blues?"?
Do long and woeful histories of material, intellectual, and financial expropriation surrounding blues music and its social milieu--including sharecropping, the "cover" phenomenon, the ordinary functioning of the music business, and possibly the fact that 98% of blues folklorists and scholars before 1970 were white--have any weight in the way we answer the question "Who owns the blues?" SHOULD they carry any weight? Do black people as a group tend to answer this question differently than white people? (For the record, almost every blues autobiography by a southern-born black blues musician makes the point that the musician turned to the blues as a way of "getting out of the cotton field" and away from the exploitative sharecropping system.)
Is there a difference between playing blues music well (competently, inspiringly) and "owning the blues"? Are histories of exploitation suffered by black Americans actually evoked by and audible in blues music? Do black people as a group tend to answer this question differently than white people? Do black blues musicians as a group tend to answer this question differently than white blues musicians? Does B. B. King answer this question differently than Kim Wilson?
Are questions such as "Who owns the blues?" questions about blues-as-music, or questions about "blues" as a free-floating signifier that encompasses histories of oppression and a certain kind of race-exclusive sadness that results from this oppression?
Does "white blues," as a category of performance, encompass elements of blackface minstrelsy--i.e., comedy, mockery, burlesque--that suggest that some significant strain of white blues musicking is about NOT taking seriously the histories of oppression and mockery encompassed by black blues performance? The Blues Brothers are arguably the most influential white blues artists in history, considered worldwide: more people arguably know about the blues, and know how to dress "bluesy," as a result of the Blues Brothers, than as a result of the music or performances of any other white blues artist, including Stevie Ray Vaughan. What does it mean that the non-African-American world has been so affected by this representation of the blues: two costumed white guys (dark sunglasses, fedoras) dancing spasmodically and repeating the facetious line, "We're on a mission from God"?
Is is possible to play blues deeply and well without knowing anything about the world--black, southern, with black citizens legally segregated from whites and with that segregation upheld through brutal violence--in which the blues was created and evolved?
Since whites spoke about "having the blues" in the mid-19th century, long before blacks did, and since the first blues on record was put there by whites, is it really correct to say that "Blacks created the blues"?
The question "Who owns the blues" is not a trivial question, however one answers the questions I've spelled out above.
Last Edited by on Nov 29, 2009 6:23 AM
Okay....firstly thanks to both Elwood and Adam for your answers to this question. I think the best thing for me to say here is that I don't know enough about the history of the Blues to have an opinion on what you both say and I especially don't know enough to answer any of the questions Adam poses. Growing up in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s we had very little exposure to the Blues apart from a few old records my folk had.
However I have been thinking alot today about what you have both said and I now think I know a little bit about where you are both coming from.
My dad was a musician and played Irish traditional music. He was in a band with two of his brothers and travelled all over Ireland and Scotland in the late 50's and early 60's. They were playing in Dublin one night when they were approached by a large American guy who asked if they would like to come to the US and play their brand of music. This man was a Mr Fuller from Elektra records who indeed took them to the States (after he had gained permission from my Grandparents ...my dad was only 17 at the time) and they cut a Album and toured for about 2 years, appeared at Carnigie hall and even had a short slot on the Ed Sullivan show. This was at the height of the Folk revival boom in the US in the 60's. You can read a little more about them here...
Anyway, I often spoke to my Dad about his time in the States and he told me that the thing that first struck him when he had been there a while was the rascism he encountered in many places, especially amoung Irish/American people (who you'd have thought would know better).
Anyway I once said to him that I didn't really like Irish traditional music as I thought it had no soul and was just playing very fast and technically very well. Well...he soon put me right. He told me that no matter what kind of music you're playing, when you're up on stage and everything clicks and there's a kind of telapathy between the guys your playing with, you feel the most beautiful searing feeling in your soul and it's the best feeling in the whole world. It's not something you can try and achieve, it just sort of happens and it doesn't matter what kind of music your playing or what colour you are.
Although I'm just a hobby player,I have felt this feeling a couple of times while playing at my local jam and i know where he's coming from now.
I hadn't thought about what my Dad had said for a long time and it's only now after reading your replys that I think I get where you are both coming from. Obviously the experience with race was very differnt for me ( I only met my first black person when I came to England when I was 20) so what Adam says above makes a,little bit more sense when I think a little bit more deeply about the context.
Anyway..this has been an enlightening discussion for me and one where I have changed my opinion from "What the hell are these 2 eejits going on about" to "I think I see now what they're both saying" and I'm happy to say you've made me think differntly and changed my opinion.
Reading back through the various posts again I think for me that Kingley summed up what it all means with his post though. At the end of the day it's a very personal thing to each of us.
Sorry this post has been a bit of a ramble but I think I got it what I mean out in the end.
Yeah! That's enormously gratifying, though it looks like Adam did all the hard work...
Since you've mentioned N. Ireland, I'm reminded of an inventive spin on all this put by Roddy Doyle's story of The Commitments. For those of you who haven't seen the film or read the book, it's the very humorous tale of a group of unemployed youngsters who start a soul band in the slums of Dublin.
The friends and relatives of the main characters are enormously sceptical of the idea. But our protagonist, the enterprising Jimmy Rabbitte, argues that no musical form could be more appropriate: "The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud."
(There's no way to tell who accessed the essay via the link I provided in this thread.)-Elwood
Good, because that would be creepy!
Anyway, I often spoke to my Dad about his time in the States and he told me that the thing that first struck him when he had been there a while was the rascism he encountered in many places, especially amoung Irish/American people (who you'd have thought would know better).- Oisin
That's often the case. Groups on the bottom of the economic ladder often hate each other. Irish-Americans and African-Americans have a pretty long history of hating each other. They competed for the same jobs and had to adopt the same sort of 'us or them' mentality just to survive. When you move up the economic ladder you tend to identify more with your class than your race.
Totally agree with that Nacoran...I remember in the first years I moved from Ireland to live and work in London I was in a Laundrette in South London area called Peckham (pretty deprived area) and watched open mouthed as a African and Pakistani lady laid into each other, saying some terribly racist things to each other because they both wanted to use the same washing machine. I was only a 20 year old wide-eyed kid but it left a very lasting impression on me. One of the reasons I left Northern Ireland was to get away from the whole catholic/protestant thing which was awful as you were almost expected to jump on board which ever bandwagon you happened to be born into. The above incident was one of the most depressing things I'd even seen up till that point but it made me realise that Ireland didn't have the monoply on sectarianism/racisim....it's world-wide human condition....one group of people thinking their better than another.
It's enough to make you want to write a song about it.....
I'm as gratified as Elwood by your response--not because I need praise, but because what you've actually contributed is soulful, real, and useful; it's your story, it's your dad's story, it's a chapter in a larger story about being Irish (and an Irish musician) in the modern world. Rory Gallagher, for what it's worth, was an early influence on my guitar playing, and he was a hell of a player who deserved every bit of fame and respect that came to him. There's a long history of black/Irish interchange. Heck, at one point in the late 1980s I was taking African dance classes and the instructor, who was from Guinea, showed us a step that was 100% an Irish jig. It wasn't PARTLY an Irish jig. It was a f---ing hornpipe. It's a very unusual and distinctive step--a 1-2-3, 1-2-3 step in which you drag first one heel and then the other heel forward in a kind of circular motion. He did the step like a leprechaun from the "Lucky Charms" commercial. God only knows how he came to think of a hornpipe/jig as an African dance step, but there it was.
Butterfield was Irish-American.
Anyway, I'm digressing. But I'm really glad you shared your story. It certainly deepens this conversation. The truth is, when people start to share their stories, some of surface-y ideas about music start to drop away and the deeper truths become apparent.
I learned to play the blues in an Irish bar run by a pair of brothers named Dan and Jerry Lynch.
Last Edited by on Nov 29, 2009 1:24 PM
Thanks for that Adam...just the way you've answered explains to me what it is both you and Elwood were trying to get across in the first place. You know we Irish take a little bit longer to get things than most other races...except the Poles of course!! (Only joking!!)
Along with Jazz, white people have also taken quite a shine to The Blues, an art form that captured the pain of the black experience in America. Then, in the 1960s, a bunch of British bands started to play their own version of the music and white people have been loving it ever since. It makes sense considering that the British were the ones who created The Blues in the 17th Century.
Today, white people keep The Blues going strong by taking vacations to Memphis, forming awkward bands, making documentaries, and organizing folk festivals. Blue and Jazz music appeal mostly to older white people and select few young ones who probably wear fedoras. But that doesn’t mean that young white people aren’t working hard to preserve music that has lost relevance. No, there are literally thousands of white people who are giving their all to keep old school Hip Hop alive.
Even as you read this, white people are telling other white people about the golden age of Hip Hop that they experienced in a suburban high school or through a viewing of The Wackness.
If you are good at concealing laughter and contempt, you should ask a white person about “Real Hip Hop.” They will quickly tell you about how they don’t listen to “Commercial Hip Hop” (aka music that black people actually enjoy), and that they much prefer “Classic Hip Hop.”
“I don’t listen to that commercial stuff. I’m more into the Real Hip Hop, you know? KRS One, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, Wu Tang, you know, The Old School.”
Calling this style of music ‘old school’ is considered an especially apt name since the majority of people who listen to it did so while attending old schools such as Dartmouth, Bard, and Williams College.
What it all comes down to is that white people are convinced that if they were alive when this music was relevant that they would have been into it. They would have been Alan Lomax or Rick Rubin. Now the best they can hope for is to impress an older black person with their knowledge.
I grew up on hair metal, then grunge, the only two forms of music that might have a whiter audience than Classical, even whiter than country. I hear people talking about bands like Nirvana as 'Classic Rock' all the time now and it makes me feel old.
It's interesting how different styles of music go in and out. As a kid there were two kinds of 'metal', the devil worshipin' kind and the pretty boy rock. Both groups hated each other, but now if you listen to a classic rock station they'll be right next to each other. They really don't sound that different when you listen to how much rock has changed since then.
There also seems to be a periodic tear down in style. Disco got to fancy sounding and got replaced. Hair metal went from hard rock to a bunch of people wearing spandex and got replaced by grunge. Grunge got too loud and got replaced quietly by alternative. It's like a giant mob trying to push this way and that. Dissonance fights pretty, club fights folk, love songs fight social songs, electric fights acoustic, 'real' fights poser. Whenever one gets to popular it leads to excesses that lead to a backlash and music goes the other way. Everyone is always trying to distinguish themselves as a leader instead of a follower, but still like what ever everyone else likes.
I have had friends who will love a band until they get popular, then turn on the band. I'm not talking about bands that 'sell out' just bands that get popular. The same songs they liked the week before they don't like anymore, and not because it's been over played, but because they define themselves as being different and if other people like it then they aren't different anymore.
All that just leads to this... I'll still slug anyone who says they like Winger.
This an interesting question, and excellent posts above. As a white middle class guy I find The Onion's piece both hilarious and just a little uncomfortable.
"Hair Metal" ? I had never heard that expression... Is it opposed to "Bald Metal" ?
"...the British were the ones who created The Blues in the 17th Century." : is that a joke ? Surely, Irish music has its part in creation of the blues, and more so in country music and bluegrass, but IMO the most important heritage in the blues comes from West African music, as the vast majority of black people who became slaves in America were coming from that part of Africa.
In the question of "Who Owns the Blues", the west-african musicians certainly own a part of it. I read somewhere an excerpt from an interview of the late Ali Farka Touré, the most famous player of "Mali Blues" : he said that when, as a youngster, he first heard the music of John Lee Hooker, he was surprised to hear an American guy playing the same African music that him and his ancestors knew from all times !
It may seems simplistic, but I see the blues as West African Music (that uses the same chords) transfigued in structures coming from European Music, mostly Irish songs (for example, "Saint-James Infirmery" and "House of the Rising Sun"). The use of English for the lyrics must be also important for the differences between African music and Blues, as each language bears its own inner rythms.
In a more general way, I don't think one has to know about the "history of the blues" in order to play it deeply and soulfully ; it has a lot more to do with the skills and sensitivity as musician. But learning about that history, reading about the lives of the blues greats and researching about the meaning of the songs cannot be harmful, and helps to play the music with more insight. It's the same with every music genre.
By the way, here's a very interesting website I found some time ago, when I searched for the meaning of some songs by Kokomo Arnold ("Policy Wheel Blues" in particular). It gives a lot of information on "Hoodoo based lyrics" you can find in the blues of Robert Johnson and many others :
http://www.luckymojo.com/blues.html
Last Edited by on Nov 30, 2009 2:26 AM
I've seen this phenomeon, where the followers of two kinds of music that are very similar fight o hard to make sure that they are not thought of as similar. This brings to mind a few thoughts I oce had about genre:
It seems to me that the larger majority (particularly non-musicians) attach not only their taste to a genre of music, but their identity. Suburban cowboys, fedoras, etc... This to me seems the source of such things.
I've also seen people exclude genres of music, not because of the musical qualities, but because they were biased against the people who were making it.
Why is this issue never (or hardly ever) applied to jazz music? Blues and jazz came about around the same time period in the American South and each were influenced by the other. Even though both were invented by African-Americans, we have had great black and great white jazz musicians. Nobody ever accused Bix Beiderbecke or Artie Shaw or Gerry Mulligan or Dave Brubeck of not being real jazz musicians because they were white. I think one reason is that jazz had white musicians early in the music's history and blues had no white blues singers ( or none that were marketed as such ) until about the early 1960s. Another reason I think is that jazz was seen as a more sophisticated music and blues was identified with poverty and share-cropping and the like. This stereotype was perpetuated in the 1920s and 30s as much by blacks in the Notheastern US as much as by whites. It was that image that blacks in that area were trying to get away from. Country Blues records by Mississippi blues singers did not sell in places like Philadelphia, New York or Boston and were not even marketed there. They did listen to Blues/jazz singers like Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday but not Charlie Patton and the like. I am currenty reading "Escaping the Delta" by Elijah Wald and according to his research, recordings by white artists were popular among blacks in the Delta as well as blues recordings by black artists. The listeners of music by white singers included blues artists such as Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson so some influences of white music had to have seeped in. According to Wald, blues artists even covered songs by white singers but the record companies would not let them record white music. I was raised in the South and I'm old enough to remember the Jim Crow laws and segregation and the least segregated thing was music because both blacks and whites listened to the radio and the radio station in my home town played both black and white music. The segregation of music came from record labels. I believe it was a marketing thing. What some people consider the first rock and roll record was a Southern white boy ( Elvis ) covering a blues song. This is because there happened to be a record label owner in Memphis who would let a white boy sing a blues song.
Last Edited by on Nov 30, 2009 3:53 PM
Adam: It's not a proper discussion until someone brings up Bordieu! :) Actually, your comment about there being two blues cultures i think goes along with what I was trying to say when I asked about Blues habitus. There seems to be two Blues Habituses (Habitii?). One predominately white, and the other predominantly black. The white one is typified by, as you say, the Blues Brothers schtick. That is to say that the Blues Brothers are the archetype to which other members of this social group more or less emulate. Now what of the other group? The predominately black group? Where has their habitus come from? Has it evolved from an "original" blues way of life, or it a modern invention of modern blacks? A way to re-own blues, to take it back from what could be seen as a white appropriation of it? Who are the leaders of this new black blues, and where are the roots? I'm quite curious about this, and I don't know the answers at all? For example, does someone like RL Burnside or T-model Ford typify this new black blues? If so, he definitely has roots in "traditional" blues ethos. Is it younger folks? If so, are they pushing a new direction, or is a kind of nostalgia? Even though guys like RL and his crew had tangible connections to old school country blues (they were old dudes before they got recorded), but you could argue that they were/are very forward thinking. RL especially was. What more do you know/think about this issue?
@Isaacullah The second blues culture that Adam refers to is (I think) the Southern "soul-blues" circuit, predominantly centred around Mississippi, and pretty much defined by labels like Malaco and Ichiban's blues and soul releases.
To my ears it's a continuation of Bobby Bland's "two steps from the blues" sound - a smoother, soul-influenced take on the blues. Check out artists like Bland, Bobby Rush, Latimore, and Z.Z. Hill. Most of these artists (except Bland) are pretty much unknown - or at least unlistened to - to a white "blues" audience.
It's funny, that thing about the Blues Brothers : I never thought of the BB as an influential blues act, just a movie with some car chasing and cameo appearances of musicians. To my ear, the movie was not even about blues, but rather a sort of soul music, James Brown style.
Isn't it an American thing, mainly ? In Belgium at least, when I say I play blues, nobody has ever mentioned the Blues Brothers to me. It would be very sad if the so-called "white blues" was reduced to BB. Anyway, I think that "White blues/black blues" thing is really not an issue here, where almost every blues musicians are white. You can find bands playing Blues-rock, boogie, acoustic blues etc., so you can't say there's a "white blues style of music" either. And those bands don't try to copy black artists, nor they put a "mockery show", they just play a music they like, the way they feel it.
@DanP: re: "Nobody ever accused Bix Beiderbecke or Artie Shaw or Gerry Mulligan or Dave Brubeck of not being real jazz musicians because they were white." Not true. There's plenty of politicized commentary about "white jazz." Actually, the place to start might be: What sort of space does Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center behemoth (with intellectual grounding provided by Stanley Crouch) make for the white jazz players you've just listed? How do those players fit into the official narrative of jazz history as presently constructed by Wynton?
Check out LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka's BLACK MUSIC, a collection of essays. In Jones's BLUES PEOPLE, which is as much about jazz as blues, Jones argues that each successive stylistic innovation in jazz--swing, bebop, cool, funky, free--came about when black musicians, feeling that their sound had been coopted by white guys, strove to create something new and blacker that couldn't be coopted.
Dick Sudhalter's LOST CHORDS, I believe, is a history of "white jazz" that tries to rescue the white guys who have been left out of the official histories. Of course it's important to understand that the black guys were left out of, or misrepresented in, the earlier "official histories" of jazz. The first jazz on record, of course, was the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1916 (or thereabouts): white guys.
I was intrigued in particular by the so-called "funky" movement in jazz in in the late 50s and early 60s, a movement that led to songs with titles like "Chitlins Con Carne," "Moanin'," "Sister Sadie," and other distinctly black cultural references. Black jazz musicians at the time felt that the white players like Chet Baker had stolen and diluted cool jazz, so they decided to take it back to the roots, reintroduce bluesy melodies, reground jazz in funky rhythms that, it was felt, the white boys couldn't really swing with. Think: Art Blakey's rebellion against Chet Baker.
There have certainly been black jazz writers who claimed that Paul Desmond (who played the sax lead in Dave Brubeck's "Take Five") was a terrible player because he'd taken all the vibrato--and soul--out of his sax tone. That sort of critique has died down now, but it hasn't gone away. Gary Giddins, Marshall Stearns, and others, in the past 15 years, have critiqued Wynton, Stanley Crouch, and others connected with Lincoln Center pretty heartily. Google THE MURDER OF JAZZ and read all about it. Here's something I copied off the Amazon page for that book:
"From Kirkus Reviews Nisenson (Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest, 1993, etc.) adds another voice to the increasingly shrill debate on the future of jazz and the role of Wynton Marsalis and his friends in that future. Tom Piazza's Blues Up and Down (p. 1443) denounced critics who rejected the neoclassicism of the young musicians around Marsalis, hinting that those critics' emphasis on emotional statement and innovation had an unspoken racism underlying it. Nisenson has written a virtual manifesto for the opposing view. He jumps into the fray with both feet, accusing the ``revivalists,'' as he calls Marsalis and his coterie, of ``smothering the heart and soul of jazz with their love.'' He repeats the often-made accusations against Marsalis, his primary mouthpiece, Stanley Crouch, and their mentor Albert Murray, that there is implicit racism in their insistence that only African-Americans can truly play jazz, that jazz has its roots exclusively in the African-American experience. He also repeats the claim that Marsalis's hiring practices at Lincoln Center, where he directs the jazz program, have been both racist (few white musicians hired, only one--Gerry Mulligan--feted) and ageist. Then he offers a canned history of the music, designed to provide evidence for his own understanding of jazz a view that is no less essentialist and no less limited than the one he assails. The basic problem with this book, indeed, with this entire debate, is that nobody is offering a definition of jazz, based solely on musical analysis. Rather, as in Nisenson's book, what we are getting is a potted mix of half-understood sociology, half-digested musicology, and half-baked mythology. Nisenson compounds the felony with a writing style that is drenched in clich‚s. Will someone please step back from this fight and offer a dispassionate assessment of the state of jazz, the history of jazz, and the future of jazz? This book certainly isn't it..."
kudzurunner: Thank you for that information. I didn't know that there's the same kind of backlash against white jazz musicians as there is against white blues musicians. I haven't read very much on jazz history even though I'm a fan of most of the music. I did know that Charles Mingus was political on race issues and that there was a free jazz/liberation movement in the late 1950s and on into the 60s that was tied into the civil rights movement and the racial politics of the time. Charlie Haden, a white jazz bassist, was involved in that. Stll, the recordings of white jazz musicians such as Chet Baker, Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan and a few others are highly regarded in most jazz circles and by critics and fans both black and white. On a slightly diiferent note, Adam, you are the only white blues musician who ever appeared on the cover of Living Blues magazine (for those who don't know, it's the September/October 1996 issue). I have that issue in front of me right now. Even though I'm ambivalent about the magazine's hard-line policy of "the African-American Blues Tradition" there are a couple of very eloquent statements on the editorial page of that issue:"... Adam Gussow's studies will also be a valuable addition to the lexicon of the blues in American music, culture, and society is receiving increased attention at the most santioned levels of our formalized educational system. The fact that Satan and Adam have gelled as a musical force dispite such disparate backgrounds reflects not only the power of music as a universal language but also the complex circles of exchange, influence, and interaction that have been a creative impetus in the evolution of the blues." To that, Professor Gussow, I want to add my thanks for your contributions.
@DanP: Living Blues! Yes, I do have that curious claim to fame. Editor David Nelson happened to be part of a panel on the blues that I organized at the American Studies Association conference in Pittsburgh in October 1995 and Satan and Adam happened to be there to play the ASA dance. I killed two birds with one stone, that time! Anyway, we played a gig at The Decade the following night and Dave was there, in the audience. We were pretty potent back then. And he got a full frontal assault. So his decision was motivated by the knowledge of what he'd seen in a musical way and his sense that SOMETHING had to give with the racially exclusive editorial policy of LB, which was increasingly out of accord with the realities of the contemporary blues scene.
@Isaacullah: I don't think it's fair to take the Blues Brothers as representative of white blues in its entirety. I think Stevie Ray Vaughan is more important, and Paul Butterfield, and Bonnie Raitt (and all the female singers she's influenced), and Kim Wilson, and Tab Benoit, Paul Delay.....just to mention the Americans. Charlie Musselwhite! Not a trace of burlesque minstrelsy in that guy. Clapton and Mayall are obviously huge. As are all the journeymen, famous and not-so-famous, who back up and accompany older black legends such as Pinetop Perkins. Jimmy Vivino is a real blues guy; Paul Oscher. It's easy to pick on a few artists who make a fetish out of purveying a certain kind of retro "black" stage image--heck, I did this earlier in this thread--but that's not really fair. Sometimes I exaggerate for the sake of clarity and the hope of prompting spirited debate.
As for my own projected blues image on stage: probably some combination of Crazy Athletic Harp Guy and Vocally Challenged Blue-Eyed Soulster, with a pinch of Jazz Cat thrown in. I'd put Magic Dick and Madcat Ruth in this category.
Last Edited by on Dec 01, 2009 11:07 AM
Everything feeds off of everything. There is enough blues to go around. Without some German jeweler tinkering with Chinese invention there wouldn't even be a harmonica. In school I was a big fan of class-warfare theory. So instead of asking is Blues a black or white thing, how about asking if it is a rich or poor thing? Or just an insider/outsider thing? 'White' elites wouldn't have invited a black blues player to dinner, but would they have invited a white blues player? You can switch the question around to all sorts of permutations.
Gene- There's a question! I've never really followed dancing. The only person I'd ever know by name who I've seen do tap is Fred Astaire!
Are we not missing a fundamental point? The debate isn't about whether I have the right to play the blues, it's about whether someone else has the right to say whether I have the right to do so. It's not about ownership; the thread title should read, "who are the gatekeepers of the blues?"
There is no 'real' blues or 'fake' blues. Everything is created with valid intention. Someone else applies those labels.
In all fairness to the Blues Brothers, it did start out as a skit on Saturday Night Live, and I thought it was funny as hell. (Love Aykroyds' chaining his harp case to his wrist!) Who would have thought it would have evolved into such a big deal. I have no doubt that all this came from a genuine love of the blues from both of those guys.
