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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Can Blues lyrics be explained to "foreigners" ?
Can Blues lyrics be explained to "foreigners" ?
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Goldbrick
1412 posts
May 01, 2016
11:12 AM
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Ok- had an audition for a new band last night-- it was supposed to be for guitar but it looks like I will be playing harp.
Great bunch of guys and good players
However , as is not uncommon in my part of the world ( Miami)
The leader and singer is not a native English speaker and managed to make stuff like Dust my Broom and Stormy Monday totally unintelligable
Things like a " no good donie" and "eagle flies on Friday" were pretty much like Klingon speak
I guess I will just grit my teeth and be a hired gun-- They do have a better instrumental grasp of the blues than most guys I have played with around here
But I know blues lyrics were a lot of the attraction of blues to me and I wonder about what the pull is for those who dont comprehend, to sing pretty emotional music
I know I love and listen to a lot of African High life and afro- beat --but would never try and sing it
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STME58
1673 posts
May 01, 2016
12:24 PM
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I found this brief but perhaps helpful to a novice dictionary of Blues terms.
I also found this . It is not really well laid out as you have to scroll though pages and click on the term to get to the definition, but I learned a few things I did not know.
Last Edited by STME58 on May 01, 2016 12:25 PM
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shakeylee
531 posts
May 01, 2016
3:12 PM
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I think one of the best Chicago blues guitarists is Elmo Preston .
He lives in Miami now .
His guitar playing makes you jump !
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www.shakeylee.com
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ted burke
460 posts
May 01, 2016
5:30 PM
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I was a literature student in college and took courses from poets Jerome Rothenberg and Michael Davidson, two brilliant men who , among other things, studied the poetic structures and poetic expression of non-European cultures, especially those of Native American, Asian, Islander and Middle Eastern origin. The study regimen is too nuanced to summarize here, but the point is that after the courses in which we studied cultural context, history, and linguistic particulars, attempting, as it were, to comprehend the cosmology of the cultures and understanding the linguistic formations and kinds of imagery and tropes they produced, I came away understand comprehending a world view not my own a little better. The method is fraught with problems, of course, not the least of them being the tendency to convert what you witnessing and/or studying into paradigms you already have in place. I do think, though, that listeners not native to American culture can get beyond the world views they were born into and understand blues lyrics. There are enough similarities in human experience to make empathy possible.
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Ted Burke
tburke4@san.rr.com
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