Monday, March 22, 2010

(First published in Austin Downtown Arts, Summer 2001)


What happens when there are no Blues Babies being born into the Blues Family, in the birthplace of the Blues?

Blues.

Blues is a musical style that anyone with talent can learn to play and sing.

The Blues is cultural expression of a people, transmitted artistically through instrumental music, song, and language bearing an intrinsic connection to the particular life experiences, spirituality, emotions, folkways, and collective history and culture of oppressed African descendants in North America.

Blues bloodlines.

The old-timers was not born in no hospitals. They was mid-wifed into this world by somebody's grandmama, out in the country, or over in the projects, or down cross't from the cut, but really close to the church, and very much -- town or country -- down home.

My blues, your blues, Clifford Antone's blues, Hayes McMillan's blues, John Lee Hooker's blues was not born'd in no hospital. You gotta remember, back in them days, in most places, they wouldn't let no Blues Mother in no hospital no way, if all she was needin' was to give birth. Blues People were thought to be especially evolved (de-volved?), with great retention of natural survival instincts and skills, perhaps learned during slavery. Blues People didn't need, it was believed, no special medical care for something as natural as "birth." Remember, we're talking about life in the early twentieth century, rural south, America, USA.

Just take my word for it, the Blues was not born'd in no hospital. The Blues -- ever' last one of them -- was born down home, delivered by somebody's gradmama.

Birth. Progenitors, ancestors. Family. First generation. Off-spring, extended family. The further you get away from the roots of the family, yes, the blood line continues, but the further you get away from the roots of the family the further you get away from the roots of the Blues. Today in Austin, Texas or Clarksdale, Mississippi, in this new millennium, it's a long, long way away from Bessie Smith's down home of 1923.

No matter how politically expedient it is, no matter how economically lucrative it is, no matter how just plain stupid it is: If you carry the Blues Family name with you without bringing the rest of the family, the culture, without acknowledging the remaining living family members -- and worse -- without acknowledging, with reverence and due respect, that you know, understand, and give thanks to the family that birthed you; if you do all of that, smiling all the way to the bank, eyes wide-open, you are doing no less than just trying to "pass." You are a cultural liar, charlatan, thief. And you ought to wake up and smell the chitterlings (you don't even have to like to eat chitterlings, but you must at least know what they smell like when they're cooking).

I think about this stuff a lot. Many folks do. A couple of weeks ago the Sunday New York Times ran a front page story about the scarcity of real Blues People still alive and practicing the art in the Delta. They went to Clarksdale; they went into the backwoods; they went to the old juke joints and fishhouses. In the birthplace of Delta Blues, the New York Times had a hard time finding blues. Of course, there is the Museum there in Clarksdale, but I'm talking about those real living rough-and-tumble bluesmen and women who play, and sing, and live the blues life. A few are still there, but they are old and dying. They are the relics. They play the festivals in the summer, they sale a few CDs in Japan, they return home to work on the truck farms. They are among the last direct links to the family of origin of the Blues, the real blues.

Real-life, down home, country Blues People are a complicated lot, especially when it comes to their place in their home communities. You see, the blues life ain't no good life. The raw material for the blues necessarily includes living and/or being exposed to and/or truly understanding/living what it means to be Black in America. And sometimes it also means that, if the blues -- man or woman -- is singing/playing their own life story, they are not always exactly the responsible citizen, pillar of the community, perfect faithful spouse, good Christian kinda person that the Baptist look to with respect. Sometimes the quality of a good bluesman hinges on his ability to honestly communicate what it means to be a bad man, a backdoor man, what it means to be a "Jody" and be proud of it. Sometimes it just hinges on truly understanding what it means to be Black in America. Because, even if you grow up Black and republican -- with -- money in the 'burbs of Memphis, on the streets of West Memphis you might be treated as if you're just another uppity nigger who dresses too well and speaks too proper. Most of Black America (some white folks get it too, I'd guess) can understand what I'm talking about in this scenario, regardless of how or where they grew up. Somehow out of all of this joy and pain comes beautiful, soul deep, honest, gritty-sweet, soulful expression. And if you also happen to be a good player and are into the blues, that soul/cultural connection is genuine, it works (talk to Robert Cray sometime about his life in the Pacific Northwest).

The reason I say that carrying on the Blues bloodline is complex and complicated is that even down home, it's harder these days to find some of the original conditions and lifestyles that historically provided the source material for the blues. And, for a number of reasons, a great number of Black folks -- down home, town or country -- don't really have much interest in the blues. Yes, the Blues is one of the cornerstones of our cultural history, but it historically is also tied to juke joints, cut-and-shoot backwoods shacks, and big city dance halls with backroom prostitution, gambling and drug dealing. It's complicated because a lot of us recognize the musical and cultural treasure it is, but there are also those (among Black folks) who don't look at blues as something suitable for passing on to the next generation. And, to many of the kids, Muddy Waters as hero/cultural icon just don't hold a candle to Puff Daddy's star status. Naturally, that means finding the "original blues," even in the Delta, just gets harder and harder as time passes.

This is serious.

The really sad thing, for me, is that so many folks just don't "get it." I think the conversation should be about the importance of sustaining mechanisms for passing on culture, for keeping the connection to the source, for treasuring and preserving our culture. My strong beliefs and opinions, and my delivery perhaps, sometimes just get me into arguments that miss the point.

The expressive culture of a people, at least in the formative years, is tied especially and uniquely, to those people and their folkways. It might be a style of sculpture, or painting, or dance, a ritual or musical performance practice, but if it comes out of them as a very particular kind of cultural expression, they own it. If it moves on to be "pop and commercial" and they don't continue to benefit from its production, there's an integrity problem in that process. It -- the art -- may be copied, extended, changed, continued, and kept alive by all kinds of folks who do not have a direct connection to the culture, but if that link is not consciously there, and acknowledged, the integrity of the production of it is at best questionable.

Who's blues (culture) is it, anyway?

This conversation is a complex one; there are a lot of issues here. For me, this conversation is not about whether white folks can or should play the blues (or jazz or reggae for that matter). This is not a place to argue about whether Stevie Vaughan was a legit bluesman or not (he knew and would tell you the blues truth). For me the most important issues here have to do with acknowledging origins, respecting the bloodline, and understanding the essential "pre-commercial" African American cultural content/context of the Blues.

What is true today in 2001, is that folks other than Black folks are largely responsible for continuing the blues music tradition. That is not to say, however, that these folks should behave in ways that seem to indicate a lack of respect, knowledge, and understanding of the essential Blackness of Blues and it's unbreakable direct connection to African American history and culture. In fact, these latter-day blues players and entrepreneurs owe it to the tradition, and themselves, to do all they can to pay homage to the people and culture that birthed the Blues. When you receive a gift, say "thank you."

Rough-and-tumble or not, or perhaps just artistic spokespersons for those who are in indeed "rough-and-tumble," the older-than-50 set of practicing Black bluesmen and women are by and large the last generation of musicians who had direct social, cultural and artistic immersion in the pre-integration African American culture that gave the world the Blues. This is true in Clarksdale, Chicago, and in Austin.

To me, it seems logical to expect that any real Austin Blues Festival would include some of these Black Folks/Blues People on its stages.

Once again this May, Austin's biggest, best financed, most promoted blues event of the year, the KGSR (formerly Antones) Blues Festival features international headliners and (Black) blues legends (Ray Charles this year, John Lee Hooker in the past). I am glad this festival is here. I know it will be well-produced. And, damn, they snagged Ray Charles to play in Waterloo Park! What I don't understand is how, once again, they will put up this great show and (as I understand it) not include even one local Black blues performer on any of their stages.

I guess I really do get it. What I wonder is, "Do they (the producers) understand and appreciate what a slap in the face this kinda thing is to Austin's community of original Blues People?"

Perhaps it's just another case of the river city blues.

I'm up all night, again

just setting this page up. might become something i do regularly. would like to get back to writing again, so maybe this is it. we'll see.