Blues - Philosophy for Everyone: Thinking Deep About Feeling Low by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

In closing, it might be fruitful to pursue the suggestion above that the blues recreates the emotional landscape of urban life. For one, it might help answer related questions concerning who can play the blues, where it is best heard, and so on. Since the early blues speaks from the terrible experiences of the African-American people, it has often been assumed that only African-Americans can play it with any authenticity. After all, it is not just the historical list of top-notch bluesmen and women that is substantially African-American, but any contemporary list of the new generation as well: Keb Mo, Corey Harris, Shemekia Copeland, Otis Taylor, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, and many, many more. But, if I am right, then modern electric blues, at least, goes beyond that. Not only does the music speak to urban people and their experiences, but it must, in order to do so, be based in such experiences. What would these experiences be? These are the common experiences of love and loss; of work that is often repetitive, inane, and not very intrinsically satisfying; of alienation and injustice in a fast-paced urban context; and so on. None of these are the particular province of African-American people, so on that front at least the music is not restricted exclusively to black performance. But, on a different front, the music might be more restrictive. Recall that the music originated from community experience of work and play in both the African and American contexts; note also that the African-American community remained a community even as it urbanized, if only because it was marginalized as a community (though this has hopefully been changing in recent years). Hence, the hallmark of this music is that it is still communal and intimate, and its best purveyors are communal creatures that have a particular capability to communicate their experiences, often by performing in intimate venues that allow for such communal interaction. Thus, witness the many fabulous non-African-American contemporary blues musicians: Tab Benoit, Marcia Ball, Moreland and Arbuckle, Watermelon Slim, Roomful of Blues, Coco Montoya, Debbie Davies, and many, many more. Not only do good blues musicians not have to be African-American, but it also follows that the best places to hear the blues are intimate spaces such as bars, and not the festivals and arenas that are more appropriate for the younger, more display-driven rock music that is a progeny of the blues. I trust that my suggestions go some distance toward explaining the phenomenon that I have regularly witnessed at the local roadhouse.

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