WeenieCampbell.com
The Unwound Third => Jam Session => Topic started by: greynolds on May 18, 2015, 04:38:57 PM
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Saw this post by way of Dom Flemons' Facebook page:
http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.com/2015/05/can-white-people-play-blues.html (http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.com/2015/05/can-white-people-play-blues.html)
I've been turning it over for a few days and still haven't made up my mind. I've been a big consumer of his video lessons at SonicJunction but am feeling played for a chump. If his heart lies where the blog post seems to indicate, why bother to teach?
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I'd hate to think it was all about the Benjamins
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Its been in in discussion elsewhere and after some thought I believe he's entitled to teach whoever wants to learn from him, he's entitled to his opinions, whether or not anyone finds them extremist, his religious beliefs, and Afrocentric orientation and to define himself.
I unfriended him on facebook a while back because I found his posts extremist and they cast a shadow over his teachings IMHO. Learning from a teacher involves trust for me to be able to learn from him/her and I would not be able to with him.
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I will admit that there are aspects of the "blues" that are impossible for me to understand. However, most of the "woman done me wrong" type songs are common to every race/religion/ethnic origin. Part of the reason that the blues appeals to every culture is the universal aspect of broken hearted, life treating me badly, nothing ever comes out right.
We still sing songs that are hundreds of years old, and know of many recent songs that will fall into that group. 200 years from now, people will still be singing the Beatles songs....I doubt you'll find people hanging around the piano singing "Thriller" - although they might still be doing the dance routine once a year.
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well, he'll certainly get views posting stuff like that.
Kinda funny to be schooled about blues culture by a guy from Denver.
edited to add: and I definitely DO realize that pointing that out tilts toward the "ad hominem"
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One does, therefore one can.
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My biggest objection to that piece is that it's sloppily written -- I'm still not sure what his point is. Blues is black music, yes, and white people should sing in their own voice, but then anything white people sing in the blues genre will be a sorry imitation of the real thing, so don't bother. Huh?
Some of his points about "guitar heroes" and so forth I agree with. But there's an awful lot of BS mixed in there too.
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My response on his blog:
(sorry for the length)
Several points.
What if in this article the word Black were replaced with German and we were not talking about Blues but 17th through 19th century German Baroque and Classical music? What if someone made the claim that this music couldn't really be understood
by anyone who wasn't German and hadn't experienced the particular culture of Germany during those periods even though that era's culture had changed through time, enough to make it almost unrecognizable? What if the article went on to label the playing of that music by Black artists like Andre Watts, or Leontyne Price as somehow inauthentic because they were Black, or Yoyo Ma because he is Chinese?
What if it criticized singers like Paul Robeson, Marion Anderson, Leontyne Price, Jessie Norman, Katherine Battle, for proper pronunciation of Italian, German or Russian lyrics because doing so was not expressing their true voice, i.e. not giving clues as to their ethnicity?
One could argue ,as you have eloquently, that the SOUND of an artist's singing is an essential component of the music and not an afterthought, and therefore in order to make Verdi sound the way Verdi intended his music to sound, the singer is obligated to stay true to the composers intent by shaping the sounds according to how they were conceived.
If a White artist were foolish enough to try and play the work of Sleepy John Estes for example, one of the greatest vocalists ever, would he or she not be obligated to try to reproduce the sound of his vocals as closely as they could? Since his vocal inflections, timing, accent, and timbre are essential, defining qualities of his work?
The Blues, for better or worse has gone from being an obscure local music to being a recognized part of universal human culture more quickly than any other Art movement in history as far as I can recall. Has something been lost in the process? Undoubtedly. Many if not all of the original motivating forces which created it have changed in their particulars or have vanished along with a million other cultural behaviors and artifacts of the same initial period.
We are now two or three generations distant from the original creators of this music. I think you'd admit that even someone as gifted and studiously committed, and Black, like yourself can't quite get the "thing" that inhabits this music like the original players did. Neither can Jerron Paxton or Dom Flemons, close as they come, and much as I think they're great.
So you can view the participation of American Whites, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arab, Italian, Israeli, Jamaican, French, German players as an example of cultural imperialism, and not be entirely off base, or, as the fabulous and extremely unlikely triumph of the music and culture of the most downtrodden, disenfranchised and brutalized segment of the American population of its time.
Either way the Blues has started to morph into what can only be described as a "Classical" music
with an established core repertoire, and the equivalent of conservatories, albeit pay as you go online ones, to teach the basic guitar skills needed to play this music somewhat credibly.
I agree wholeheartedly that to ignore singing is to miss the point of the music almost entirely, but clearly disagree that Whites, Asians and others should not seek to reproduce the vocal sounds of
the original players. I believe to do so is to disrespect the intentions of the original artists. Like it or not the original records have become something akin to scores and as people attempting to play or reproduce this music it is incumbent upon us to sing the vocal parts as close to the originals as possible. An impossible task.
Behind all this is a labor issue. Do White people intrude on Black artists getting a fair share or even the Lion's share of what little money is devoted to this music? I think its fair to say yes.
Its a problem. I personally stopped playing out for many years when I realized that Larry Johnson whom I knew from when I studied with Rev. Davis, and with whom I was friendly and whose playing I admired ,could not get enough work to survive. That was in the early seventies. The situation has somewhat self corrected due to audience preference for seeing modern Black musicians play this music rather than a White player. As far as how I choose to sing, well, Rev. Davis called me one of his boys and a right sportin' Gitar Player..so I answer to an even HIGHER AUTHORITY!
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I guess what I was struggling with while reading this piece is how little room he leaves for cultural interchange in his history and understanding of African American music. When a New Orleans brass band broke into "Didn't He Ramble" were they playing "black music" or "white music"? How about when Charlie Poole sang it? In mutating from a version of The Derby Ram into an entirely new song, did it become the cultural property of one group or race? How does the white 19th century parlor guitar tradition relate to blues guitar in terms of pieces like Spanish Fandango? I'm not sure Buddy Bolden needed Sousa's permission to rag out a version of "Stars and Stripes Forever."
Blues and jazz are black music, and there's no denying that, but they didn't come into existence and flourish in a vacuum. I think in some ways it does a disservice to the music to ignore the ways in which white reaction and participation affected the path and development of these forms of black music. I think its possible to do so while also acknowledging the deep-seeded racism in our countries cultural history and the tendency for white musicians to appropriate and strip away black forms of expression.
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Why does Corey teach the blues to non black people?
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Well, if Corey Harris disapproves, then I'm sure we'll all cease and desist playing the Blues immediately ;D
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Oh well. Never much cared for his music anyway!
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Well, if Corey Harris disapproves, then I'm sure we'll all cease and desist playing the Blues immediately ;D
There are enough Tin-Pan Alley songs available, that might be an option.
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In a way this is a monster that the curators of Blues have created. Go to the RBF, even a slight mention of a white Blues musician is cause for the administration to shut the thread down. Where is all this deep Black Blues culture, curated by Whites going to get us in the end? Shit like this. We've created an attitude with this music which is absolutely claustrophobic & idiotic. Poor Blind Lemon. Here's a musician who created such a beautiful, interesting & singular art form yet some will never let him be anything other than a historical Black man who probably suffered (or at least his people did) & so we can never really think of him as anything other than a victim. What bullshit!! Every human is a victim of life. When we listen to the Blues it behooves us to take into account the plight of our Black brothers & sisters in days past & present, that goes without saying, but suggesting that two people cannot relate, or cannot create an interesting dialogue (ie Whites playing the Blues) is the epitome of ignorance.
What are Corey Harris' roots? I've never enjoyed his Blues playing very much & wouldn't be surprised if his foray into the Blues world spoke as much to opportunity as it does to inspiration.
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I'm not too familiar with Corey Harris, so I did some research online.
Turns out that two of the biggest feathers in the hat of "Hard Travellin' Bluesman, Corey from Denver" are participation in an album of Woody Guthrie songs and, a Johnny Cash tribute album.
What happened to the inflexible belief that you shouldn't play music that emanated from a member of an ethnic group other than your own? HA! This guy's been busted
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I have great respect for Corey Harris and I enjoy his music very much, but I would like to sit down and discuss this issue with him.
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No matter how you package it it's the same kind of discussion that creates negative controversy. Take away the perceived labels there is no me and them.
In the end it is people playing other peoples music.
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I think it basically falls into the category of "taking yourself to seriously".
I mean, life is tough. The blues helps you get through. It did then, it does now.
I don't have the life experiences/history of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, or Dave Van Ronk either, even though we're all white. But there music, like the blues, helps me get through and makes my life a little sweeter in the process. So I use it.....
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It has come to my attention that there aren't a helluva lot of black people who can play 'the blues', whatever that is, anymore either. The whole discussion is absurd and at the same time unfathomable and uncomfortable since nobody has actually understood or explained (to my satisfaction, anyway) why such tectonic shifts in music occur. I believe Corey Harris is likely struggling to understand it, as are we all. His conclusion is his own but doesn't warrant much discussion since he has no answers.
To put it another way, he should be glad. Most tectonic shifts completely wipe-out all active participation in whatever musical genre other than by a few die hards. Oh wait, I guess that's what we are around here, black or white. Good for us. So his point is... what, exactly? And who really cares what he thinks? Not me.
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Kinda silly and a bit pathetic, really. You might just as well argue that Jessye Norman shouldn't sing opera. Corey is a fine musician but I have never really been able to connect with him despite having been around him when he was the Artistic Director of Blues at Centrum. I thought maybe it was my gender but I can see now it's cause I'm white.
I don't buy his argument, because I know plenty of musicians who play the music of their ethnicity who are thrilled and encouraging when outsiders want to learn more about it and especially when they play it well.
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Two words: Stevie Ray. No further debate necessary ;)
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Stevie Ray
please don't confuse blooz with blues.
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:P
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I may need some education here: what is blooz?
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"Blooz" is a derogatory term, applied to loud, bar bands.
If you've ever seen the movie "Ghost World" there is a scene with a group of young, frat boy types, who have a band called "Blues Hammer". That's a pretty good example of "blooz"
It's hard to imagine that anybody would put Stevie Ray in that category, or, be dissing Stevie Ray in any way, but there are some folks who just don't like electric
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Take any music filled with craft, sensitivity and attention to detail and replace it with bombast and you have 'blooz'.
Electricity is just fine. Even Stevie is just fine for what he does, but using him in the context of this 'discussion' is doing him and blues a disservice.
I have no real opinion on SRV - except to say that taking what he does as blues generally ends up missing the point in what he does and in what blues is about.... maybe I've been on the internet for too long, but I've seen it happen over and over and OVER again.
yawn.
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Hi Frankie,
If you would, I would love to hear your thoughts on "what blues is about" and why you would not call what SRV did "blues generally."
Thanks,
Joe
P.S. Your performance of the Greyhound Bus tune was amazing!
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and before anybody gives in to some deep-seated need to defend SRV (as if he EVER needed it) or to point out more exciting examples of white people singing blues - let me just point out that doing so is buying into Harris's whole argument, to the extent he can be interpreted as even HAVING one.
My point is that this is an empty, specious example of using an incendiary assertion to draw attention to oneself.
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If you would, I would love to hear your thoughts on "what blues is about" and why you would not call what SRV did "blues generally."
Maybe I'll try to put it together sometime, but I'd rather not draw any more attention to this topic.
P.S. Your performance of the Greyhound Bus tune was amazing!
Thanks - I get lucky sometimes!
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I enjoy both acoustic and electric blues. One of my favorite albums is the first Paul Butterfield Blues Band record (1965). Michael Bloomfield played guitar on that and was totally accepted in the black music scene. Waters, Spann, Sunnyland, BB King, he was like a son to them.
I hate these "Can White People Play the Blues?" discussions. John Lee hooker was asked about this once and reportedly said something like "if I close my eyes I don't see no colors".
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Big Joe Weems, there are a lot of discussion venues for electric blues on the internet. This is not really the place for that. The focus here is on acoustic blues & close relatives from the great exponents of these styles, going way back to the beginning of recording and earlier.
Sure some electric stuff gets discussed, but when it's plugged-in it's generally country blues played in the same spirit, just using cheap instruments and amps. Rock blues stars don't get much air time here, and that's the way we'd prefer to keep it if that's OK with you.
Incidentally this topic is in the wrong place, it probably belongs in Jam Session (?)
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Just thought I should add that for those of you who may be interested Corey Harris has written a follow up article to the one mentioned here, in which he discusses the reaction to the original post. The link is as follows http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/can-black-people-write-about-blues.html (http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/can-black-people-write-about-blues.html)
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It's official after reading Harris' blog part two that he is an unadulterated racist. The essence of racism is claiming that anyone has a "birthright" to anything based upon their race. Lacing his grossly racist statements with several true facts does not make his racism less nauseating. It sounds like the source of his anger is a frustration for being underpaid. He has exposed himself as much more of a businessman than an artist. Sad on one hand. But on the other hand you can't be affected much by someone you don't respect. And a racist gets no respect from any truly intelligent person. I, along with hundreds of others on this site, reverence and revere the hundreds of black artists who are talked about here daily. But Harris has no place among that group, and is now living proof that book learning and real intelligence are very different things. I would say, "God help you, son," but it don?t seem like to me that God takes care of old folks and fools.
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Well, after reading Part II, I'm inclined to be say that my opinion hasn't changed. I hope this hits him in his pocketbook...
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Corey's slightly passive aggressive rant in part 2, if you make it to the end, seems to be all about declaring ownership, nothing more, nothing less. He would like everyone to say, all together now, "Blues is Black Music".
I trust that will make him feel better, but probably not, since everyone knows darn well it's black music, mostly, and only a deluded few would claim otherwise or accuse blues fans of not acknowledging that basic fact.
Perhaps he's just a naturally grouchy person, I dunno, I've never met him.
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BTW, he states that while blues is black music that does not mean people of other colors can't or shouldn't play it.
This is great news for the Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, South African and West Indian cricket teams, etc. I was about to go online and bitch endlessly about how how cricket is an English sport and they should stop being so good at it and accept that the English invented it and they'd darn well better let them win occasionally.
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This is great news for the Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, South African and West Indian cricket teams, etc. I was about to go online and bitch endlessly about how how cricket is an English sport and they should stop being so good at it and accept that the English invented it and they'd darn well better let them win occasionally.
New Zealand just did exactly that. Took a last innings collapse (both openers out for 0) at Lords, but the English were allowed to win. Can't say they seemed teddibly grateful.... Seemed to act like they deserved it.
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Hey don't ruin my absurd analogy with facts!
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Adam Gussow wrote this response a while back. I agree with much he says although his tone & the 'jihad' stuff were unfortunate. I agree with much of what Corey says as well, I just think that coming from him it's a bit loaded. For some of the reasons Adam mentions in his response. This is a complicated issue that many in the Blues world are just not adult enough to talk about.
https://www.facebook.com/adam.gussow/posts/10152883507203061?hc_location=ufi (https://www.facebook.com/adam.gussow/posts/10152883507203061?hc_location=ufi)
An open letter to Corey Harris, prompted by his blog posting earlier today, "Blues is Black music!"
http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.com/ (http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.com/)?/can-white-people-pl?
Hey Corey:
Ralph Ellison called the song you?re singing, "beating that boy." Shelby Steele called it "race holding." I call it a fairly predictable ideologization of the blues: an oversimplification made for polemical purposes. The arguments that you make, with few exceptions, have all been made before; they're almost all half-truths. Half-truths contain some truth, but to the extent that you think you?re uttering the final word on the blues, from a position of high and mighty righteousness, you?re fooling yourself.
The one surprising moment is when your diatribe veers, in the final paragraph or two, towards something that is actually in line with your life as a blues playing professional who spends a fair bit of time teaching white people how to sing and play the blues. THAT paradox is worth pondering. You don?t speak in this essay about that teaching--i.e., the fact that you?re the creative director of the Port Townsend Country Blues Festival--but you give it away by the actual tenor of your remarks at the very end of your essay:
"White blues lovers who want to sing and play in the style should stop trying to sound Black. Keep it real and sing like who you are! Be true to yourself! Express yourself, not your imitation of someone from another culture. This is what true artists do."
I completely agree! That?s something I hammer away at on the forum of my own blues-focused website, Modern Blues Harmonica. I was taught that lesson, forcefully and repeatedly, by my own African American blues master, Sterling Magee. (When I listen to Tab Benoit and Bonnie Raitt, I hear blues players who have learned that lesson and have much to teach us about how to make the music live.) I?m glad we agree on something. But we disagree on many things.
One of your many errors is in insisting that because blues is "culture and history," white folks don't have an earned and organic relationship with it. White people have been playing, singing, and dancing to blues for more than a hundred years at this point. It's time to stop pretending that it's all one big stupid ripoff. Jimmie Rodgers and Roscoe Holcomb aren't ripoffs. Marion Harris, a white blues singer from the 1910s and 1920s, had a lot of black fans. So did Elvis in 1956. He was mobbed by black female teenyboppers at the WDIA show in Memphis. He had number #1 hits on black urban radio in a dozen cities across America that year. If blues is a call-and-response music?and I can?t believe you?ll argue with me on that point?then aren?t the audiences, black and white, an important part of what the music is about? Shouting ?Blues is BLACK music? unwisely writes off that half of the blues equation. Either you care about bringing pleasure and enlightenment to your many white fans, or you don?t. Which is it? Or is it both?
One thing that you don?t do--because people who make your sort of angry case for blues as BLACK music never do this--is discuss, or even mention, the contemporary soul-blues scene: black music made by black performers for all-black audiences. I?m talking about the kind of music people listen to in my part of Mississippi: Marvin Sease, Johnny Taylor, O.B. Buchana, Donnie Ray, Vick Allen, Ms. Jody, Lamont Hadley:
http://www.mississippibluesfest.com/news/ (http://www.mississippibluesfest.com/news/)
You?re not a part of that scene. You don?t have any audience among that particular crowd of black blues lovers. They're just not interested in your particular version of the blues. That must hurt! Choosing as you do to perform a repertoire that draws on older styles, you?ve consigned yourself to a life in limbo--making pilgrimages to Africa, communing with musicians there, spreading your separatist Afrocentric gospel, voicing your pain and sense of cultural outrage in blog posts like this and on the occasional conference panel, even while your living depends to a significant extent on playing clubs and festivals and teaching blues musicianship at events in which white promoters, white audiences, and white musicians dominate. You?re competing with white blues players and acts for gigs. I don?t blame you for being pissed off that white folks are competing with you, telling the blues story in their own way, picking the big-stage acts for mainstream blues festivals, and putting a fair number of talentless, minstrelesque white blues players on contemporary blues radio. But there IS another, all-black blues scene where your claim ?blues is BLACK music? makes a whole lot more sense?and it?s not your world. So you live in this blues world, the ?mainstream? world, and yet you rage against it.
Meanwhile, people in 175 countries around the world visit my website every year, seeking to learn how to play blues harmonica. That?s not a misprint; that?s Google analytics. EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD is in love with the blues and wants to learn how to make those sounds. We're way, way beyond the black/white thing, my friend. From a global perspective, it ain't just about the white boys anymore. It's about Cal/Indian harpist Aki Kumar. It's about Chicago guitarist Shoji Naito and his "Blues Harp Tracks" website. You could, if you chose to, celebrate that fact. You could chalk it up to the Senegambian DNA encoded in the music?the stuff that was put there by the Arab trade routes, the raids (by blacks, whites, and Arabs), and by the Sengambian ability to absorb influences while retaining core values. Celebrating the power and depth of the blues, you could seek to celebrate both the African cultural sources and African-American struggles that lie behind the collective achievement of the music in its heroic mid-20th century phase. You could seek to educate, rather than preach. You could do good work without jihad.
But you prefer jihad. AND you prefer to make your living in a mainstream blues scene dominated by white people. That?s certainly your right. But it?s a surefire recipe for alienation.
I'm intrigued by the IMpurity of the contemporary blues scene. I groove to the paradoxes. I'd respect you more if you were willing to entertain them. But doing so would interfere with the purity of your ideological position. Ideological purity isn't something intrinsic to the blues. Blues--real blues--has more of a sense of irony than that. As Kalamu ya Salaam once said, "life is not about good vs. evil, but about good and evil eaten off the same plate." I?m sure you know Salaam from your time in New Orleans. You?re trying to make the blues into good vs. evil. That?s one sort of feeling that animates the blues?we?ve all been filled with simmering rage at a lover, or the world, at one point or another?but it?s only one feeling. It?s not the whole story.
I'm currently reading the published version of BLUES ALL DAY LONG, Wayne Goins's long and remarkable biography of Jimmy Rogers, Muddy's guitarist. Wayne, a black Chicagoan, grew up in and with the blues; his father was a friend of Little Walter's. In ideological terms, Wayne sits at the opposite extreme from you. He?s an amazingly gifted jazz/blues guitarist as well as professor of music, and he has no ideology?at least no ideology that seeks to parse the blues into black and white. He's more interested in capturing the whole arc of Rogers long and epic black blues life--an arc that took Rogers from an entirely black musical environment into a place where his supporting cast was almost entirely white musicians, including harp players like BBQ Bob Maglinte and Steve Guyger . Goins has interviewed everybody; he starts the book with a long monologue by Kim Wilson, another white blues player whose life and art rebuts the title of your essay. What comes across in Goins?s biography is Rogers?s sense of exactly what he was questing for, musically, along with the irony that it was white blues musician/producers, including Rod Piazza and Wilson, who ultimately helped him record the music he was hearing in his head and gain the public recognition he deserved. Shouting ?Blues is BLACK music? does an injustice to the many non-African American blues players (including a fair number of Japanese guys, by the way) who have helped older black blues players realize their dreams.
Goins?s book is the counterstatement to your jihad. It's about how blues culture actually works, in our time; it's about a long swath of history that we're still sorting out. It's about the excitement felt by young (black) men in the mid-to-late 1940s trying to come up with a new sound; and it's about the excitement felt by an older Rogers and his younger white disciples as he began to come back on line and his "old" sound caught the fancy of the white blues imagination in the late 70s and early 80s.
When I invited you to the 2004 ?Living Blues? symposium at the University of Mississippi, I made a point of gifting you with a piece of artwork that was as dear to me as any piece of artwork I?ve ever owned: the ?Mother Mojo? necklace that Sterling ?Mr. Satan? Magee had given me. It hurt to give that away; I gave it away precisely because it hurt to do so. I respected your artistry greatly and wanted to acknowledge that in a public forum, without jive. It was a gift to me from my own blues master, an American treasure in his own right. I passed it along to you. I trust that you?ve still got it. I hope you find what you?re seeking, with or without the help of my gift.
Life?and blues?is not about good vs. evil. It?s about good and evil eaten off the same plate.
-Adam Gussow
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Bravo, Adam. Well said
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There's a lot to agree with in both Harris's and Gussow's position, I suppose, but in general, I have a seriously bad attitude. When it comes to the vast majority of 'professional' musicians of ANY ethnic stripe purporting to play 'blues,' I'm with Yank (speaking to Howard Armstrong in Louie Bluie, over his dinner):
"I wouldn't hire you to work in my yard."
I'm not saying there aren't good ones - there are. But the best ones seem, as always, to be under the radar.
And no, I'm not going to post a list of guys I like or don't like.
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Being an engineer by training and by trade, I can't help but feel that half the world's problems would be solved if people would just crisply define the question they're trying to answer and the terms they're using in the answer.
So if your definition of the blues is that it's a specific musical form with a customary set of scales, melodic forms, harmonic progressions, and performance conventions, then it's self-evident that anyone schooled in that style can play the blues.
If, on the other hand, you define the blues as the cultural expression of a given group of people at a given moment, then it's just as self-evident that only that group of people at that moment can play the blues.
I also happen to think that anyone playing or singing any form of music is by definition expressing the specific culture and moment in history that that exists in. So when I'm sitting on my back porch making my feeble attempts to play and sing the blues, I'm faithfully and authentically expressing late 20th/early 21st middle class American culture, and nothing else. And that's just fine with me.
Dang! I've just taken all the fun out of the argument! Oh, well, we can always sit and argue about where the blues came from, since the specific answers to that question are lost in the mists of time. :D
And by the way, frankie, I'm not afraid to name names: I just can't stand the way Lawrence Welk sang and played the blues. :P
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I don't know dj.
Old Lawrence did a pretty dang good job of giving me "the blues" everytime my parents had him on the box.
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Your parents watched Lawrence Welk? That show was strictly my grandmother's province. He was too whitebread even for my amusical mother.
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I've gone to YouTube and searched for videos of, either of Lawrence Welk's guitarists, Neal Levang or Buddy Merrill. It's embarrassing to realize that, as a teenager, I thought of these guys as no-talent hacks
What a moron I was.
Glad I'm such a fount of wisdom today ;D
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Cricket is an English sport. So is rugby and football, or 'soccer' as it's known here.
Opera is European music. Rock & Roll is North American music, a percentage black and a percentage white. Soul is Black. Jazz is kaleidoscopic. Rap and hippity hop are black, and they can keep it. Country is white, and they, likewise, can also keep it, mostly. Klezmer is Jewish, Polka is European. Tex Mex is the result of polka standards and instruments finding their way into the repertoires of Tejano-Mexican conjunto accordion bands.
My point is this. There never was any point to this discussion. Music transcends culture, except to academics who need to write a thesis every so often. Why do they feel the need to do that, is probably a better discussion.
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Cricket is an English sport. So is rugby and football, or 'soccer' as it's known here.
Actually, not that I want to cause any arguments but I'm fairly certain that crochet is of Scandinavian origin.
Oh!! Cricket... very sorry, my mistake, carry on as normal.
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Right... crochet is a Scandinavian craft. Morris Dancing is a British dancing kind of thing. 'Maurice Dancing' is the French equivalent. Blues is black music. All are equally true. Well except for 'Maurice Dancing' which was an attempted joke.
Sorry, what were we talking about again?
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We were discussing the Lawrence Welk show. Try and keep up ;D
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If you grew up in the Lawrence Welk era, I highly recommend catching one of the shows which are syndicated on PBS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg)
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Am I crazy, has this been edited & rewritten? Because I find it making much more sense & I think it's a well-thought out & well stated post where I didn't seem to feel that way the first time I read it. ???
http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.ca/2015/05/can-white-people-play-blues.html (http://bluesisblackmusic.blogspot.ca/2015/05/can-white-people-play-blues.html)
He's saying stuff a lot of us here in the hallways of Weenie would agree with, I think. I don't remember reading some of the stuff about singing & the adopting of old-timey cliche's, which I fully agree with. I DON'T agree that Lemon & Blake & Johnson weren't seen as guitar heroes in their community. We've heard a lot of older Blues musicians talk about the artistry of some of these players & their skills.
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Am I crazy, has this been edited & rewritten? Because I find it making much more sense & I think it's a well-thought out & well stated post where I didn't seem to feel that way the first time I read it. ???
I don't think it has been edited because I've got a copy of the post from when he first put it out and after quickly scanning through it looks pretty much the same article to me.
It would be interesting if people were to go back now and read it and then to see whether or not they viewed what he said differently. I agree with you that there is a lot in there that makes sense although I would also say that he has for whatever reason bordered on the edge of being provocative, especially by using techniques like always capitalising the word black and never the word white. This kind of thing could be called racist be a lot of people, however I don't think he is racist, I think he is a clever man who is pushing certain boundaries to get some kind of response.
It is a well thought out article and it refrains from making any actual definite statements like "White people should not play the blues?", he knows what he is doing and I think that he has many valid points. I do think that a lot of people went there to read his article with a mindset of wanting to be angry and disagree and that this may have clouded judgment in certain people. It would be interesting to hear others opinions after a re-reading of the article. In many ways I think the fact that it has generated such discussion with such passionate responses is a good thing because it means that blues music is still relevant and still really matters and for me that is wonderful to know.
I DON'T agree that Lemon & Blake & Johnson weren't seen as guitar heroes in their community. We've heard a lot of older Blues musicians talk about the artistry of some of these players & their skills.
I wouldn't be able to say for definite whether or not the above mentioned were seen as guitar heroes in their community or not. I would however be cautious of using evidence such as what you have stated, from 'older Blues musicians' simply because of the fact that they are 'musicians' and therefore more likely to view other 'musicians' as heroes of a community. It is easier for a guitarist to speak highly of another guitarist because they have more of an understanding of what has gone into making that person so unique in style of playing etc.
I would presume that in general it would be easier for non musicians to associate with singers as it may be assumed (wrongly) that there is less skill involved and therefore it could be seen as something anyone could do.
This is probably the belief in modern culture, who do people view as heroes now and who do they most associate with? Probably for the majority it would be singers, which in some ways is only natural.
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I wouldn't waste my time reading it again. It's nothing more than one man's opinion. It's hard for me to imagine why anyone else would care either.
Mr Harris isn't even on my radar.
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A Black woman from Augusta Georgia sings the music of a late nineteenth-early twentieth century German Composer...END OF STORY as far as I'm concerned! Listen and weep.
Jessie Norman and the deceased as of today Kurt Masur RIP>
https://youtu.be/LqugWCw3cRs
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I had happily forgotten all about this mess, but thank you indeed Mr. OMuck. Jessye owns that... 'Nuff said.
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Friends,
After many months of reflection on this topic, and then going back and re-reading the four pages of comments it has spurred here thus far (there are dozens more comments--many intelligent, many foolish--on Corey Harris' Facebook post where he initially shared this link) I feel compelled to lay out a few thoughts with the humble request that my fellow Americans read them, consider them for awhile, and then respond as they see fit. People of all colors from outside our country are, of course, encouraged to engage. But the thoughts below are addressed specifically to my countrymen who think Corey's article is somehow aggressive, insignificant, misguided, or otherwise irrelevant to what we do here.
1. Being dismissive of the perspective and issues raised by this article is regrettable and unwise, because what this is about is actually larger than the tradition that we all love so deeply--and that is damn big!
I want to state first of all that what we are clearly interested in here is not just blues, but many stylistic permutations of early American music. That tradition is clearly the whole reason we are talking together on this forum. But, as you will surely agree, that ENTIRE tradition (whatever the colors of ALLL the people who helped forge it) would be wholly unrecognizable without the incredible and diverse contributions of black Americans.
2. That impact, that pervasive influence exerted by black musicians on not only American music--but American culture at large--combines with the ongoing reality of minority persecution by our [still majority white] culture and institutions to prove one of Corey Harris' main points: racism continues to negatively impact black people, and (more specifically for our purposes) the lot of the black musician as he or she attempts to participate professionally in the blues culture that their ancestors created. That is not just ironic. It is also wrong.
3. Just because we're a bunch of people who are mostly studying this great old music for fun doesn't change the fact that we are sitting here comfortably while benefitting (on the other side of the coin) from the same systemic injustice that continues to disproportionately effect black lives in the United States. In fact, I feel compelled to argue that we--as lovers and interpreters of this music--have a greater imperative than most to both acknowledge and address these thorny, complex, emotional and devastatingly relevant issues.
4. I believe that we can all agree that plenty of white people sing with soul--but those that do don't accomplish the feat by imitating black singers: they sing with their own voice, and it is moving and powerful because it is sincere--not because it's a clever imitation of someone from another background. I challenge you to go back and read Corey's article and then tell me where he says anything to the contrary.
5. I agree that Corey's perspective would carry even more weight if he had been raised in the Deep South as opposed to anywhere else. Shit is different down there. And--as anyone who's spent time with both black and white people in Mississippi or Louisiana will tell you--racism is still much more out in the open there than in a place like Denver, where it is a more insidious and often invisible force. However, what it comes back to is that racism still exists and one vital part of blues music has always been the freedom it gives the singer to voice feelings and ideas that--for whatever reasons--society will not accept, however valid.
Robert Johnson may or may not have believed that he was being chased by Satan's minions, but whoever he adopted that image from was much more likely to have been imagining a lynch mob or prison bloodhounds than a spectral canine from the netherworld. That is what was done to black people back in the day, and if you think it's all better now then please go talk to someone who has spent time in Angola prison.
That is enough for now. Heavens know there is much more to say on this topic. I lay out these thoughts not to reprimand anyone who's shared their two cents here before me, but rather to implore you to face the issues raised by the article while taking this topic more seriously. It's about more than this art we love, and it's vitally important to me that this community--which I value deeply, and am proud to be a part of--tackles Corey's invitation to think about this more substantially than we have thus far.
Thank you so much for reading, please tell me what you think.
Joe Seamons
www.benjoemusic.com
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Is Corey Haris a Bluesman?
Thank you so much for reading, please tell me what you think.
I'd enjoy hearing you tell me more about how different shit is down in the deep south. That sounds fascinating.
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The advent of the commercial recording industry, a century ago, made all music become available to any one who wished to purchase it.
It could be reasonably argued that, the unintended result of this was, any one who purchased it could also learn to play it themselves, making whatever region or ethnic group it first emanated from, an historical footnote, at best
This is why you can hear Irish Music played in New Orleans and Traditional Jazz played in Ireland
How many on this forum, like myself, have lived in the city all of their lives and yet, play Old-Time String Band or Appalachian (the product of rural people)? Or, aren't Jewish but have played Klezmer Music?
I'm not Greek, but I have a friend that I get together with and we play Rembetika.
And yes, I, quite unapologetically, play Blues
In my opinion, the argument that, any musical style, is the exclusive property of any ethnic group and may only be played by members of that ethnic group, is to deny that we're all living in 2016
How much sympathy can one muster for the buggy whip manufacturer, cursing those danged "horseless carriages"?
If you love it, then go ahead and play it. That's what I sez
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Sigh...
Thank you, Joe, for your very diplomatic attempt to add some new perspective to this discussion. I've avoided this topic publicly because I've been very disappointed in the overall reaction. I think a lot of people just never got past the title "Can White People Play The Blues?" Corey answered that question with an obvious "yes" while also emphasizing the importance of the African American roots of the music. Doing so in such a provocative manner, I can't imagine that he didn't expect some of the reaction that he got. But I am truly amazed at the overall tone of the response.
On the other hand, I also can't help but smirk at the fact that this is coming from a guy who plays up a Jamaican accent when he's doing his Reggae thing. Doesn't devalue his point, just complicates things a bit. I also think some of Corey's responses to the immature comments on his FB posts were equally immature. But well... He's human and I've done (and continue to do) my share of immature shit online.
I wish I had the patience to participate more in this discussion, because I do think it's very important. I'm too emotional and I haven't had much luck changing people's minds by typing my opinions on forums. I just wanted to briefly express solidarity with those that read past the provocative title and understood the greater need for sensitivity and humility.
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Well joebanjo, I have somewhat read through your post, I read through Cory Harris awhile back and I am not interested in revisiting that particular post. I found the later posts where he shared memories of B.B King and Nina Simone far more interesting and sort of filed the post you referred to under "musician grousing in public and catching hell for it" .
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I'm extremely late to the party, but then I just heard about Corey Harris' post through an old episode of Joe Dappa's Blues podcast (https://jackdappabluesradio.tv/category/podcast/). And can't resist commenting.
Honestly, I find it deeply saddening to read through most of this thread. And it makes me question reality a bit did I even read the article as most of the people writing here? Corey Harris said there are white musicians who play the blues well and that white musicians just need to make sure to sing blues in their own voice and out of who they are, rather than as a pale imitation of black blues musicians, while giving credit to the source.
And you know, this is exactly what a lot of innovative white musicians did, from Jimmie Rodgers to Jack White. Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash both played blues in their own way, without pretending they were from black culture, and I imagine that's why Corey honours them by playing their songs.
Blues is Black music just like classical music is European music. Of course people from other backgrounds can play it it's kinda hilarious to hear people cite black opera singers like this contradicts Corey's point but to deny the background, history, and culture that produced it is silly. Charlie Patton couldn't have written or even conceived of an opera aria anymore than Puccini could've written or conceived of a blues song. (And personally, I'd take Patton any day.)
What's the point of loving blues music if you don't appreciate the struggle it came out of? Or understand that the struggle continues?
I'm sure most of us would like to think that if we had been alive in the 1920s or '40s, and Blind Willie Johnson or Howlin' Wolf had spoken up about the racism they faced, we would have been sympathetic and supportive. Even if that would have meant re-examining some of our assumptions, prejudices, and actions. Here Corey Harris speaks up today about racism in blues music and he's mostly met with defensiveness, personal attacks, and mischaracterizations of what he said. (And why would black people want to be part of the blues music scene if the message from white audiences is still "shut and play" if they dare speak up about racism?)
Music isn't universal at least not, in terms of communicating the same meaning to everyone. A song by Charlie Patton can never mean to me a white kid from the suburbs of Canada what it meant to him, or to a black sharecropper in the South in the early 20th century. What's beautiful is that it still means something to me.
What's beautiful about the blues what's beautiful about any music is it can create empathy in me for someone different from me. It can make me want to emphathize more. It can make me aware of their existence in a visceral way, it can make me appreciate who they are even if I don't understand them, it can make me curious to learn more, to try to understand them so that I can understand where this amazing music came from.
At least, that's what I thought. This thread makes me question my faith in music and my faith in the blues.
I do hope that in the years since this was posted, some of what Corey said (and 'joebanjo') and what Black Lives Matter has shown has sunk in some more. Who knows?