Topic: Sunday Times article about the blues
This was in yesterday's Sunday Times.
I thought it may be of interest/raise a discussion etc. It makes some contentious suggestions
Blues is the poor relation of roots music. Its brethren, folk and country, are reviving left, right and centre, but blues, if not quite the genre time forgot, is a tradition most of us are forgetting. Why?
One reason is that it’s so fundamental to rock (where would the Rolling Stones be without Muddy Waters?), we no longer hear its echo; another is that even its newest stars are often old-timers. Seasick Steve, a sixty-something, poor-white rambler, has made the most waves lately. Before him, it was T-Model Ford, one of the outlaw OAPs discovered by the enthusiastic Fat Possum label and still doing their thang in rural Missis-sippi. The original bluesmen are a rich seam of coal; once spent, damn hard to replace.
A lot of modern blues falls down by being too slick. BB King, Buddy Guy and Robert Cray are as guilty as their white imitators of the kind of showy soloing that puts fret-boarding before feeling. For all his pyrotechnics, Jimi Hendrix, a bluesman to his core, never made that mistake. Even in his day, though, the number of young black musicians playing blues was declining, as culture moved on. Today, hip-hop makes the older guys into heritage attractions, and the likes of Keb’ Mo’ seem almost anomalous.
Blues now is in some unexpected places. Like Bridgend, South Wales, home to the genre’s equivalent of Kerrang!, Blues Matters. Alongside trad and neo-blues acts, it features blues-influenced indie bands such as the White Stripes and the Black Keys. The latter’s new album, the superb Attack & Release, finds the Ohio duo anchored in early 1970s British blues-rock. Then there is Lake Elmo, Minnesota, host to the Deep Blues festival, a powwow of America’s punk-blues underground from July 18-20 (its MySpace page has a handy who’s who).
And finally, try Mali, via the Barbican. This month’s Blues: Back to the Source concert explores links between the Deep South and West Africa, with Otis Taylor and ngoni ace Bassekou Kouyate. Taylor’s excellent new album, Recapturing the Banjo, reclaims the instrument’s black, slave-era history but is no museum piece. The music is fresh and compelling, and his own material keenly felt. Add to that his educational work in American schools, and Taylor is the strongest advocate the blues, in its classic form, has.
The mainstream still tips its hat to the genre when seeking credibility, as the blonde soul hopeful Beth Rowley does with Nobody’s Fault but Mine. It will take more than sweet covers of Blind Willie Johnson, however, to keep blues going. Maybe Cadillac Records, the movie now in development about the Chess label, which stars Beyoncé as Etta James and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters, will inspire someone to shake things up; or maybe we just have to broaden our terms. Arguably, Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy was the best blues song in years, so perhaps the blues flame is already being kept alive in different – sometimes radically different – ways in the 21st century. What do some of its proponents think?
http://www.edinburgh-blues.uk
