BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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The Truth is Your Reward
by Fred Kaplan
The current state of blues seems only a wispy shadow of what this great American art form has been in its culturally piquant historicity. Must we settle for a flattened, watered down version of what this amazing music once was? Is traditional blues unsustainable in today's music market driven environment? Since when is Crosby, Stills and Nash or The Black Crowes on your “gotta hear list” at the next McBlues Festival? Let's hit the rewind button and go back a few years to see what happened to this regal and glorious music.
Not unlike the food we consume today, much of the blues has been genetically modified from its original artistic form. Anorexic diet-blues has replaced real musical nourishment for the soul. This is largely due to record companies attempting to reinvent this genius art form. The result is that it has become a dying language. In the modern pop music world, much of contemporary blues has become a loathing burlesque of a once magnificent music. Somewhere back in the 1960's, when rock was making its ascent into American music culture, the blues began its “de–evolution”.
Over the next four decades, blues began to take on other pseudo shapes for resale, mainly to white audiences hungry for cultural grit in their musical diet. The shift had begun. Real roots based blues bands began to fade away. They were replaced by rock-blues, funk-blues and even disco-blues as well as many other pedestrian, musical hybrids that became the norm. An example of this can be found by surveying the rosters at recent and upcoming blues festivals.
There are some blues artists that have made stoically proud stands at keeping traditional blues alive. Fewer musicians however, were interested in studying a dying language. Instead, many have tried to create new “blues languages” that sadly began to cloak the original idiom of richly laced traditions by burying it even deeper into the Blues Babel Tower of obscurity.
Make no mistake blues has its own rich etymology. The study of any language always requires learning the roots first. Respecting and studying the progenitors of specific genres such as flamenco or European classical music is conventionally mandatory for any serious student of those genres for instance. The same applies to the study of blues music.
Alas, blues seems to have many double standards when it comes to self-preservation or tradition. “It's too old-timey.” “You can't play it if you're white.” “It's only three chords.” “It’s musically boring” “It's so predictable.” It seems that this music is obscured by a mountain of fallacy.
Reinventing musical history is not the answer to rescuing this mystically beautiful and alluring art form.
To immerse one's self into the blues river can not only resurrect this great music but can have an impact on its future. We can set a course to see that blues becomes a thriving American traditional art form that is widely appreciated.
The sustainability of traditional blues is possible through rectifying the diet-blues revisionism that is so pervasive. It requires diligent musical study as well as the financial support of the artists who perform it.
The truth is really out there. Its discovery is your reward.
Your musical archaeologist…
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Note: May I direct your attention to a couple of paradigm shifting books, I think you will enjoy. They were recommended to me by Al Blake.
“Escaping The Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues” by Elijah Wald
“To A Young Jazz Musician: Letters from the Road” by Wynton Marsalis
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BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
info