Do the blues mean alot to you?

[A Lark Ascending]

I thought this was interesting. From a blindfold test with Stefon Harris in the March, 2002 Jazz Review:

Do the blues mean a lot to you?

That's a complicated question - you have to watch your answer for political correctness! In the history of the music, the blues is very significant. And you feel liberated when you're playing a blues form. But I'm a Gen-X-er, and I don't think it has the same place in my music that it does in Milt Jackson's. He was very influenced by gospel music and the church. Though I grew up in the church, we were exposed to a large variety of music we're the internet kids, the dot-commers, so I think our music should be reflective of how much smaller the world has got. I've played in African dance companies, and studied classical music...

[Soul Stream]

I think he's very, very right. I learned my lesson several years ago, when on a gig in a hip young joint I slipped in the obligatory blues. I looked up only to find the place had cleared out. I had been playing blues for years, mainly to a slightly older crowd (late 20's and up.) I won't play any blues if the crowd is young, play the blues over a funk beat...! The kids hate the blues. It just doesn't play any part in their life. They have no relationship with it.

I find nothing wrong with that. People are who they are. The blues are evergreen in a way, but I don't think they'll every truely connect with 99.99% of an audience.

[Harold_Z]

Well...you can't fault a man for telling the truth, and that's what the blues mean to Stefon. I think his view makes a lot of sense for his circumstances.

A lot of us grew up saturated in blues - blues of all kinds, from R&B to In The Mood. Hip blues, jazz blues, country blues, unhip blues, etc. We hear a certain type of lick and synapses in the brain start going off. It effects us on many levels. It tickles our senses and gives us pleasure. I don't think that necesarily is true for later generations, or at least everybody in later generations, or that the same licks are going to effect later generations.

Music changes and the elements and influences that are used change and vary, so I think it's entirely possible to play well and not be saturated with *my* idea of blues. I'll have to listen and decide my liking or disliking something based on each individual case. Kind of like I do now, come to think of it.

[A Lark Ascending]

I found his comment interesting given how often you hear people declare 'the blues' and 'swing' to be essential to jazz. I find it encouraging to hear a musician, without disparaging those marvellous options, suggesting that at least one of them is not a required element.

[JSngry]

Anthony Braxton's comments, quoted from "Forces In Motion", are relevant to me:

BRAXTON: People say I don't play the blues - I've always played the blues, but I never argue about those kinds of things. What we call the blues is not just notes, it's a vibrational understanding that's been transmitted and encoded, and it's manifested in various forms of music in various different ways. Still, there's a science to different periods of blues playing and that information is important. It just depends on how you want to look at it: there's blues as manifested in one particular style or projection and then there's what the blues is really affirming, and that's manifested on many different levels.

LOCKE: How long do these cycles (of any particular music's evolution, discussed earlier in the interview; it is specifically the blues that are under discussion here) last?

BRAXTON: Oh, that's complex Graham. Normally the mystics talk in terms of 7-year cycles, but it's complex: I don't know wxactly when a given information focus becomes stylistic or traditional information. We can look at the lineages of, say, the last 2000 years, the routes... interview changes focus.

So, if you think you can lose the STYLE, fine. You can. I'm not much interested in doing it myself, but that's cool. I'm of a certain age, in several ways.

But if you think that what caused that chrono-specific style to become necessary has miraculously been removed from the menu of the human experience, you're just setting yourself up for some even DEEPER blues than the ones you think you've left behind.

There's always going to be the blues. Maybe not THE BLUES, but you know what I mean. What form they will take is uncertain, but their existance is not.

There's also perhaps of level of socio-political self-deception going on here, but that's too complicated and nowhere near monolithic enough to discuss with any certainty. Best to just leave it alone until we get reports from some more precincts.

[Chuck Nessa]

Bravo Jim. I can't believe you pulled that out of the air.

I was really bothered by Mr. Harris's comment, but don't know his music. His statement means I may never bother to hear it.

I believe any musician working in the tradition of "jazz" unaffected by exposure to the blues has missed a large part of the vocabulary. Jazz has always been a "conversational" music with a shared (and expanding) vocabulary. Because of this shared language, the music lives. The music is so fragmented now it has lost focus and thus lost audience. The thought of a generation of musicians working without the "blues gene" saddens me and gives me little hope for the future.

My first real understanding of the blues changed my life and my perception of all music.

Old fart signing off.

Edited March 17, 2003 by Chuck Nessa

[Soul Stream]

I'm with Chuck and Jim. Where I come from, playing the blues is what it's all about. That's what people strive for. If you can't do that on a basic level, older musicians won't even listen to you. I found it pretty disheartening that people in their teens and twenties just didn't care to hear anything bluesy or swinging. It's all about "beats" to that generation. Sure there's exceptions. I'm in my early 30's, so I'm not too far off the mark. But I know I'm too old already in the sense that a basic connection through blues feeling has been a disconnect with younger people. I'm not sure what happened. With few exceptions, they just don't care.

[jazzbo]

My answer to the question differs from Harris' as well. It's a definite "yes." The blues has been the musical language I have used to understand a lot of music and the lingua franca of all the musical sharing I have done performance-wise in the past. It was in the streets of Philly when I was growing up (I mean, I lived on the same block as a bar called "The Red Rooster!") and it was what I heard on the radio and in the air in Africa and it became my musical focus when I came back to the states at age seventeen and got my hands on a Gibson SG.

I don't think it's necessarily necessary for anyone else but me, but it is a cornerstone of the musical world in my noggin and flavors much of what comes out of my equipment when I listen.

[Harold_Z]

I think Stefon Harris is telling us the blues is a part the pallet he draws on - one part of it and not as large a part as it has played for us older guys - not as central or important..... Well... he has to make that determination for himself. I think what he is saying is going to be true of large numbers of musicians from his age group.

What I'm saying is OK - he can do that and his playing may or may not appeal to all of us (the older guys) - Probably it won't appeal to us - we're part of our timeframe and he is part of his. The thing is..NONE OF US have any choice in this matter. Not him - not us. We're all the sum total of our lives. We are what we are.

Look, there will never be a Muddy Waters again...he was a part of his time frame. Pops, Duke...same thing.

[Chuck Nessa]

Harold, you are too logical. Maybe I'll die in time to miss the consequences.

[Jad]

I have two different answers for this question. The blues mean a lot to me and it's something that is always at the heart of what I'm playing (although it's not always recognizable and I prefer it that way) and it's how I learned to communicate with music. But nothing chases me from the room quicker than a band playing contemporary "bluez" that is little more than an excuse for extended jamming. Muddy Waters, Howlin'Wolf, Elmore James, and those that came before, but IMHO Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton slammed the door shut on that and blues became irrelevant and tired after that.

[Harold_Z]

Chuck, Here I am...firmly ensconced in the 20th century.

[Noj]

I love the blues, even though I share little experience with those who created the blues I like. I'm sure little in my life has resembled the lives of any of the great bluesmen, yet I can "feel" the sounds. Maybe it doesn't "mean" as much to me as it might to another more personally connected to the music, but Albert King's "I'll Play The Blues The Blues For You" and "Feel Like Breakin' Up Somebody's Home" get a lot of play time on my stereo. I've got the Robert Johnson 2cd (haunting stuff!), a Willie Dixon, a Muddy Waters, some Nina Simone, and some good compilations, but its tough to jump into collecting blues while collecting jazz. I have smaller collections of r&b, funk, rock, hip hop, reggae/dub, ambient...they all suffer at the expense of my jazz collection.

I was really into Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin in my early teens. They were really the gateway artists which opened my ears to blues-like sounds as much as that might irk blues purists to read.

One of the things I love about having all this great old music is to enlighten people who think it is all about "beats." Drum machines ain't got a damned thing on Mike Clark! :rsmile:

[Jazzmoose]

When you consider the impact of the blues on American music in general, I find it hard to believe that anyone who plays almost anything in this country and understands how music developed can downplay the blues.

[Soul Stream]

I don't think it's being downplayed. I just think young people don't know what it is. Where would they be exposed to it? My first exposure to the blues was a Roy Clark/Gatemouth Brown album I bought cause I saw Roy on Hee Haw! And that was the early 80's when at least SOME blues-based rock was still being played on the radio at least.

Now, what's a kid's perception of the blues? A B.B King commercial for Diabetes control? The background for a burger or car ad? I honestly don't know. I do know one thing...It's not commercial radio. There's NO blues in today's R&B or Rap songs. Much less pop material.

Exposure is everything. You've got to START...SOMEWHERE!!! No matter how lame it was initially. That Roy Clark album led me on a road that took me from Lightnin' Hopkins to Charlie Parker and all points in between.

[Simon Weil]

I really respond to the "vibe" of the blues, but I think something has happened in black American society (basically I think the blues is a black innovation which affects other people) which has disconnected a lot of people from it. I don't think there's anything you can do about that, I think it's just happened. I actually find a lot of "blues playing" now also rather disconnected and lacking in honesty - more like a technical exercise in "playing the blues" rather than about expressing emotion.

I think "the Blues" isn't *really* necessary to create Jazz or Jazz-related music. The Euro-free players don't really have much blues in their pallette and yet do produce vital and original music - and there's a big crossover between them and the American free players who often do have substantial blues feel (say in Chicago etc) - showing a deep level affinity.

The main thing for me is the vitality and honesty of the improvised music - which I think is necessarily rooted in the musical (and other) culture from which the musican comes.

I do worry that Americans don't seem to respond to blues though...

Simon Weil

[Brad]

Frankly, I can't imagine life without the blues or jazz without it. It's part of what we are. I came to jazz because of the blues and Howlin' Wolf remains important to me. The blues is so much part of jazz to say that it's irrelevant demonstrates a lack of knowledge of what jazz is about. Charlie Parker was a player of the blues. Parker's Mood is an important part of modern jazz. Should we just disregard what has gone on before us?

I think that's the nub of the problem and it's not just a musical problem. Today's youth (I hate that phrase) seem to think that history and society start with them so let's disregard what's happened before. Much of modern music owes what it is to what happened previously and that includes the blues. It's part of the strain and can't be ignored or deemed irrelevant.

[Jad]

The best examples of blues players don't sound as good through the digital format.

[Brad]

The best examples of blues players don't sound as good through the digital format.

Huh?

[A Lark Ascending]

Very interesting responses.

Growing up in the UK (and Singapore!!!) in the 60s in a household where showtunes, light classical and MOR music was the norm I actually disliked blues based music to start with. Soul, blues always sounded formulaic which was why I was attracted to prog-rock (yes, I know, they wern't formulaic; and it normally was!!! It sounded different then!).

I learnt to like the blues as an ingredient in music as a consequence of coming to jazz; jazz taught me how to enjoy them. Though I'm still not a huge fan of soul.

So my background is different to those of you to whom the blues was central from the start. I can see exactly why jazz without blues might seem somewhat deficient.

I think being exposed to a great deal of European jazz gives a different perspective; Simon mentions free jazz but European jazz in general, though it might touch on the blues, increasingly references elsewhere. I'd say the further it has moved away from the traditional blues and swing ways of operating the more independent it has become. European jazz today is the distinctive force that it has become because it has recognised the blues as not necessarily an idiomatic language for Europeans. It also begs the question as to whether US jazz might not take off in an unexpected direction of more musicians were prepared to leave that zone.

So Harris' comments make perfect sense to me. I was struck by them coming from a young, black musician.

I do not mean to disparage the blues or deny their centrality to the jazz tradition of the past; or their continued relevance as a ingredient of choice for the future.

But I fall on the side of the fence which believes that jazz (or improvised music) can continue to grow as a rich music without the blues.

And I'm considerably older than Harris!

Edited March 17, 2003 by Bev Stapleton

[Simon Weil]

I think being exposed to a great deal of European jazz gives a different perspective; Simon mentions free jazz but European jazz in general, though it might touch on the blues, increasingly references elsewhere.

Right, I mean the first European Jazz musician of real stature, Django Reinhardt, doesn't really strike me as a blues player. I mean he was, I guess, coming out of the tradition of gypsy improvising. And then there's guys like James P. Johnson - also not really a blues player, although he does play some blues tunes his sensibility seems somewhat different. I mean once can maintain that blues and swing are central to the Jazz tradition, but before that tradition was really formed, you got James P. (as a non-blues guy) and (say) early Ellington (as something that doesn't swing, not really).

I confess that tieing things down too specifically worries me.

Simon Weil

[John L]

This is a very interesting discussion.

Myself, I am extremely attached to the blues. (I don't want to say that the blues have attached themselves to me. At least I hope that it is the other way around!) My primary attachment to jazz is also through the blues.

With the younger generation, it sounds like in some discussions that they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they reject the deep bluesy stuff as something not of their time and place, the music will be hollow, as blues is at the essence of most great jazz. If they try to play the deep bluesy stuff, they will be playing music not of their time and place, and therefore it will be hollow.

Despite my personal love of the blues, I actually find myself largely in agreement with Stefon and Bev. The younger musicians have to take only that part of the blues tradition that they can feel as "theirs" and move on. The 20th century was the blue century. It is already clear that the 21st century will be something else. What? That has yet to be decided.

[JSngry]

...Django Reinhardt, doesn't really strike me as a blues player. I mean he was, I guess, coming out of the tradition of gypsy improvising.

Six of one, half-dozen of the other, after you allow for the exchange rate.

Seriously, I'm with Braxton - there's blues as manifested in one particular style or projection and then there's what the blues is really affirming, and that's manifested on many different levels. If "the blues" are ceasing to have relevancy as a STYLE to many people, that's one thing. The reason so much of what passes for "blues" these days sounds outright STUPID is because its NOT about the meaning anymore, it's about the style above all else. We see this in jazz, rock, country, pretty much all "styles" of music where aping the mannerisms takes precedence over dealing with the meaning, when what gets played is more important than why. That's a recipie for empty sloganeering, musically, and makes perfect fodder for commercials, movie soundtracks, and other media where the object is not to convey true meaning and feeling, but just to seduce the consumer into a false sense of "hipness". EVERYBODY likes to feel hip, especially if they can do so without having to confront the possibility that they just might, in fact, not be!

But style so very often has nothing to do with substance, and that's where proclaiming the lack of relevancy of the blues starts down a slippery slope. Anytime you laugh to keep from crying, anytime you feel like a stranger in a strange land (especially if ti's home), anytime you can muster being at once totally invincible AND mortally vulnerable, anytime you feel everything and nothing at the same time, you've got the meaning of the blues, and these are all conditions that do not depend on a certain geo-chronological setting to exist, nor can they be expressed through only one musical medium. If, in distancing one's self from the blues, one seeks to convince somebody/anybody (even/especially one's self) that the time has come when these life-conditions no longer exist, then one is very much being the fool, and I pity the fool. Hell, Shakespeare was one of the greatest blues lyricists of all time. Seriously. Ellington figured that one out, didn't he? The Blues ain't nothin' but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

I certainly have no trouble believing that there are a great many people across the globe, and perhaps, especially, youngish middle- and upper-middle-class African-Americans (the current American bull market for illusions of escape, or so it seems to me), who in fact HAVE convinced themselves (or allowed themselves to be convinced/seduced) that they, either as individuals or as a culture, have somehow moved beyond the dynamics that create the blues. Free at last, and a mighty tempting thought it must be. But if you ask me, it's a long fall that comes off a high horse. Especially a Trojan horse.

The blues - not the temporal style, but the eternally relevant fundamental dynamics that create them - will die only when humanity does. I just hope that that death is by natural causes, not the mass suicide of a Faustian bargain with a self-congratulatory delusion. But, the blues being what they are, it probably will be.

[AfricaBrass]

If blues is being pushed aside, I wonder how much the future jazz musicians will be influenced by today's music. When it comes to today's popular music, I'm pretty much cut off from it. I try to be open to different types of music, but they don't all grab me. Especially Rap and Hip-hop. I know that there have been attempts to bridge them with jazz, but what about 20 years from now? Will they be a common element of jazz. I see a move away from the blues in multiple genres of music, especially rock. As a guitar player, I have been very influenced by the blues. But a lot of the newer rock music doesn't seem to have any of the feel of the blues. Maybe that's why it sounds so generic to me. It just doesn't grab me. I hope the same doesn't happen to jazz.

I think I know how the moldy figs felt when bop came on the scene.

[John L]

Jim: I hear where you are coming from. But the way that I think of the blues is a bit different. Certainly, it goes far beyond style. I nevertheless consider the blues to be a specific language, a medium, a way of communication, that is of time and place. You speak the language or you don't. Even if you do speak the language, there is often a noticable difference between a native speaker and a Johnny-come-lately.

Beethoven expressed through music plenty of the deeply human and spiritual qualities that you associate with the blues in your posts. But Beethoven was not the blues, at least not in the way that I define "blues." He didn't speak that language. As Bev is pointing out, it is not necessary to speak "blues" in order to create deep music.

That is the sense in which I interpret Harris. The language is changing, and it is evolving farther from what is commonly associated with the "blues." Here, ironically, I think that Harris actually echoes your concerns. For him, going back and playing in the style of old blues would be superficial. As you say, it would be a "style" and nothing more. He needs to make statements in *his* language.

BTW: I have always heard a lot of blues in Braxton. Growing up in Chicago when he did, it would be hard to get rid of them.

Edited March 17, 2003 by John L