JSngry

Sure! Nor me, because I don't have a clue where they come from! But this ain't about "scales and tunings", which, since we agree on almost everything, I'm sure is already understood.

I don't see that anybody is denying that here Jim. The question is maybe more of a semantic one. While it is absolutely clear that African retentions are fundamental to the blues, people get still uptight with the idea that the blues itself "originated" in Africa. That is perhaps not without reason, as the extreme Afrocentric view would have you believe that influences from the New World had nothing to do with the formation of the blues. That is just as incorrect as denying the importance of African retentions. And yet, whenever those African retentions are mentioned, there's always some smartass white folk who pops up and seeks to either minimize or talk a lot of "musicology" that says, well, yeah, maybe, but you now, we can't be sure, and all that bullshit, like, yeah, we'll allow them just as long as nobody tried to make too specific a thing out of it... Makes me wanna holler, throw up both my hands... The "blues" are, I would hope obviously, an African-American music, no America, no "blues". Duh. Everybody's comfortable with that. It's the African part that fucks people up, it seems, even at the subconscious level. And as long as that discomfort exists, even at the subconscious level, then there will be "advocates" for the other side who will go to the same lengths to confirm what is objectively only part of the recipe, just as there are those who go out of their way to deflect away the obvious. That's what happens when you argue over who owns history. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much all bullshit, because what happened happened, and if my hunch is right, what's happening now, and therefore what is likely to happen, ain't waiting around for it to happen any differently than it already did. Them that are are named Marsailis, etc., and they are not relevant to the living, only to the undead. To sum up, Africanisms in blues - sure, ok, of course, just don't look for them, becuase even if you find them, they're not relevant and/or provable. God DAMN you gotta love that! We are the fucking world!

I'm getting all your points and not arguing against them, your points are not at all relevant to mine, so yeah, let it drop. Of course. As per the Last Poets, White Man DO Got A God Complex.

Jesusfuckingchrist, why is it so goddamned difficult to accept that under the circumstances that most African-Americans faced for the first 250 or so years of their existence as African-"Americans" that, since assimilation was aggressively discouraged & "nuturing", where it existed at all, came from within self and community, that some "African-isms" (and if every time a phrase like that is used it ends up being challenged on some "oh, that's insulting becuase Africa is such a DIVERSE continent" condescension, then fine, but FUCK THAT, can we stipulate to that with a gigantic DUH! and them MOVE ON?) would be more likely to survive than not? The only alternatives would be to evolve into some new creature with no memory/identity whatsoever, or to assimilate completely in Master's Perfect Image. No dount, there was that, but why does the "legacy of slavery" that Good White Folk like to go on and on about seem to never entail maybe holding on to some characteristics of the "mother land"? It's like the Good White Folk like to bemoan how we took these Africans and made them into Total Non-Africans With No Identity Of Their Own. The "damaging legacy of slavery". Well, Good White Folk, maybe we weren't as successful in that regard as we like to think. Maybe we're just too goddamned VAIN to consider the possibility that we tried every which way to get that African OUT of that African and yeah, we tried pretty hard, we did, and we got a good way there, but holy shit, SOME of it still hung in there after all. Maybe we AIN"T the Holy Badasses we fancy ourselves as. Maybe there's SOME shit that we just couldn't get to, no matter how hard we tried. But no, couldn't be. Weren't never no African in African-Americans. By the time it got to the birth of the "blues", all we had was tabula rasa colored folks on which to skeet all our melting pot American jizz of everything but Africanisms. And that's what the "blues" is, right? RIGHT! That probably ain't what Vieux Farka Toure and his late father Ali Farka Toure are talking about. Don't know, don't care. It's an age of tourism and it's the Christian Science Monitor. Proceed accordingly. But that is what I'm talking about. Lest there be any confusion.

Never mind.

Not language, but "language", the subconscious, subliminal aspects of inflection & rhythm. I don't think there's anything "erroneous" about that. If, let's say, me and a bunch of other people from Plano, Tx was kidnapped and carried away to, say, Bosnia, and forced to not speak English and to basically live like chattel and be treated with all the considerations thereof, I have no doubt that once the haze began to clear, there would still be residual "North Central Texas-isms" in my psyche that would carry over to my style of communications, things that I would also pass on to my progeny, as consciously as possible, and altho subconsciously, just through whatever would be left of my.our "cultural memory". Or soes such a thing not exist? For every other culture, there's a big "celebration" of traits that have carried over from "the old world". Except for African-Americans, where every time, it seems, any attempt is made to to point out such connections, there's always some overly-eager "objective" white cat ready to jump up and deny even the plausibility of such a thing. Not saying that to bug you, seeline, just speaking in general. And yet, as they say, black don't crack...just speaking in general. I've never used that word in my life, not do I intend to! The Christian Science Monitor, on the other hand, hey, they're liable to do anything!

Maybe they made too many now future recordings to get to the next one.

gracias beaucoup!

haven't heard Declaime or Flying Lotus yet.

I don't think it's wrong to note that although the meanings of the stories told changed greatly from Africa to the "new world", the basic elements of the "language" was kept intact as much as was possible under the circumstances. Attempts to completely eradicate "cultural memory" failed, although they certainly succeeded more than you'd like to think that basic human decency would allow for. But once recovery from the attempted cultural genocide began, there was still more than a shred or two of "original identity" left in speech and other "signifiers". Of course, that was pre-"blues", but it also pretty much remained at the root of what came to, in one way or another, dominate the popular culture of the he better part of the 20th Century - the aftershocks of the African Diaspora. Personally, I think that although that continues, it's also "winding down" thanks to assimilation, genericification, and all other sorts of ations, but lord have mercy, it sure was front and center for a good long while, wasn't it! But that's neither her nor there. What's really a trip is looking at a computer at a desk in the middle of a Mega-Corporate Day and all of a suden seeing a link to a story in The Christian Science Monitor about Timbuktu being the "birthplace of the blues". It's one of those uber-WTF? moments that you wish you weren't in position to experience, but there it was anyway.

can i get a dl, please?

Christian Science Monitor! I mean, hey. File under "Who? Meets Why?"

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0305/Timbuktu-the-birthplace-of-blues

Damn that's good.

Never have a problem on RS after (about) 7 PM CST and before (about) 6 AM CST. Between then, I quit trying. That used to be only on weekends, but now it's any day.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=YatEyrcj2Ro "There are centuries of my ancestry I don't understand..." "but the anger stays so strong I long to be on my own...."

I menat that interest and sincerity alone is not enough. You got to get in there & live the life, pay the dues, and play the music accordingly. You'd be surprised (or not) at how many people drop by, get "a taste" and then move out/on, using that little bit as some sort of cachet out in the bigger world. Publically, nobody might not say too much about that. But privately... Which is just to say that, in Chicago, Bloomfield & Butterfield certainly met that criteria, as least from all I've heard.

Fwiw, in my experience, if you prove yourself as a player & as a human, willing to put in the time, pay the dues, and live the life instead of being a spectator/tourist/etc, you will get that respect as a peer. But that's usually not a partial offer...

well, ok, but everybody wants to get their hands on "the blues", when the truth is, it was here before it was here, and it'll be around after it's not here. So calling it something won't make it that, just as calling it something else won't make it that thing either. I'm w/Braxton - ther's been blues forever. The 20th Century African-American manifestation is just the one that most of us today have the most experience with. But that is a "stream" of it, and if you take something out of that stream that doen't eventually flow back into it, then you'fe created an offshot, not remained in the stream itself. In other words, the Missouri River is not the Mississippi River, the Mississippi River is not the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf of Mexico is not the Atlantic Ocean. Ok, they are in a sense, but if you try to drink from the Atlantic Ocean thinking - and then believing - that it's water from the Missouri River, somebody's got it wrong somewhere! Well DUH!

I mean, why the need to call it "blues", when it's obviously a pefectly legitmate rock-blues hybrid where a lot of white players found their voice, voices that were certainly informed by "blues" but who told essentially different stories than those told by several generations of what "blues" was generally accepted to be "about". It's like making a BLT with bacon-flavored chicken and still calling it a BLT. Why the need to call that a BLT?

Meaning, what, that it was now able to be perceived/received as being played convincingly by white players for white audiences? I'm confused as to how any of this "benefitted" the "blues" as music instead of as product other than giving new people new room to roam. Then again, that's how the West was won!

Mary Vonnie, a kind of faboolus babe, ended up in scientology?!?!?!?! http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/malko/7.htm

David Lucas is proud of his accomplishments: http://davidlucasmusic.com/bio.html And ouch: http://people-vs-drchilledair.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-lambert-hendricks-and-ross-tribute.html

These are not people I know... http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/259167 But Sarah Boatner turns up as composer on Disc 9 here: http://www.mosaicrecords.com/discography.asp?number=208-MD-CD Who were these people? Wow....Sarah Boatner was Sonny Stitt's half-sister?!?!?!?! http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/edwardboatner