Robben Ford Discussion

[JohnnyBlues]

I saw this and thought I would post it up, I hope that's okay:-

What is the essence of Blues? I see the Blues as a kind of Zen. Like Zen the Blues at face value looks simple, easy. Actually the Blues is simple in its essence, however, as with Zen, a deep understanding of the Blues requires the student/disciple to travel along a path of gradual enlightenment. Brownie McGhee said: "Blues is life", i.e. the Blues is a way of life. It can also be understood that the Blues, like life, has complexity on the one hand, with levels and layers, changing and evolving in time, but at the core its essence is constant.

Willie Dixon said: "I am the Blues", expressing a level of Zen awareness about his life as a Bluesman. The origins of the Blues are quite diverse: not necessarily just musical, they are to a great extent a social/cultural expression of the enslaved and oppressed Black populations of America. Musically we find African melodies and particularly rhythms, intermixed with European musical forms, both folk and classical.

One of the inborn paradoxes of the Blues is that pain and frustration are expressed side by side with joy and spiritual elation, sometimes in the same song, this is a sort of Zen duality. The Afro Americans ("Blacks") arrived in America a few hundred years ago as slaves who were kidnapped out of Africa, with them came the famous "Talking Drums". This was both a form of percussion and a form of actual communication (like the telegraph).

White plantation owners soon understood that the drum-communication was a direct threat to their subjugating authority and a widespread ban of drums and drumming was enforced by the 1830’s. The result was apparently a strengthening of the singing rhythms as well as an emphasis on guitar(European origin) and banjo (African origin) as rhythmical instruments,a trend that has remained in the Blues to this day.

In the same token that rhythm was internalized or went "underground’, so did the Black slave's spirituality. The Black man brought with him from Africa a myriad of religious practices and beliefs which were quite foreign and strange to the Christian/European sensibilities of the White man. This included kinds of tribal witchcraft and Voodoo (sometimes called Hoodoo).

The clash with Christianity, followed by a ban of Voodoo and other ritual practices, caused the Blacks to hide these beliefs deep down inside themselves(much like the Maronites in Portugal - Jews who were forced to conceal their religious practices from public view and "officially" converted to Christianity). Again a duality arose with the Black man publicly embracing Christianity (producing Gospel music by the early 1900’s).

Many Blacks continued in secret the practices of Voodoo and other pagan traditions, some of which are even witnessed in the Blues today. Muddy Waters was well known for the song "Hoochie Coochie Man" (written by Willie Dixon) and also for "Got My Mojo Working", with lines such as: "I got a black cat bone, ‘got a Mojo too, I got a John the Conqueror root, I’m gonna mess with you...." and "I’m goin down in Louisiana gonna get me a Mojo Hand, gonna have all you ladies right here under my command".

These ancient religious forms in the Blues may be the reason that "righteous" Blacks who were loyal to the church called the Blues "the Devil’s Music"and either frowned on it or banned it outright in their homes and the community. Gospel music, though really another musical form of the Blues, was strictly Christian and "White" in textual content, while the Blues have all the rest of the social/cultural content of the Black experience.

Much in the same way that Zen and Blues can be a process of enlightenment, the Black man has undergone a process of socialization and evolution in America. In the music itself we see lots of clowning and "hokum" in theBlues of the 1920’s and 30’s. The Black man in Vaudeville and early movies has no dignity, no self respect. His only expression of being a real person is his sexuality- the one thing the White man didn’t manage to repress. The White man was afraid of the Black man’s overt sexuality, leading to all those nasty stereotypes that exist about Black’s and their sexuality.

The expressions of sexuality that seemed natural and healthy in Black society, were too blatant for the uptight and even puritan White society in America of the 40’s and 50’s, and this was a major factor in keeping R & B and Blues from breaking the color barrier in the 50’s. The "softened" versions of the Black music that were hits for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other White performers were often simply "covers" of the Black originals that couldn’t break through, and were often stolen outright from the Black artists.

The late 50’s and early 60’s saw a maturation of the Black music scene, Chuck Berry became a star that appealed to Whites as well, but just as the White audiences began discovering the wonderful Black heritage, the Black community began to turn away from the Blues as being archaic, and something they wanted to put behind. For a while there was even a kind of shame involved in the old black culture and music, and only in the mid 1980’s did young Black artists find a renewed pride in the traditional Blues (witness Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Keb ‘Mo, Guy Davis,and Eric Bibb).

The great attention Blues has received in recent years in the media, is a "ship finally coming in" for artists such as John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, and the recently departed Luther Allison- artists who have patiently practiced their Blues craft for 20-30 years before achieving real fame and fortune. A pop-rock artist may rise to fame in 5 years and then vanish overnight, but the Blues, like Zen, is a patient and enduring art.

Living with the Blues and learning as we go, brings us full circle, like Zen, to the starting point of simplicity, an expression of everyday life- "THE BLUES IS LIFE" Brownie McGhee

© 1998 Eli Marcus
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To the world you may just be one person - but to one person you may just be the world.

[BlueRunner]

I suspect that Marcus has read the late Philip Toshio Sudo's "Zen Guitar," a great book that Robben Ford quotes from during his clinics.
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- BlueRunner

[Bluelobster]

i suspect too and enjoy a lot carry on

[Aeolian]

I am reminded again of the line at the end of the movie Crossroads where Willie Brown tells the young ‘Lighting Boy’ “You have to take the music where you found it, and take it someplace else”. Whether from Baroque to Romantic, Swing to BeBop, or Sunhouse to Robben Ford, music is an evolving performance art. It exists between the performer and listener, to the benefit of both (although they can be the same person). It’s like the old tree in the forest line, if music is put out into the air and no one listens to it, is it still music? Whether the most esoteric avant garde free jazz or someone singing horribly off pitch in the shower, the performers are listening and enjoying it, or they wouldn’t be doing it. Though years of musical training and a youth of hearing, Beethoven heard it in his head. So even when he lost his hearing, he could still put it down and enjoy the performance of it within himself, not to mention all the multitudes that have been able to enjoy hearing performances of it. Even if you gave someone an electronic controller that they didn’t know how the pitches were arranged on, and you told them to play it but the sound was off and they couldn’t hear what was coming out, they would probably resort to playing it rhythmically, still hearing rhythmic music in their head.

What we call the blues is a form, a genre evolved from a particular situation. At it’s roots are an elegant simplicity of 3’s and 4’s, the triplet superimposition over 4 beats of the shuffle and the distribution of changes within the 12 bars. From there it springs countless variations according to the internal music of the composer or performer. To maintain the interest of the listener (even if it’s the same person as the performer) it has to evolve. To stay static is to be expected and thus ignored. I think one of the great aspects of Robben’s playing is the interjection of the unexpected at just the right points. To take a melodic idea that we feel comfortable with, play it such that we are drawn in by the comfortableness of it, and before we get bored with the situation, to do something unexpected that maintains our attention. To be always playing the unexpected would be musical anarchy or chaos. To play the unexpected too often would be jarring and uncomfortable. The idea is to maintain the interest in the music so that it is enjoyable for the listener.

When the blues went from the fields to the porch, from the porch to the street corner, and from the street corner to the tavern and so on, it did so by growing and evolving. We all owe a debt of gratitude to each of those who have brought it this far, and we must be careful not to loose the essence of the emotional connection that it conveys, I’ve never understood the fascination with going backwards. Any more than my black friends would want to return to the cotton fields, or I would want to return to digging stones out of potato fields in Ireland, or any of us would give up our stereos, TV’s, or cars.

That should stir things up a bit.
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There are no such things as wrong notes, there's only the look on your face.
My Stuff: www.stevekirbymusic.com