Endangered Chicago Blues I: The Root

I.                   Blues is the Root          

Feeling vulnerable to the Great Recession and at the mercy of illogical governments and corporate bullies, we can all use a little musical relief. The futuristic writer Kurt Vonnegut, shortly before his death in 2007, called African American music “America’s greatest contribution to the world.” He added, “Blues is the remedy for a world-wide epidemic of depression.” 

Blues is music of survival. It’s about real feelings. It grew up from the ground. It gives voice to the human spirit.  As Chicago’s esteemed producer, composer and bass player, the late Willie Dixon, often said, “Blues is the root. Other music is the fruit.”  

Singing together about feelings, joys and sorrows, both in church and in the juke joint, helped African Americans in the early 20^th century South cope with long work hours, low pay, unfair and racist bosses. Blues shares one’s personal story with the community. Blues has a call and a response, a rhythm and a swing.  The music makes you feel better. Watch a blues audience, eyes half closed, tapping their toes—or in a lively mood, shouting out their comments on the singer’s story.

If it’s so good, why is real live heritage blues so hard to find?

Some say Chicago blues is dead. The British author of the definitive book Chicago Blues, was saying that already in 1972. It died the same year as America’s innocence, in 2001, when the city tore down the historic musical haunts, Maxwell Street and Gerri’s Palm Tavern.

Still, 10 years later, you can find African American bands playing to their neighborhood crowd in a handful of tiny juke joints on the West and South Side. A few musicians sling a guitar, bass or drumsticks in downtown clubs for mostly-white tourists, but they are underpaid. Why is the blues, the root of all rock’n’roll, R&B and parent of hiphop, revered around the world—barely visible in Sweet Home Chicago and other American cities?  Some possible answers:

As baby boomers growing up, we were exposed to all types of music on the radio:  classical, folk, bluegrass, R&B, jazz. It’s hard to tune in anything now except hiphop, rock, country, and a bit of Christian contemporary music. Some of the words are clever but the music is often very lame.  Most pop music these days is not created by artists, but manufactured by corporations who design and mass-test it to reach what they think appeals to the greatest number of people.

Many young people are not developing a taste for different kinds of music, because they get little or no instruction in music and art (or phys ed; and often no recess) in school, thanks to the No Child Left Behind law.  Students can find blues on the internet, including videos of Muddy Waters, Bessie Smith, Koko Taylor and Howlin’ Wolf—if they know to look for it. Unless they’ve seen the movie Cadillac Records, featuring Beyonce, many youth have never heard of the blues. 

American corporate culture constantly preaches the next new thing to buy. Music from the past is scorned. The media has reinforced this amnesia so many adults are no longer aware of our own cultural heritage. We forget to respect our elders and fail to inherit the musical soundtrack of their lives. Further impediments to both respecting older music and creating new include onerous performing arts licensing requirements and hassling of small restaurant music venues for large fees by  performing rights bureacracies like BMI, ASCAP and SESAC. (These organizations supposedly help songwriters get royalties when their work is performed, but what part of these royalties ever go to blues men and women, as opposed to major pop writers and singers?)

Despite these barriers, today’s kids are resilient, curious and open to anything that’s fun. When our traveling blues workshop, Chicago School of Blues, www.chicagoschoolofblues.org , shows a grade school class how to make up and sing a blues tune, they’ll catch the groove and throw in some rap rhymes. One South Side youngster observed, “This music is relaxing.” A seventh grader said, “I learned how to walk away from my problem and that blues can cool me down.” Starved for adult role models and relief from relentless standardized testing, the kids cheer when local professional blues men and women come to play.

In addition to the overall American neglect of history and the arts, there’s a racial dimension.  The natural progression of music being handed down in African American families and neighborhoods has been interrupted. And while some promoters in the majority European-American culture prize Black music, they don’t respect the people who are its creators. Disrespect and greed have led to the music ripoffs that nobody wants to talk about, but we must try to understand. I will address this history in the next column.