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Originally Posted by seanlowe  I'm afraid i completely agree with you dirk mate, it's the equivalent of listening to autumn leaves time and time again, the harmonic interest goes and there is very little movement.
On another note is that i would've said that nowadays very few of the guys who are playing blues really have the right or soul to; from growing up in middle class chicago and going to a private school or something.
But thats just me, i can appreciate why you guys do enjoy it, and good keep doing it we need people to like different things (dont wanna sound like im flaming anything) Out of interest my dad force fed me blind lemon jefferson and robert johnson from 1-16 years of age. |
To some degree I see where you're coming from on the "right to play the blues" thing. But not totally. Maybe it can be hard to get the right feeling for it if you don't "have" the blues. But I don't think that music is something you're either born with or will never have - it's something you develop with a variety of success. (I don't mean that you claim to have this view, of course). But I want to remind the reader that many of the greater bluesmen of the 60's were middle-class and often university students or drop-outs (i.e. the Rolling Stones and many from the British blues boom scene). It's a matter of making it one's own music. If there was a right to play the blues coming from class and colour, then jazz definately wouldn't have been what it is today. That said, I pay hommage to the masters in both jazz and blues, and aknowledge that they both developed by southern African-Americans to begin with. The greatness of the music, though, is that it trascends categories. In this, I adhere to the wisdom of Duke Ellington who spent his life fighting and refusing categories.
Sorry, I hope I don't make it sound like I'm dissing your answer, if so I apologize, it wasn't my point.
As for myself, like somoene said, blues is where I started. Or blues-rock, really (I suppose I'm quite young). While the harmonic interest might not be there, there's the question of energy and gut-feeling for me. In some ways, I often say that I try to listen to jazz with my brain and blues with my groin. It's not entirely accurate, of course, because there must be a lot of feeling in jazz. But it's a much more intellectual music than blues. "American classical music", as someone put it.
Ah well, I've ranted, hope you guys get my point.
09-08-2010, 07:13 PM
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