I wonder (not!) what the reaction would be if someone were to suggest that black people can't play Classical music? Our perception of "authenticity" in any music cannot be separated entirely from our individual life experiences and resulting biases (and, in some cases, feelings of guilt). When you get right down to it, what is the difference, at their core, between the feeling conveyed by the blues as performed by the great black blues artists and the feelings in any traditional ethnic music of any other culture which expresses similar feelings about that people's troubles and woes. To my way of thinking "the blues" is universal. Anyone listen to Shostakovich or Lecuona lately? It's the blues....in their respective cultures.
++++“I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.”
― Cornel West, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir++++
++++I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
B. B. King++++
++++The Blues is Life.
-Brownie McGhee++++
++++Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
-Charlie Parker++++
++++“I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.”
― Cornel West, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir++++
++++I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed.
B. B. King++++
++++The Blues is Life.
-Brownie McGhee++++
++++Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
-Charlie Parker++++