America celebrates 100 years of the blues

Jet, Dec 15, 2003

However, the blues elder statesmen and stateswomen can rejoice in the arrival of an emerging generation of Black blues performers who promise to keep the music alive.

Blues performer Corey Harris, 34, has just released his fifth album, Mississippi to Mali, and was featured on the opening segment of "The Blues" PBS, series.

He says the public, needs to become more educated about blues music. "We need to educate our youth about all the great Black people who came before and laid it down. I think sometimes Black folks create music and then we kind of change and go somewhere else."

Robert Cray also believes that the blues would be more recognized and appreciated if more young people were introduced to the music Becoming more familiar with the music can ensure its survival, he believes. "Young people don't know or care about the music--because the older generation hasn't taught them about it."

Gray emphasizes, "Young people need to learn more about the music and it's up to older folks to teach them about the music and it's importance to American culture--as the roots of all American popular music. It's a proud music."

Big Bill Morganfield, the son of the late blues pioneer Muddy Waters, also is contributing to the preservation of the blues with his new GD. Blues in the Blood. "We are trying to de the best we can to keep this thing going. It is not mainstream music and it is, harder to be out there making a living from it. You got rappers out here buying these homes, we're out working just as hard. The money is not there as in rap and other music. So you've got to really love this. There is some great blues talent out there."

Blues vocalist Shemekia Copeland, the daughter of late Texas performer Johnny Clyde Copeland, notes, "Great music will he around forever and that is what the blues is. The blues is a timeless art form and it is here to stay. It has survived through many things, like the disco era. That was a rough time for live music. So there is no doubt about it, the blues is here to stay."

The blues performers interviewed for this story also painted out that few Blacks have embraced the music that Blacks created. Veteran blues star Lonnie Brooks explains "They are ashamed of it. They don't want people to know 'I was poor. I had nothing' .... It's a hush-hush thing. It's like something happened in your home and you don't tell anybody about it."

Says King. 'Tin not begging the Black kids to like what we do. I just want them to know about it. I want them to learn about it because it has a lot to do with them. It has a lot to do with our culture."

He says the blues "has been hidden. It has been put under a rock all this time. Many times being a blues performer is like being Black twice, You're not only put down for being Black, you're put down again for being a blues singer, not by other races, but by your own race."

King notes that more Whites than Blacks have embraced the blues. "My clientele has been young White Americans, 14 to 45, with some exceptions, sometimes younger, sometimes older, but not many young Blacks. I just don't think they feel that it is a part of what America is to them."