So tempting, still, to want to arch desire in the direction
of what doesn’t merely live— by grace— on the season’s margins.
Like crows and common starlings, bronzed gloss of feathers flashing
where they forage in the dirt, or on the sidewalk’s margins—
Tap into the popular vein, says a friend: write blood, gore, sex, vampires;
more sex, then zombies. You’ll sell like hotcakes from the margins.
And pedigree? Unfortunately I’m still not pure enough, nor hybrid enough:
my accidents of birth, of history; my gender, color, keep me in the margins.
Prove more, prove higher, prove over and over— And while you’re at it,
take care you don’t show up another, perched higher above your margin.
How long have such races been run? Here’s a short list of prize deferments:
Atalanta’s golden apples, Tantalus’ hunger rising and ebbing into the margins.
Suckled in the wilderness, that amazon learned to hunt and fight with the bears.
And that cannibal, child-killer, dog-stealer? What other notes are in the margins?
Who funded those commercials? If you had stolen nectar and ambrosia off the table
of the gods, wouldn’t you be blacklisted, your name defiled in the margins?
And yes, I might push that rock from sandy bottom up to the crest of the hill: but
my loyalty belongs to that frisson no one sees, that fire I tend within the margins.
Late last night I finished compiling this second (and probably last) series of videos. If you haven’t watched the first one yet, I’d recommend doing that first, since it includes a higher proportion of big-name acts — though I have plenty of those in this one, too. Gems like the opening and closing videos are kind of hidden in plain sight on YouTube, since it’s often impossible to tell what’s a real film and what isn’t until you play it. (I think music fans tend to assume the music can speak for itself. At least I imagine that’s why they’re not too good about annotating their uploads.)
This one’s longer. The first playlist was a mere 3 1/2 hours long; this one clocks in at 4:17:47. That’s because I’ve included more multi-song videos, such as the first part of a concert by Mance Lipscomb, as well as a wonderful short documentary by blues scholar David Evans on the fife-and-drum tradition of Gravel Springs, Mississippi, complete with footage of Otha Turner cutting cane and making a cane flute. There are also more long guitar jams — though not nearly as many as I could’ve included if I were a more typical blues fan. (More about that below.)
I’ve included more younger performers, more Texas blues and more jazz-blues than in the first playlist. I’m obviously far from a blues purist, but remain conservative about including performers from outside the African-American community, favoring those who, like Doc Watson, made the music their own, rather than slavish imitators like Eric Clapton… but see Buddy Guy’s passionate speech about the importance of the “British invasion” (and the band Cream specifically) in #21. As collectors, promoters, appreciators, and (since the 1970s) audiences, white people on both sides of the Atlantic have been essential to the survival of the blues. It’s great to see a younger coterie of players, black and white, taking the blues in new directions. The next to last video, for example, is from a young Serbian guitarist, Ana Popovic, who clearly isn’t afraid to use the blues to address the intense ethnic tensions in her own country.
I discovered a couple of new-to-me artists in the process of putting this playlist together, for which I’m mainly indebted to John Hayes’ Any Woman’s Blues series of portraits of female blues guitarists at the excellent, multi-author music and poetry blog Robert Frost’s Banjo. I remain personally more interested in blues as a vocal art-form, but as I said on Facebook last night, there’s always something powerful about a woman with a guitar. I think my favorite discovery was Barbara Lynn, whose career exemplifies the familiar woman’s trajectory of taking a couple decades off to raise a family. But it also exemplifies something that I love about the blues: there’s always been a strong place for older performers. Like jazz, and unlike rock, blues is music for grownups.
And that leads to the last point I want to make today. Unlike most white guys in my generation, I didn’t come to blues from a classic rock background. I listened to a lot of folk music growing up, including my brother Steve’s clawhammer banjo, and more than anything I think it was that latter sound that prepared me to love the haunting, droning style of traditional Mississippi blues when a college roommate with a great record collection first exposed me to guys like Robert Johnson, Elmore James and Muddy Waters. I remain fondest of the country blues in general, because I think it’s more musically diverse and much more interesting lyrically than the more commercial stuff.
When I did get into rock music in my early 20s, I found myself gravitating toward genres where the role of the lead guitar solo was minimalized, and the emphasis was on killer riffs — mainly thrash metal and punk. So to balance what I said above about the importance of white fans in keeping blues alive, I think this may have also retarded its development quite a bit, because so many fans are in it for the electric guitar leads, and prefer blues that sounds like classic rock. Where are the great blues pianists and saxophonists these days? Playing jazz for Cassandra Wilson and Dee Dee Bridgewater, apparently.
I will say, however, that much as I share Buddy Guy’s oft-expressed impatience for contemporary blues fans’ adulation of Stevie Ray Vaughan, specifically, making this playlist reminded me that he did have a unique and soulful sound — especially compared to some of his contemporaries. I couldn’t leave him out. Ditto with Albert Collins and some of the other axemen and -women in the playlist. Perhaps it’s time to revisit my indifference to screaming guitar solos. But mostly, I’ve found that compiling these playlists has reminded me why I love the blues so much in the first place: its bittersweetness speaks to me. It makes we want to get up and get down, and the years drop away. Also, I still think I might be able to dance like Cab Calloway if I just concentrate a little harder…
They climbed to the promontory
and took photographs of memorials,
brushing the dirt aside to read
the letters that told of who
had been there before. She wondered
if the black specks she sighted
above the ridge were vultures; if,
after all this time, such birds
might still take an interest
in cured and leathered bodies,
mummified and resting in their caves.
In the village, the rest house
had no heat. For bathing,
there were metal drums filled
with chilled spring water. It was
the last day of the year—
Bonfires flickered. Frost trails
formed at the ends of sentences.
They were unaware of their own
restlessness, soon to be eclipsed
by the years. Above terraces
lined by hand with stone
upon stone, the occasional burst
of a firecracker. Mostly, the wind.
Or the muffled sound of a gong.
Once upon a time, the ear was a flower that bloomed every day & by night bore dream-fruit. Helix & antihelix fused & swelled like the fat lip of an orchid. Deep in the ovule, a complex apparatus of drum & cocclea translated sounds into fertile seeds. Words had wings, & notes would fly from a saxophone like golden bees.
What happened? Why are we stuck now with these passive receptacles, this garbage in & garbage out? I blame the first tongue that found a way to get around not being forked. Once language knew how to feed on the ready sugar of lies, who needed nectar? Ears are for hearing, we said. Which is why nobody listens anymore except for the truly deaf.
My teacher resembles a flightless bird:
the sky, to him, is an open book
written in a foreign tongue,
his enormous eyes are no bigger
than his three stomachs & when
he sticks his head in the sand, it isn’t
to evade the truth but to remember it
by being alone with his terrors.
