Epiphany

1. (initial capital letter) a Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day.

2. an appearance or manifestation, especially of a deity.

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
-Link

Never said any better than this:

The Tuning Slide: Jazz 7- Everyone's Music

I merely took the energy it takes to pout

and wrote some blues.

-Duke Ellington

I said toward the end of last week’s post on big band music that jazz musicians need to know the roots of jazz. We are the heirs of an incredible tradition:

• Dixieland and ragtime
• Big band and be bop
• Hard bop and fusion
• Latin and free jazz

But there’s one more- perhaps the underlying roots of much American-based music.

The Blues.

I’m not sure we can understand jazz without at least knowing something about the blues. It is often the first type of music a jazz musician is encouraged to learn. The chord progressions are simple and repetitive. Yet it informs, shapes, colors, and even defines Louis Armstrong and George Gershwin, Robert Johnson, Willie Nelson, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. It is a music of life as it is experienced every day. Wynton Marsalis called it “everyone’s music” and said this about it in his book, Higher Ground:

The blues trains you for life’s hurdles with a heavy dose of realism. John Philip Sousa’s music is stirring. It’s national music of great significance. But Sousa’s is a vision of transcendent American greatness: We are the good guys from sea to shining sea. The blues says that we are not always good. Or bad. We just are. (P. 52)

It’s roots can be traced to the late 1800s in a melding of African-American work songs and European-American folk music.

Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also an important part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. (Wikipedia)

Robert Johnson is perhaps the paradigm for blues musicians. Only in a bargain with the devil himself could music of such power and emotion develop. The Faustian story of such bargains is as old as human mythology, but is reserved only for the most incredible and impressive accomplishments. Johnson’s artistry in a short lifetime was powered by the incredible and impressive sound of the blues.

It’s simplicity is what makes it so infinitely malleable. That basic three-chord, twelve-bar progression can be the basis of every emotion. It can express the depths of sadness to the heights of ecstasy. They can underlie Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess or the “Alleluia” in a worship service. B. B. King can bend them into dozens of melodies or W. C. Handy folds them into the "St. Louis Blues." When you have finished listening to a blues, you know you have been touched by that which is greater than any of us. (See the list "Greatest Blues Songs" at Digital Dream Door)

The Blues contain so much joy and

sadness at the same time.

-Bill Charlap

In that way, the blues can be our own personal guide into ourselves. An essential element to any of us who want to play music- blues, jazz, rock or classical is to be some kind of self-aware. It may only be within our own experiences of emotion that we can put that into our music. Or maybe the music itself digs into our psyche and finds those emotions and blends them into itself. I have no doubt that music is THAT alive and THAT powerful. In the blues is the foundation of what that means. Marsalis says it begins in “pain” but it will always have that element of “things will be better” someday. Even in the blues there is a sense of hope. That, I believe is the hope that lies within us, the view that we can get through this. Sometimes it’s hard to find, but it is there.

This is where the music and life intersect with the blues. It can be very difficult for any of us to live in the midst of pain and uncertainty. Somehow or another I believe we have to find outlets for our feelings, ways of expressing our common humanity. The alternative to that is dangerous to our health and happiness. We stuff it; we put on a “happy face;” we deny our concerns, our fears and our needs. The more we do that the more unhealthy we become. Blues becomes a way to let that out either though listening, singing, or playing. Part of that comes from the very repetitive nature of the blues form. We can fall into the rhythm and the groove to be carried along to new places in life and soul.

One other piece of the blues (as well as jazz, in general) is its place in the American story. It may be easy to overlook the fact that this music is a gift to our national spirit and soul from an oppressed people. It is very much American music. It’s an expression of soul in spite of pain, hope in spite of fear, grace in spite of hate. Wynton’s thought that it is “everyone’s music” is beyond argument. Perhaps in these days of fear, pain, and hate, the blues can lead us into some new ways of sharing with each other. Perhaps we can hear the pain and be willing to do something about it. Maybe we can see the hate and refuse to allow it to conquer. In the end we can allow the American soul which includes all of us of myriad ancestries, faith expressions, racial identities, or sexual understandings. In that we will hopefully discover the power of the blues.

The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in

words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.

-Willie Dixon

An Excellent New Album

I came across the new Avett Brothers album the other day. It is titled True Sadness. Here's the trailer:



They are a folk-rock-Americana band from North Carolina who capture spirituality and life in remarkable ways. As I was listening to the album, the title track hit me. These two verses say a great deal.

When I was a child, I depended on a bottle
Full-grown I've been known to lean on a bottle
But you're the real deal in a world of imposters
And I've seen the program make men out of monsters


I cannot go on with this evil inside me
I step out my front door and I feel it surround me
Just know the kingdom of God is within you
Even though the battle is bound to continue

Here's a live version of the song.



Here's a link to a Rolling Stone interview that talks a little about the new album.

The Bells Ring For All

I heard Sarah Jarosz sing this on A Prairie Home Companion last week and was struck by its power and message. It is a Bob Dylan song from the late 1980s. Some consider it part of his "Christian" period. Yet the message is broader than that and its depth reminds us to pay attention to what - and who - is around us. Dylan has the amazing ability to make us think. Listen to this at least once, letting the words carry you into a deeper connection with your Higher Power.



Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow

Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man’s son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf
Ring them bells for all of us who are left
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through
Ring them bells, for the time that flies
For the child that cries
When innocence dies

Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
Oh the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong
Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

A Leap of Faith

I love listening to Folk Alley, the Internet music service from Kent State University. Hardly a day goes by when some song grabs my attention. The one that got me the other day was a Guy Clark song sung by acoustic blues-master Eric Bibb. The chorus goes thus:

He's one of those who knows that life
Is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold your breath
Always trust your cape

What a great line

life is just a leap of faith!

Truth can be made so real in such a short phrase. We may think life is supposed to be so many things- fair, just, fun, always good, centered on "me". Ah, but we learn that none of these is true. Life is less about fairness than it is about living. It is living with a "faith" that believes that something matters.

Concerns like fairness and justice are what we do with life. They are the ways we treat others. It is the building of community, rooted in our common life.

Today's Gospel lesson was Jesus telling his followers (and us) that we are branches on a bigger- greater- vine. He is that greater vine for those of us who are Jesus' followers. He is the way to be fed and nourished. But we are in it together. No single branch survives if it is disconnected.

The "leap of faith" we are called to take is simply to live in our awareness of our connections

• to each other
• to the communities we are part of
• to the Higher Power that created and feeds us
• to the power within each of us that allows us to follow.

You can define these in any way that is appropriate for your theology and spiritual outlook. The greater reality is that none of us is in this alone- and we don't need to be.

So jump into life- take that leap of faith.

Which is what the rest of the chorus tells us:

Spread your arms and hold your breath
Always trust your cape

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I debated on using Guy Clark's or Eric Bibb's version of the song. Both are wonderful. I stuck with the one that I heard that inspired this post.

More Singing Around the World

The great people at Playing for Change have almost outdone themselves with this one. I challenge you to NOT tap your foot or smile when you listen to this. Wonderful music!!

A Day in Nashville- Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

 

	Needless to say the musicians who make it into a Hall of Fame have to have done some great stuff. Roger Miller earned 11 Grammy Awards- and they are right there in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
	Ricky Skaggs is one of the top country and bluegrass musicians around- and he's been doing it for years. Here's his mandolin he played in January 1962 at age 7 on the Flatt and Scruggs TV show and his CMA Male Vocalist of the year from 1982.
Ralph Stanley- a legend! Here is the display honoring his "retirement". He may have said "Farewell"' but we did see him last year at the Opry.	And Stanley's Grammy for the soundtrack of O Brother Where Are Thou? the movie that gave Bluegrass and country music a real boost that hasn't let up.
One of my musical heroes is John Hartford. Gentle on my mind is only one example of his musicianship. Below are his Grammys and on the right, the shoes he wore to make a percussion accompaniment while onstage.

More to come later. It was quite a place to visit!!!

A Taste of the Original

"Cotton Fields" is a song written by blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, who made the first recording of the song in 1940.

Without further wasting of time, enjoy the real thing.

A Video for the Month: Go in Peace

Sam Baker.

A wonderful way to start the year.

Happy January 1!!

When the Lyrics Catch You

One of the top rated Americana music albums of the year (Swimmin' Time) is from a husband and wife duo, Shovels and Rope. Listening to Folk Alley the other evening I got caught by the opening chorus lyrics:

when the devil is all around
got you crawling on the ground
on your hands and your knees
with an apple in your mouth
you will know how far you'll go
to make your peace with God

The whole song is outstanding, but the set-up with this chorus is a real grabber! The image of

• The devil all around
• Crawling on hands and knees
• With an apple in your mouth

Amazing lyricism.

BTW, just want to give a big end of the year shout-out to Folk Alley. I have the link to them on my sidebar there. They provide a truly interesting and eclectic mix of the very broad category of acoustic music. If you haven't listened- or joined as a member- give it a thought!

Great music programming!