There is something to this magnificent music that draws my ears in a way like no other. People always say that there is that one song that you hear, and when it grabs you, it holds you to your very core. I would say most, if not all blues music I came in contact with had that effect on me. One benefit of growing up in the age of the internet was that I had options to craft my individuality the way I saw fit. In this case, I dived deep into the blues, because it was always at my fingertips. The way I saw it, why would I only listen to what was popular when I could literally explore any genre I wanted? I listened to punk, afrobeat, hip hop, gospel, and classical music. In each of these genres, I found the blues. It was so interesting to me understanding how everyone’s favorite band loved and admired the blues so greatly, yet everyday people didn’t seem to care about blues.
I quickly learned that people’s perception of the Blues were heavily misguided. Some people thought it was just a black man strumming a guitar down south singing about whiskey and women. Other people reduced its complexity to being just a music that gave birth to Rock n Roll. The Blues in this narrative was an antiquated sonic form, its only purpose being a stepping stone to the development of rock and roll. Very few people were intentional in saying what it actually was though, an African American art form. I see the blues as a folkloric element to the Black experience that is passed down through generations, verbally or nonverbally. When I was a child growing up, my grandfather would sit in the back of his truck and listen to the radio. Oftentimes, I would tag along, and together we would spend afternoons sitting in his car listening to Blues music on the radio. I was much younger then, barely past four or five, however I knew that what I was experiencing was something special. I had no words to describe what that experience felt like until years later, when I came across a well known painting called The Banjo Lesson by Henry Ossawa Tanner. In that image, I saw an aesthetic contextualizing the relationship with my own grandfather, a Black man passing down culture and folklore to a younger generation.
John Prine - Sam Stone
- Written by: John Prine
- Released in: 1971
- Genre: Rock, Folk
"John Prine was active as a composer, recording artist, live performer, and occasional actor from the early 1970s until his death. He was known for an often humorous style of original music that has elements of protest and social commentary."
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