Robert Johnson, The Blues, and Music Which Matters: A Personal Reflection
"It was only after blues had largely disappeared from the
black charts and had been revived as a nostalgic adjunct to the
white folk and rock scenes that he became famed as the the most
influential bluesman of all time." Wald
"Music is an essential component of literally all social activities, and it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe that the same must have been true of our hominid ancestors." Wilson, Quoting Steven Brown
"Scholars love to praise the 'pure' blues artists or the ones, like Robert Johnson, who died young and represent tragedy. It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy." BB King, From Wald
Today I'm going to write about an album that changed my life:
Robert Johnson's "King of the Delta Blues Singers."
Eerie, haunting, considered by some as the preeminent acoustic, delta blues, or even simply blues album, Robert Johnson was apparently thought of as sullen and moody in his day. I have mixed feelings about what is thought about this album, but as an album, for me, it is sheer brilliance. Admittedly, blues isn't my genre of conscious choice. Whenever I sit down with my grandpa's Conn acoustic guitar or my Fender acoustic, I start with scales, arpeggiations, chromatic shredding exercises (thanks brother, for the John Petrucci exercise tape when I was a senior in HS – I now know how I never want to play), and some odd punk progressions a la Gorilla Biscuits or With Honor – but I find a way back to them. The first chord progression I learned, at a time when my memory was hazy enough to not know the specifics, was the common Emaj, Amaj, Bmaj7. But now I like to pretend that my playing is sophisticated. I'll avoid that 1-4-5 simplicity and launch into the bits of Pride and Joy that I snaked from watching my brother play, yet, like a warm bed over wood flooring in the NW winter, my feet painfully cold to the touch, I'll return with subdued bombast to the blankety goodness of some variation on that same, simple blues theme.
I'll tell myself “to me, blues music is an exercise in repetition and offers not nearly enough commentary or societal interest to bring me to it intellectually.” Nevermind that even complex music uses the 1-4-5 schema, whether in a plagal or authentic cadence. No doubt, 95% of classical music was written this way, or involving these conventions at some point during the song. Historically, classical music is perhaps an example of the excess or the baroque richness of overindulgence. To use a metaphor, on a sports level, it would be something like curling, something taking a lot of money and people to create and support. Blues music, on the other hand, is like soccer – something so simple that you just need a ball (guitar), and you can do it. In fact, it can be as simple as running (singing, unaccompanied), if you want it to be.
This style of blues, this one man/one guitar thing seems quite narcissistic in ways, and that is what I think of first, from a philosophical standpoint. This is the history of blues, this one man telling the woes of his life. “King of the Delta Blues” is not music you can dance to (aside from a bit of the music here and there), or really hum along to for that matter. Despite the importance of the previous two steps (pitch blending and isometric rhythms are the keys for the musilanguage model proposed by Brown), this Delta Blues singer style is so forlorn, so idiosyncratic, and so solitary, it can't help but turn the ear. The tragedy of being alone, of outlying, being ostracized by force (slavery, American culture) or choice, or ego, or true independence. How to discern the difference? In “Kindhearted Woman Blues,” Johnson breaks into a falsetto which is as chill-inducing as his guitar playing has been up to this point. While Johnson's lyrics don't necessarily have social commentary, Robert Kopp has made a very compelling point: blues weren't always about personal suffering, and they probably have their roots in African song pre-(and African-American song during) slavery.
Robert Johnson is the ultimate outlaw, a musician who had certain qualities that no first-world white person can deny. He never made money in his lifetime, he was an outsider among an already disenfranchised minority, and he came to define a music style that laid the foundation for many CEOs to line their wallets. And while artists under the guiding vision of profit-based corporations have taken Johnson's message and twisted it to create, for instance, a selfish hip-hop, or used an aggressive and socially conscious style like punk or hardcore and warped it to sell Hot Topic clothes and justify high school bullying, there is a vibrant counter culture in nearly all musical styles that continues to persist. I'd like to think that this is the music that matters. Humorously enough, many people find Kanye West to be brash, unruly, and cocky to a fault, and they couldn't believe he would interrupt Taylor Swift's award presentation – I have no doubt that many Bernie Sanders fans thought the same of the Seattle #blacklivesmatter group interrupting his speech, with their claim that he offers the most for their group of the potential candidates. The latter claims notwithstanding, as a white person, I don't have the right to define black culture or black politics. If it's true that scholars consider the blues as ultimately tragic, can this be the moment that saves our African American comrades from further tragedy?
Everyone has an opinion, right? The music that matters to me may never matter to you. There's a debate raging still about the speed at which Robert Johnson's music was recorded and is now presented. Some like the slowed down verison, some like the “accepted” regular speed. I think both have their application. There is so much music now existing, being created, and planned for creation, that not only will our preferences change, culturally, but our tastes will change personally. Still, we have to wonder, using Ed Hagen's argument - that music is a way to band a coalition together for warlike activities – with which coalition are we signifying acceptance? Which coalition matters? Until we can all realize that no music is inherently worthless, with whom will we ally our worth?
This essay is dedicated to Akira Watts.
References
Music
-King of the Delta Blues Singers, 1961, Robert Johnson. Available on YouTube here
-One "pitch/tempo-corrected" or "restored" version of Robert Johnson's "Hellhound On My Trail"
Books/Websites
-A Brief History of the Blues – Robert Kopp. 2005.
-Cadence – Wikipedia
-Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Wald. 2004.
-Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. Wilson. 2007.
-Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. McNeill. 1995.
-Music And Dance As a Coalition Signaling System, Hagen and Bryant, 2002.
-Robert Johnson – Wikipedia
-The Robert Johnson Recording Speed Controversy. Wald.
-The Musilanguage Theory of Music Evolution, Brown.
"Music is an essential component of literally all social activities, and it does not require a great stretch of the imagination to believe that the same must have been true of our hominid ancestors." Wilson, Quoting Steven Brown
"Scholars love to praise the 'pure' blues artists or the ones, like Robert Johnson, who died young and represent tragedy. It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy." BB King, From Wald
Today I'm going to write about an album that changed my life:
Robert Johnson's "King of the Delta Blues Singers."
Eerie, haunting, considered by some as the preeminent acoustic, delta blues, or even simply blues album, Robert Johnson was apparently thought of as sullen and moody in his day. I have mixed feelings about what is thought about this album, but as an album, for me, it is sheer brilliance. Admittedly, blues isn't my genre of conscious choice. Whenever I sit down with my grandpa's Conn acoustic guitar or my Fender acoustic, I start with scales, arpeggiations, chromatic shredding exercises (thanks brother, for the John Petrucci exercise tape when I was a senior in HS – I now know how I never want to play), and some odd punk progressions a la Gorilla Biscuits or With Honor – but I find a way back to them. The first chord progression I learned, at a time when my memory was hazy enough to not know the specifics, was the common Emaj, Amaj, Bmaj7. But now I like to pretend that my playing is sophisticated. I'll avoid that 1-4-5 simplicity and launch into the bits of Pride and Joy that I snaked from watching my brother play, yet, like a warm bed over wood flooring in the NW winter, my feet painfully cold to the touch, I'll return with subdued bombast to the blankety goodness of some variation on that same, simple blues theme.
I'll tell myself “to me, blues music is an exercise in repetition and offers not nearly enough commentary or societal interest to bring me to it intellectually.” Nevermind that even complex music uses the 1-4-5 schema, whether in a plagal or authentic cadence. No doubt, 95% of classical music was written this way, or involving these conventions at some point during the song. Historically, classical music is perhaps an example of the excess or the baroque richness of overindulgence. To use a metaphor, on a sports level, it would be something like curling, something taking a lot of money and people to create and support. Blues music, on the other hand, is like soccer – something so simple that you just need a ball (guitar), and you can do it. In fact, it can be as simple as running (singing, unaccompanied), if you want it to be.
This style of blues, this one man/one guitar thing seems quite narcissistic in ways, and that is what I think of first, from a philosophical standpoint. This is the history of blues, this one man telling the woes of his life. “King of the Delta Blues” is not music you can dance to (aside from a bit of the music here and there), or really hum along to for that matter. Despite the importance of the previous two steps (pitch blending and isometric rhythms are the keys for the musilanguage model proposed by Brown), this Delta Blues singer style is so forlorn, so idiosyncratic, and so solitary, it can't help but turn the ear. The tragedy of being alone, of outlying, being ostracized by force (slavery, American culture) or choice, or ego, or true independence. How to discern the difference? In “Kindhearted Woman Blues,” Johnson breaks into a falsetto which is as chill-inducing as his guitar playing has been up to this point. While Johnson's lyrics don't necessarily have social commentary, Robert Kopp has made a very compelling point: blues weren't always about personal suffering, and they probably have their roots in African song pre-(and African-American song during) slavery.
Robert Johnson is the ultimate outlaw, a musician who had certain qualities that no first-world white person can deny. He never made money in his lifetime, he was an outsider among an already disenfranchised minority, and he came to define a music style that laid the foundation for many CEOs to line their wallets. And while artists under the guiding vision of profit-based corporations have taken Johnson's message and twisted it to create, for instance, a selfish hip-hop, or used an aggressive and socially conscious style like punk or hardcore and warped it to sell Hot Topic clothes and justify high school bullying, there is a vibrant counter culture in nearly all musical styles that continues to persist. I'd like to think that this is the music that matters. Humorously enough, many people find Kanye West to be brash, unruly, and cocky to a fault, and they couldn't believe he would interrupt Taylor Swift's award presentation – I have no doubt that many Bernie Sanders fans thought the same of the Seattle #blacklivesmatter group interrupting his speech, with their claim that he offers the most for their group of the potential candidates. The latter claims notwithstanding, as a white person, I don't have the right to define black culture or black politics. If it's true that scholars consider the blues as ultimately tragic, can this be the moment that saves our African American comrades from further tragedy?
Everyone has an opinion, right? The music that matters to me may never matter to you. There's a debate raging still about the speed at which Robert Johnson's music was recorded and is now presented. Some like the slowed down verison, some like the “accepted” regular speed. I think both have their application. There is so much music now existing, being created, and planned for creation, that not only will our preferences change, culturally, but our tastes will change personally. Still, we have to wonder, using Ed Hagen's argument - that music is a way to band a coalition together for warlike activities – with which coalition are we signifying acceptance? Which coalition matters? Until we can all realize that no music is inherently worthless, with whom will we ally our worth?
This essay is dedicated to Akira Watts.
References
Music
-King of the Delta Blues Singers, 1961, Robert Johnson. Available on YouTube here
-One "pitch/tempo-corrected" or "restored" version of Robert Johnson's "Hellhound On My Trail"
Books/Websites
-A Brief History of the Blues – Robert Kopp. 2005.
-Cadence – Wikipedia
-Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Wald. 2004.
-Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives. Wilson. 2007.
-Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. McNeill. 1995.
-Music And Dance As a Coalition Signaling System, Hagen and Bryant, 2002.
-Robert Johnson – Wikipedia
-The Robert Johnson Recording Speed Controversy. Wald.
-The Musilanguage Theory of Music Evolution, Brown.
