A Blues Blog...

...has to be primarily about music, doesn't it? You know, songs steeped in the pain of the human condition, wrenched from guitars and the suffering of the singer's soul - borne out of Africa on slave ships, honed by centuries of hardship on the plantations of the Americas, given back to the world in the 20th century from the crucible of the Mississippi Delta and the slums of Chicago courtesy of the Recording Angel. It's a complex subject and I must apologise upfront to any blues purists for the somewhat reductionist approach as I try and keep the appeal as broad as possible.

Of course the first impact of  'the blues' on us music-hungry teenagers in the UK in the mid-'60s came via the filter of white musicians (John Mayall, Rolling Stones, Fred Neil, Chicken Shack, Fleetwood Mac, Savoy Brown, Steve Miller Band...not an exhaustive list by any means), players who championed and were influenced by the sounds of black America's bluesmen. From there, some of us reached back to the originals - Albert King, BB King, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins, Rev. Gary Davis, Robert Johnson, Son House and Muddy Waters.

I don't think many of us realised, or at least not for many years, that the blues music we were grooving to - whether it was played by white or black musicians, American or British - not only had its roots in West Africa but continues to be made there by a stellar bunch of Malians, Mauretanians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Sierra Leoneans: check out (if you're so inclined) the works of Baaba Maal, Boubacar Traore, Majid Bekkar, Mansour Seck, Tinariwen or the master of them all, Ali Farka Toure - king of the desert blues.

Ali Farka Toure - king of the desert blues

Yes, it all began in West Africa and strangely enough, the first musical instrument I ever possessed, aged four or five, was made for me by a kindly and ingenious Yoruba tribesman in the Nigerian village where I grew up as a boy. That instrument was fashioned out of a large sardine tin of which the partly-peeled lid had been cut into strips of varying lengths, so each strip could be twanged to produce different notes, the body of the tin serving as the sound chamber. I was delighted with it. My mother broke out her accordion and our 'house boy' would thump away on a goatskin drum while I played lead sardine tin - my first blues band!

Further down the line I learned to play piano (under duress - I was Grade II listed); and then I gravitated like so many others to guitar, first six-string and then bass - the latter in a band that also enjoyed playing the blues...

Woke up this morning...

I've just finished reading a biography of Fred Neil, one of my musical heroes (and coincidentally the man who wrote 'Everybody's Talkin'  which became a big hit for Harry Nilsson when it featured in the movie Midnight Cowboy ). Fred Neil was an accomplished 12-string guitar player with an ear for the blues and a wonderful baritone voice. He was a stalwart of the emerging post-war coffeehouse folk/blues scene in New York's Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, a hand-to-mouth existence that spawned the likes of Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin, John Sebastian (later of Lovin' Spoonful fame) and one Robert Zimmerman, who didn't do too badly for himself.

While I've been reading the book, I also listened to lots of those early albums by Karen Dalton, Tim Hardin and the mighty Fred Neil himself; and so as a musical bonus this week I've linked in a version of Karen Dalton playing and singing Fred Neil's 'Little Bit Of Rain'.  Dig it.

Before that though, a new poem-in-progress. Usually I only decide what to call a piece once I've written it - but in this case the title came first and the poetry has to evoke and live up to the billing. It's partly a reflection on that folk/blues music scene I've been reading about and partly an expression of concern at the current state of play down at Bloomfield Road where the Seasiders have recorded three draws, five defeats and no wins in their last eight games as they struggle to find their mojo - searching for that metaphorical sunshine state. I hope it works on both levels.

Green Tangerine Blues
With the long war won,
we reclaimed our own,
albeit run into the ground;
sang anthems in exuberance
at being home and in the zone.
At least the healing had begun.

Rejuvenation though,
that will take some time,
months one would imagine.
So much to put to rights.
Greedy though we are
to taste success
after those barren years,
it doesn't happen overnight,
not in the real world.

Frustrating as it is,
this halting progress
towards our dreams,
when schemes occasionally
go awry, it's vital
that we find the right way
to play together, build
a whole community afresh,
create momentum,
fashion a formidable group,
recoup the scene as was
before it all went horribly wrong.

Too much is new still, green,
unproven, far from ready;
a slightly sour
but not unpalatable truth.

What's required is patience,
some degree of latitude,
and our unwavering belief
this fruit will ripen
and find favour with us all;
another season in the sun
after pouring rain,
a harvest to savour,
new sonorous refrains.
It will come to pass...
just play on.

To listen to Karen Dalton singing Fred Neil's song just click here >>> Little Bit Of Rain

After listening to that, put on your red shoes and dance the blues, S ;-)

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Roots

I once saw a man fall out of a tree. This wasn’t any old tree, but a forty-foot high African oil palm. It happened one unassuming spring afternoon in Lagos, Nigeria, land of my birth. The man had climbed almost to the crown to harvest the crop when he just appeared to lose his grip, for he suddenly arced backwards and plummeted towards the ground. I was four years old at the time.

Palm Oil Tapping

I told my mum what I’d seen, but she didn’t believe me – any more than on the evening in November 1963 when I saw a TV newsflash that President Kennedy had been shot. On relaying that information to her, I was told not to be so stupid, that couldn’t possibly have happened. Mothers! 

My parents had gone to Nigeria at the beginning of the Fifties, my father as a Methodist Missionary and my mother as a nurse. I was conceived under canvas on a trek up-country - I know, too much information – and was born in the Creek Hospital at Lagos just weeks before Blackpool won the FA Cup. What a year. 

For the first five years of my life we lived in a small village near the town of Ilorin, about 200 miles inland from Lagos, with paraffin lamps, a gas refrigerator and water drawn from the well. We slept under mosquito nets, were wary of snakes and scorpions and TV and radio were not only unheard, they were unheard of. We had mango and banana trees growing in the garden as well as chickens and the occasional zebra. We were the only white people in the village and I grew up speaking a mixture of English and Yoruba. Christmases were always hot and dusty and greetings cards with pictures of snowy scenes arrived from another almost mythical world. 

I can remember a time when I couldn’t read. We visited some friends, an English doctor and his family (relations of David Frost as it happens) and I was given a book about tigers. I loved the pictures but realised there was more to the book than that and I didn’t have the key to unlock it. My first Janet and John readers arrived shortly afterwards. 

By 1958 I was the eldest of three boys and our parents had some tough decisions to make about education. Rather than send us away to be schooled they opted to return to England. We sailed out of Lagos in May 1958 and I’ve never been back to the land of my idyllic childhood. Nigeria has changed so much (not necessarily for better or worse) that I’m not sure I could relate anymore to what I’d find.  My roots remain in vivid memories. 

Today’s poem is based upon a couple of such memories, from when I was three or four years old, and I’ve tried to recapture that sense of a young mind struggling to make sense of what it observed. I had never seen a man cry until the day I thought I witnessed this; and I really did think that loss of hair was down to the actions of a capricious wind and a careless headman!

 

The Limits Of Experience

Black-skinned man

on a hot-skinned day,

who can say

if your face is wet

with tears or with sweat? 

And that old hat

upon your head,

it cannot hide the fact

the wind has blown

your hair away.

Is that why you are so sad?

 

Thanks for reading J Eku Odun Tuntun/Happy New Year, S ;-)

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