It’s 2015 and we are talking about black and white skin. Why?

I went to see the movie Selma recently. It was quite simply outstanding – utterly engrossing, but also inspiring and challenging. The movie works at a number of levels, including giving us a fascinating insight into Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but simply in terms of reminding us of the brutal racism that gave rise to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 60s in the US, it is a film that everybody should see.

Not least because racism has clearly not gone away, not in the United States and not in Europe. Just this past week, a French man returning home from work was abused by a group of visiting English football fans on the French Metro. He was bundled off the train and assaulted verbally with racist chanting. The incident was caught on a mobile phone video and then widely distributed. The victim, Souleymane, who doesn’t want his surname known, said, “It’s 2015 and we are talking about black and white skin. Why?”

Why indeed. Yet racism continues to dog our societies. In a telling article in the Guardian, Chris Arnade recounts: “A week after Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, I walked into my old hometown bar in central Florida to hear, “Well if a nigger can be president, then I can have another drink. Give me a whiskey straight up.” Only one day in the town and I thought, “Damn the south.””

Ms Arnade works in Wall Street in New York City, but recognizes that even there, “the poor side of town in New York is still almost entirely dark skinned.” She makes the point that America celebrates the stories of self-made blacks and Hispanics, the ones who make it, to enable people to forget the others who are not able to overcome the long odds and everything stacked against them in neighborhoods racked by poverty, unemployment, crime and drugs.

“Gone,” she says, “is the overt, violent, and legal racism of my childhood. It has been replaced by a subtler version.” But maybe it’s not so subtle – Black Demographics suggests  that over 28% of black families are living in poverty, compared to around 12% percent across all races, that blacks are three times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than whites and they constitute 38% of the prison population whilst only accounting for 13% of the population. And that’s before we start discussing recent events in Ferguson or New York City.

The song that plays out during the credits for Selma is Glory performed by Common and John Legend. It’s spine-tingling, as it looks forward to a day without racism and injustice:

One day, when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh, one day, when the war is one

Intriguingly its says, “One son died, his spirit is revisitin’ us,” clearly a reference to Martin Luther King and his continuing inspiration in the continuing struggle against racism. It’s equally applicable, though, in this context to Jesus, who said “blessed are those who hunger and thirst after justice,” and died at the hands of the oppressive regime of his day, to bring in a new day of peace and justice. His spirit is available to inspire and empower all those who would walk in his way of peace and in the pursuit of justice.

I was greatly taken by the words of Martin Luther King in one of his Selma speeches:

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for the truth.”

These are, in fact, words inspired by King’s understanding of the Bible, of Jesus. David Oyelowo who plays King so convincingly in the movie says of King, “This was a man driven by his spiritual convictions. Anyone who has seen those speeches can tell there is something flowing through this man other than just intellect. There is a deep spiritual drive within him to see all peoples experience justice…I share his faith, in terms of being a Christian myself, so I know what it is to be taken up by something else other than your own intellectual thoughts.”

King’s words are a challenge to all of us, of faith or no faith – in a world full of injustice, how are you and I going to stand up for justice, for truth, for what is right?

Time to Come Home: Pigs, Stones and the Blues

In September 1929 in the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a young blues singer called Robert Wilkins recorded a song entitled “That’s No Way to Get Along.” It was a song about no-good, cheatin’ women, as were so many of the blues songs of the time.

About six years later, Robert’s wife became very ill, and, given the lack of access to medical care that was common in black communities in the Deep South, Robert was at his wits’ end. In his desperation he cried out to God and promised that if God would spare his wife, he would turn his life around and serve the Lord.

Remarkably, Robert’s wife did indeed survive, and true to his word, Robert turned his life over to God and in due course was ordained a minister in the Church of God in Christ. He turned his back on the blues, but continued to play his guitar and sing. He changed the lyrics of some of his old blues songs, including “That’s No Way to Get Along,” which became a compelling re-telling of Jesus’s parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15.

Rev. Robert Wilkins was “rediscovered” in the early 1960s and performed a version of “Prodigal Son” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, clocking in at some 9 minutes long. The song was subsequently taken by the Rolling Stones and performed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on their 1968 album, Beggars’ Banquet, providing Wilkins with some welcome income in his old age.

The story of the prodigal son is one that is very familiar to most people. The idea of “the prodigal returning” is deeply embedded into our culture to people of faith or no faith. Although told in the context of a rural Palestinian setting of 2,000 years ago, the story still resonates today across cultures. We miss some of the nuances, of course – the idea of a son asking his father, in this social context, for his inheritance, is tantamount to telling his father “I wish you were dead,” which Jesus’s hearers would have found utterly shocking and would have served to highlight even further the father’s willingness to welcome his wayward son back. The idea of a respected, village chief watching for his son and then pulling up his robes to run to greet him – an elder like this would never have been seen running – again would have amazed Jesus’s audience.

And also, the story was likely told by Jesus as a parable of what was happening to his people, Israel, as a result of his own coming. For Jesus, the long hoped for day of restoration and the arrival of God’s reign, was beginning through his own life. So the story tells Israel’s story of going away from God to live in a land of pagans (note the element of the son working with pigs in a strange land), but then coming back and being welcomed by God – with the disapproval of the elder son, clearly representing those Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus and rejected his ideas about the arrival of God’s kingdom. Israel had, of course experienced life amongst pagans, when in exile, and then again whilst in their own land under a succession of invaders including the current lot, the Romans. Jesus message is clear – that God is now welcoming all those who will return to God, including the “tax collectors and sinners” who were despised by Israel’s leaders.

But beyond the quite clear application to Jesus’s own historical situation, the story is a powerful one which appeals to most of us – someone who gets themselves into a bad situation; who makes some attempt at making a change, but with low expectations of the result (“I don’t deserve to be called a son; just treat me like a hired hand”); undeserved, but lavish parental love; jealously from those who feel offended that their loyalty has been taken for granted. We can all relate to it.

But the unselfconscious, exuberant love of the father, which refuses to stand on ceremony, and is prepared to be utterly undignified, stands out of course. And reminds us that, no matter how low we go, how far gone are things, there is always the chance of forgiveness, of love, of a clean sheet. Like the prodigal, we just need to come home.

 

Leadbelly, the blues and race

The blues emerged during a period of tremendous inequality, injustice and discrimination against black communities in the Southern States.  During this time, it would have been pretty much impossible for blues artists to sing protest songs in the way that they were sung in the 1960s when the Civil Rights’ movement had gathered momentum. Although the majority of blues songs are about the troubles of love, there is a steady stream of social protest from the early days right through to the present.

Leadbelly recorded “Scottsboro Boys” in 1938, where he warns black people not to go to Alabama lest they suffer the same fate as the Scottsboro nine (nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping a white woman):

I’m gonna tell all the colored people
Even the old n***** here
Don’t ya ever go to Alabama
And try to live.

Clearly not afraid to voice his protest against what he experienced, Leadbelly also wrote “Bourgeois Blues,” where he sings about his experience of discrimination in the nation’s capital city:

Well, them white folks in Washington they know how
To call a colored man a n***** just to see him bow
Lord, it’s a bourgeois town
I got the bourgeois blues
Gonna spread the news all around

Leadbelly talks about looking for accommodation and being turned away by the white landlord:

Well, me and my wife we were standing upstairs
We heard the white man say “I don’t want no n*****s up there.”

America, according to Leadbelly may have been hailed as “The home of the Brave, The land of the Free,” but it was just somewhere where he was “mistreated” by the “bourgeoisie.”

The legacy of racial prejudice and injustice some 80 years later rumbles on:

• the black-white income gap is roughly 40% greater today than it was in 1967
• the wealth disparity between blacks and whites in America today is greater than what it was in South Africa during apartheid
• a black male today in the US has a life expectancy five years shorter than that of a white
• The United States Sentencing Commission concluded that black men get sentences one-fifth longer than white men for committing the same crimes
• in Louisiana, a study foundthat a person is 97 percent more likely to be sentenced to death for murdering a white person than a black person
• the US imprisons a higher proportion of its black population than apartheid South Africa did
• police killings of African-Americans occur as often as twice a week for at times mundane infractions and at three times the rate as for whites, according to conservative estimates from recent studies.

The recent deaths of  Eric Garner, Michael Brown and others have polarized opinion and made the need for a national conversation on issues of race urgent. Isabel Wilkerson, author of “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” and a former national correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times, says that:

“Such cases force black families again to consider how to safeguard their children and themselves from the violence they suffer at a disproportionate rate at the hands of authorities assigned to protect them. They are still giving a version of the same talk their ancestors gave their children back in the old country of the South, about answering yes, sir, and no, sir, and watching how they comport themselves around the upper caste and the police.”

She believes there is a national problem which requires the commitment of the entire nation to resolve. Nicholas Kristoff from the New York Times suggests the US needs to “borrow a page from South Africa and impanel a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to examine race in America.”

Recent events show the challenges that exist. The blues continue to bear witness about the on-going problem of racism – not just in the US but in Europe and elsewhere as well.

And here’s the original protest song – the achingly graphic Strange Fruit.

The blues, justice and the gospel

A new book by Gary W Burnett looks at the roots of the blues and explores the blues’ spiritual dimension. In particular it looks at important faith-related themes like justice, peace and materialism through the lens of the social history of the blues in the early decades of the twentieth century. It’s available in both paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon. Get your copy at:

www.amazon.com

www.amazon.co.uk

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER BELOW…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Best Blues Albums 2014

2014 was another excellent year for the blues, as you can see from the list below. Blues music is so diverse that it’s very difficult to make a list that contains both acoustic and electric blues and everything else in between. But…notwithstanding that, here is Down at the Crossroads Best 25 Blues Albums of 2014. Feel free to disagree…

First of all, our top 10 – 

Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Goin’ Home

Still only in his mid 30s, Shepherd has a 20 year career behind him. This is a wonderful, mature album, where he gives us 12 of the songs which first got him excited about the blues. We get guest appearances from Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh, Warren Haynes, Keb’ Mo’, Robert Randolph, Kim Wilson and the Rebirth Brass Band in a hugely enjoyable journey through the some of the absolute classics of the genre.

Keb Mo: Bluesamericana

Slick return to his blues roots, this is a very fine album from Keb Mo. A highly enjoyable set of songs, all but one are originals and there is some excellent guitar work. And nice to see a couple of songs dealing with topical issues in The Worst is Yet to Come and More For Your Money.

 

Luke Winslow-King: Everlasting Arms

Luke Winslow-King, ably assisted by his talented wife, Esther Rose, have given us a stunning album of rootsy, bluesy Americana in Everlasting Arms. It’s old-time, yet always manages to be fresh, and it’ll bring a smile to your face every time you listen to it. With 13 songs that weave seamlessly through the blues, country and folk with hints of jazz, the whole album is a delight from start to finish.

Walter Trout:  The Blues Came Callin’

Willie Dixon once famously said, “The blues is the truth.” Walter Trout has given us a blues album that tells the truth, is all its starkness and rawness. Recorded prior to his liver transplant when he was quite ill, the music on the album attests to his remarkable strength of spirit. Here and there, Walter’s voice isn’t as strong as we’ve heard it and despite the subject matter of some of the songs, the album is life-affirming.

John Mayall:  A Special Life

The Godfather of British blues, after more than 50 album releases, presents us with a very well crafted and excellently produced classic blues album. Four of the songs are originals and all eleven are beautifully performed by a talented band. Most enjoyable.

 

Kaz Hawkins: Get Ready

Kaz Hawkins’ new album, Get Ready, is inspirational, honest, warm, full of energy and infectious passion. Blues and gospel with a dollop of soul and R&B served up by an excellent band and a truly remarkable singer. Kaz’s voice is powerful, emotional, rasping, passionate, bluesy. And her music comes from a deep well of personal experience, trial and hope for the future. One not to be missed.

JP Soars: Full Moon Night in Memphis

JP Soars’ third studio release, Full Moon Night in Memphis, is one of the most enjoyable albums I’ve listened to this year. Every track of the 14 is simply a joy, with divergent blues styles which show off Soars’ fabulous guitar chops and excellent, gritty vocals.  Entertaining, engaging and enjoyable.

 

Eric Bibb: Blues People

Top notch acoustic blues from blues troubadour Eric Bibb, with his characteristic upbeat songs and delicious guitar picking. In part a tribute to the memory of the Dr. Martin Luther King, the album is a fine mixture of country blues, folk, gospel and soul. Taj Mahal, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Ruthie Foster and Popa Chubby all guest in what is one of Bibb’s consistent offerings.

 

Luther Dickinson: Rock n Roll Blues

Luther Dickinson’s take on the blues is, I guess, not for everyone, but his quirky vocals, handy guitar chops and a terrific set of songs makes this a stand-out album of acoustic folk, blues, and country. This is raw and honest music, a welcome relief from much of the slick, over-produced stuff that is all too common.

 

Janiva Magness: Original

This is LA-based artist Magness’s best work to date, to be sure, 11 original songs, 7 of which she co-wrote. Wonderful vocal variation and control throughout these excellent bluesy, soul-laden songs. A treat.

 

 

And – here are our next 10 Best Blues Albums of 2014…

Gary Clark Jr.: Live

Often hailed as the future of the blues, Gary Clark’s Live is a very fine album of the best live versions of his song. Intense and passionate, it showcases his considerable guitar playing and grabs your attention from the get-go. Classic and traditional blues are fused here into a compelling fresh sound, which holds great promise of things to come from Clark.

 

Joanne Shaw Taylor: The Dirty Truth

Classy fourth studio release from Taylor who gives us ten strong songs of hugely enjoyable blues rock. The guitar work is outstanding as we would expect, but Taylor’s vocals are delivered with considerable aplomb. Much to enjoy here.

 

Ian Siegal: Man and Guitar

Ian Siegal – prolific songwriter, gifted guitarist, commanding performer – it’s all on display on this album recorded at the Royal Albert Hall by the BBC.  With outstanding sound quality, this is a wonderful concoction of blues, folk, rock and roots music that is punctuated here and there with Siegal’s witty banter with the audience.

 

Rory Block: Hard Luck Child

Following her excellent tributes to Robert Johnson, John Hurt, Fred McDowell and Gary Davis, Block has given us a fine album of acoustic songs by Skip James. As usual, Block’s guitar work is terrific and she doe full justice to one of the most important early country blues artists, whose music was often haunting and unusual. The album has one original song, Nehemiah James, which serves as an introduction to James’s life story.

John Hiatt: Terms of My Surrender

Prolific Americana artist Hiatt offers us a compelling set of blues-infused  songs with echoes of J.J. Cale, recent Bob Dylan and Guy Davis. Hiatt’s voice is as world-weary as ever, the songs heavy with a life-time of experience. Hugely enjoyable stuff.

 

Royal Southern Brotherhood: Heartsoulblood

HeartSoulBlood is remarkably upbeat and inspirational. Outstanding guitar work and lovely harmonies characterize the whole album which is funky and full of good tunes. There’s a lot of hope here, exemplified by the song “Love and Peace Will Heal the World.”

 

Nick Moss: Time Ain’t Free

This is a band in exceptional form here, with a heady blend of blues. soul, funk and rock-and-roll. No nonsense blues rock of the highest calibre.

 

Jo Harman: Live at the Royal Albert Hall

Recorded and produced by the BBC, this is a 2013 performance at Blues Fest at the Royal Albert Hall. There are 8 songs, all showcasing Jo’s excellent band and most of all her wonderful, emotional vocal performance. There is much to enjoy here – some very tasteful guitar work, versitile keyboards, terrific interaction between the two, and overall the band is a tight unit which seems to be enjoying itself.

Bad Brad & the Fat Cats: Take A Walk With Me

Bad Brad and the Fat Cats reach out and grab you by the lapels from the opening guitar riff of Take a Walk With Me and pull you right inside their rockin’ bad ass blues whether you like it or not, until finally they spit you out at the end of the Les Paul-laced Uma, thirteen tracks later.  13 original tracks of classic blues rock that always manage to stay fresh.

 

Joe Bonamassa:  Different Shades of Blue

Guitar virtuoso’s first album of all-new material in two years. Blues rock, but at the same time should appeal to a wide audience. With help from a couple of Nashville songwriters, Bonamassa has given us a fine, varied album, well produced and featuring, of course, his trademark guitar chops.

 

And, Down at the Crossroads’ final 5 Best Blues Albums of 2014

Mark Harrison:  The World Outside

Joe Louis Walker: Hornet’s Nest

Thorbjorn Risager: Too Many Roads

Ruthie Foster: Promise of a Brand New Day

Devon Allman: Ragged and Dirty

 

How I Hate to See Christmas Come Around

Christmas is the time of year when everything is supposed to sparkle and there’s joy and laughter all around. For many people, it’s become pretty much divorced from any connection to the original Christmas story and it’s now an opportunity to catch your breath and take a bit of time out as winter begins to set in, or a chance to celebrate with friends and family, and, increasingly, it can be just a rather unholy festival of consumption, excess and acquisitiveness.

For many families, the pressure to celebrate Christmas with fancy food and presents puts them under enormous financial pressure which can leave them with months of debt. Consumer counselling agencies in the US typically see a 25% increase in the number of people seeking help in January and February, driven by holiday bills that haunt consumers like the ghost of Christmas past. People in the UK spend more than anywhere else in Europe on Christmas presents and, unsurprisingly, there are more people in debt after Christmas here than anywhere else.

Jimmy Witherspoon’s How I Hate to See Christmas Come Around brings us face to face with someone doing their best to scrounge up the money to buy a few Christmas presents. He checks his bank account, but finds only 15 cents. He tries the loan company and gets no joy there. So he goes to the pawn shop to pawn his radio, but gets refused. The result?  “No chicken, no turkey, no cranberries, no Christmas tree.” When Christmas comes around, “It always bring me down.”

Funny how the Christmas story which was set in the most humble of circumstances – a baby laid in a cattle trough – and where some of the lead actors were poverty-stricken shepherds, has been twisted to become an excuse for a blow-out of commerce and indulgence, isn’t it? For sure Christmas is an occasion for hope and joy – the birth of a baby, through whose life, death and resurrection the world can be transformed – but perhaps it’s time to resist the tide of advertising and the sale of a particular type of “traditional Christmas” and to replace it with a focus, not only on friends and family, but on those in our society and world who need a little hope. Here are some organizations that might help you do that:

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/

https://www.ijm.org/

http://www.worldvision.org/

http://www.wdm.org.uk/

Grainne Duffy – do your best, work hard and let the music do the talking.

Compared at times to Bonnie Raitt, hailed as a “unique talent,” and “the real deal” in the music press, Irish artist Grainne Duffy has been wow-ing audiences all round Europe. Her superb recent album, Test of Time, has been described as having “soulful tone and real depth and emotion.” Down at the Crossroads caught up with her for this interview:

DATC: Hi Grainne – you’ve had a busy year, touring around Europe and the UK? You’ve played some places for the first time – how has all that gone for you?

Grainne: Hi! It’s been a flat out year indeed. But we have really enjoyed it. Playing new countries to new audiences and spreading the musical word…! Just great and meeting some lovely people and bands along the way which is always cool too.

DATC: You’ve two albums out, one from just last year. How would you describe the difference between them and how has your music evolved over the past 3 or 4 years?

Grainne: Well the first album, Out of the Dark, was mostly rootsy blues & Americana I suppose, while the second one was more pop & rock based. I think the main difference between them was that the second album was very song-based mainly. I try to keep evolving musically by listening to as much as I can and trying to improve musically all the time. So I hope my music just reflects this and I suppose my life experiences in my song-writing are always growing. The more you live, the more you learn.

DATC: Test of Time has 11 of your own songs on it – all very strong songs, very accessible, hugely enjoyable. Do you see yourself primarily as a songwriter or a guitarist or a singer? Or would that be a false distinction to make?

Grainne: Well thank you! I am glad you think so! I suppose I try to just be a musician expressing myself in songs. I don’t try to get too caught up in whether I am a singer or guitar player or songwriter. The reason I got into music was because of the way it made me feel. So I started to sing and then learned to play the guitar to accompany myself and then started writing songs to express myself. So I just see that as a natural evolution as opposed to being separate things. I hope I am all of these and at the same time just one person expressing myself through music.

DATC: As a guitarist, you moved from playing a Strat some time ago to playing a Les Paul – what does the Gibson add your music; why do you particularly like it? Tell us about the sort of sound you are striving for.

Grainne: Well I started playing the Gibson Les Paul after I was given it as a gift from my boyfriend. I just loved the feel of it, particularly how it feels for the slow melodic style of playing which I love. I always adored Peter Green’s playing and he was a Gibson player so I suppose anything near the tone and sound he creates would be amazing to me.

DATC: We can hear echoes of a lot of classic blues and rock in your songs – what have been the formative influences? And what are you listening to now that moves you?

Grainne: Well I started out listening mostly to old blues like Albert King and B.B. King and later artists like Peter Green and Eric Clapton and Rory Gallagher. So these were my early guitar influences. Nowadays I try to listen to as many varied influences as possible from The Kings of Leon to Gary Clarke Jr to The Common Linnets or Citizen Cope. Yet I still cannot put away my favourite records like Carole King’s Tapestry or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. These still inspire me, after 1,000’s of listens. Melodic songs are really what inspire me.

DATC: The sort of music you play has been dominated in the past by men. Thankfully that’s changing. But how has it been, making your way in this business as a woman?

Grainne: Yes it has been. Thankfully lots of great women have paved the way. One of my heroes is Chrissie Hynde. I like her attitude in the industry as a women. She never makes a big deal about being a woman, yet she is a very strong woman, and has a great energy and presence and is highly respected in the industry. I think this is the best way to be as a woman in the industry. Do your best and work hard. Let the music do the talking and you will get along just fine!

DATC: You’ve played on some big stages and have been on the same bill as a lot of major artists. But there’s clearly a lot more for you to achieve and do – what are your ambitions? And what’s up ahead in the immediate future?

Grainne: Well yes, we have been lucky to do some lovely gigs and festivals with some great bands and artists.  My main aim is to try and continue to be the best I can be and to enjoy making music with those around me. In the near future we will be releasing some new material and touring more and this will be the main goal for over the next year but I am also looking forward to maybe collaborating with some new people in the future which I hope will be exciting also.

http://grainneduffy.com/