Corey Harris – “The blues is a textbook for life”

“Blues is the news we can use to survive in a world on fire”

For nearly thirty years, Corey Harris has been at the forefront of blues interpretation, fusing jazz, reggae, gospel and Caribbean influences to traditional blues. Along the way he has recorded and played with artists like B.B. King, Taj Mahal, Buddy Guy, R.L. Burnside, Ali Farka Toure, and others, performing throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australasia. He starred in Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home and collaborated with Billy Bragg on the Mermaid Avenue album series.

He’s a W.C. Handy Blues Award winner, has an honorary doctorate in music and was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Award for Genius.

Insurrection Blues, his new album, is a fantastic collection of traditional blues songs performed with passion, rawness and fine guitar picking. The album was recorded in May 2021 in

Abruzzo in Italy, where Corey lived during the pandemic before returning to the United States. The album also features contributions on a couple of tracks from harmonica player, Phil Wiggins, and the mandolinist Lino Muoio.

Down at the Crossroads got the opportunity to chat to Corey about the new album and about his music in general.

He told me, first of all, that he’d wanted to show his roots and let people understand know where he’s coming from. “I’ve done a lot of different excursions over the years,” he said, “but this is my foundation. So, I wanted to re-inscribe that into people’s memory banks; that this is what it’s about.”

So you’ll find interpretations of songs by the likes of Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Charlie Patton, all performed with passion by a skilled guitarist and singer.

In dealing with such a wide scope in the tradition, I wondered how he goes about selecting a particular song and then making it his own?

“I try and be faithful to the form of the song, how it’s supposed to be played and the recognizable licks, if you will, but at some point, you can’t ever play it just like the version you’re learning – at least I can’t. So that’s where my own creativity and character comes in. Because, you know, you’re gonna sound like you!

“In these the traditional songs, I really try and be faithful to the musical presentation of the song, how it’s sung and the rhythm, unless I’m really trying to do something that is adding to it and doing a totally different version – but I normally don’t do that. Some artists will take, say, a Skip James tune and make it totally different, but I’m not really into that. I’m really into trying to interpret a song through my own filter if you will.”

Corey Harris has been performing, rootsy, bluesy music for a long time now. I asked him what is it about this music that is so important to him.

“Well, I would say that this music connects us to our ancestral heritage in America. And it also opens eyes to the realities of what we’re dealing with. You know, the blues is like our CNN, it is what is happening. It’s the news, you know what I mean?

“So, with the times as they are, I just really felt it was important to get back to the basics about the strengths in the culture, and that’s why I was looking at the different song forms and the different varieties within that culture. Nowadays a lot of times, in the popular context, people assume black culture is gonna be hip-hop, or Lil Uzi Vert or something, but it’s actually quite deeper than the commercial varieties we’ve been conditioned to accept. So, I wanted to show really where it’s coming from, and try and do a survey, not only of how I see the music, but of the last hundred and fifty or so years of it.”

This coheres with what Harris has previously said of Insurrection Blues, that it “is an unflinching look at desire and destruction in 21st century America…as an African American living in America, as a descendant of slaves that built this country, I am looking at the survival mechanisms that have existed for people to persevere in difficult times. And when we think about that, the blues always comes to mind.”

“Yeah. There’s a tendency in the popular press and even in academia, to typify the blues and say it’s this sad music about being drunk and losing your woman. But it’s actually so much more than that. And so, I just want to show that the blues is a textbook for life. It’s just like any other great art, it describes the condition of man and woman in all the different situations in life. So that’s what I’m trying to show. Also, that this is a rich tradition and it’s not anything that can be easily diluted or reduced into simple song forms and like, a skinny tie and a hat, you know what I mean? It’s more than that. And that’s what I wanted to show.”

The blues, clearly, grew up in the context of terrible injustice suffered by Black communities. But, I suggested to Corey, the music and the form, and the spirit seems to be something that has a very broad application and appeal, so that there are all sorts of people all around the world who feel drawn to it.

“Well, you know, we all struggle. That’s why we’re here, to struggle and to overcome, as human beings. We can all relate to that journey of struggle and overcoming, in our own way, because it’s not all equal and not all the same. We all have our own different little histories, but we all have that same feeling of, you know, it’s hard, but finally, I’m victorious. Let’s look back and celebrate how hard it was.”

The blues always seem to have that double edge about them – a lament for the way things are, but hope that things might get better. You see it in so many of the songs, where the singer seems to be able to sing his or her way out of the blues feeling.

“That’s it, being able to see the sun on the horizon and being able to get that strength you need to see the next day and to persevere and to keep going. This is the tradition. It wasn’t a tradition that people did for money. There was no profession back in the days with the ancestors of blues singers, blues performers – I’m talking, like, before the Chitlin’ circuit, before the recordings of the twenties, before Mamie Smith. There was no occupation of blues singer, people did it because they had to, because this is what their culture showed them – how you can deal with the things that the world is giving you, all the oppression and all the Black codes, the lynching, you know, all of that. So, this is a tool for survival is the way I see it.”

Harris was profoundly disturbed (along with most other right-thinking people) about the events in Washington at the beginning of 2021. He has said, “When I saw the insurrection, I saw how race and history collided there.” So Insurrection Blues directly channels his feeling about all this – “I felt there was a duty, a responsibility, to use the craft to say something.”

As I listened to the album, any message of resistance is not very explicit. Somebody could listen to the album and miss that. So I wondered, for Corey as an artist, how explicit or otherwise does he feel he needs to be about issues that he feels are important?

“Well, I think it depends on how you feel at the time emotionally. There are some issues that kind of speak for themselves, and you can make a commentary very easily on them. With the insurrection, depending on your political persuasion, you’re gonna see that event through drastically different spectacles, you’ll have a different perspective. And also, depending on your ethnic origin, with your ethnic history in America, you’ll have a very different perspective on this event. So yeah, there’s some resistance in it, because just the act that I’m here alive is proof that there was resistance.

“Because the system wasn’t built so that I would thrive. But also, this project is like an analysis of where we’ve been, where we are and what might happen in the future. If you listen to the record, there’s an interlude to the song Insurrection Blues, which is some audio of the actual crowd at the insurrection. And then after there’s the sound of thunder and lightning; and then the sound of rain, to symbolize that there needs to be sort of a cleansing. This is a storm, and then after a storm, the clouds go away, the sun comes out and things are fresh and clean. So, that’s what we’re going through. We’re going through a purging right now.”

Prefaced by this short interlude, the title track, Insurrection Blues (Chickens Come Home to Roost), becomes a powerful commentary on the infamous storming of the Capitol, such a symbolic emblem of American democracy. As the storm fades and the rain washes things clean, Insurrection Blues kicks in, a minor key blues. The lyrics are not explicit, but the repeated, ominous minor key riffs on the guitar are the repeatedly intoned, “it’s time to get wise” and “chickens come home to roost” make the point well enough.

It comes right in the middle of the album, and although the songs on either side might just be taken as enjoyable interpretations of acoustic guitar blues numbers, Harris has cleverly drawn attention to his African American blues tradition as pointing to both the struggles and the survival of his community.

On a more general note, I asked Corey about the re-emergence of acoustic blues back in the 1990s when he was starting out. Before that there had been a lot of electric blues for several decades.

“Yes, there was a renaissance of acoustic blues. I think the Columbia Records release of the Robert Johnson box set around 1990 had a lot to do with that. And then, shortly after that Keb’ Mo’ came out with his record on Sony’s OKeh Records – it was on a major label and made a big splash. So those two things had a lot to do with it. And then just by happenstance, I came along, Alvin Youngblood Hart came along and so did Guy Davis. And people were realizing, wow, black people still play the blues and they still play acoustic blues! And they realized that this is part of their culture. So it was a great confluence of events at that time.”

And what is the popularity of blues music, particularly in the United States. What, I wondered, is Corey’s sense of the people and the demographic listening to this music and the more traditional forms of it?

“My sense is that there are people my age – I’m in my early fifties – and older who are listening to this music and coming to these shows. The blues market is still people who buy CDs at shows. They’re not really downloading as much as other genres yet. So we’re kind of oldies but goodies blues people, as far as the fans go!” Harris is encouraged, though, by some of the younger talent coming up, like Jontavious Willis and Buffalo Nichols, whom he referred to as “a really monster guitar player.”

Along the way, Corey Harris has played with a lot of wonderful artists from both North America and Africa. I was very interested to hear about his experience of playing with B.B. King in the 1990s.

“I opened up for BB about 75 times around the world, over the years from about ‘95 until about 2005. I was around him quite a lot over the years and what I observed was he was very professional. He put the music on a level where you just had to respect it because the way that it was presented was first class. And very well mannered, very diplomatic, well spoken. You know, it was really like royal, like he was aptly named. You really felt, wow, I’m with somebody who’s putting their art on the top shelf. And so you felt inspired being around him because you felt wow, I got to raise my standards.

“He was someone who came from nothing, but he just dedicated himself to his craft. He studied a lot, he practiced a lot and he elevated his craft so that you just had to respect it for what it was. That’s what I really loved about him. And then he engaged people really well – he talked to you like you mattered and he was interested in you. He was a good people person. Just great being around him and you know, his stories – he had stories about hanging out with Satchmo in the fifties. He said Satchmo used to cook him bread, beans and rice backstage! And he had stories about hanging out with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. And thinking of that, he used to tell me, ‘Stay away from drugs!’ But I’m like, don’t worry. I don’t do drugs!”

Corey Harris is a multi-talented guy. Not only is he a successful and talented musician, but he’s the author of several books and is currently doing a PhD (he already has an honorary doctorate in music).

“I’m in the music department in the University of Virginia and I’m studying all sorts of different things. Some are things that I didn’t know a lot about, for example, 17th and 18th century classical music.  But my main thrust is music of black resistance. So that could include anything from capoeira to blues, to jazz to music associated with Santeria. So I’ve really whittled it down. But that’s what I’m really interested in – black music of the Americas, of the Atlantic, of the black diaspora.”

As well as studying, Harris is teaching as well, working with university classes along with renowned jazz writer Scott DeVeaux. All of this is sure to find its way into future Corey Harris performances and recordings.

At the moment he’s planning an album in collaboration with Cedric Watson. “He’s a great Louisiana, old-school Creole player who plays a violin and a push button accordion. He also plays banjo, so he’s an excellent talent. We’re going to do a duet record. We both speak French, so we’ll do some French songs and some Creole songs, so, it’s gonna be good!”

And Corey has a book just recently published, Blues People Illustrated.

“People can buy that on my website at Nattyworks.art. It’s fifty-one blues artists, men and women, the cool, all-traditional blues artists, mainly those who were active from the 1920s through the blues revival of the sixties. Each artist has a drawing of them and I’ve written a biography of the artist and included a complete discography as well. So it’s a kind of reference book.

“So those who don’t really know about the specific genre of traditional acoustic blues, the pre-war, can learn about people like Son House, Tommy McClennan, Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. And even little-known people like Hacksaw Harney, Precious Bryant or John Jackson. I talk about people that I knew as well – Cephas And Wiggins are in there, and Brownie and Sonny.”

One worth checking out as well as the terrific Insurrection Blues.

The Steady Rollin’ Blues Tour – Brooks Williams & Hans Theessink

Brooks Williams and Hans Theessink are seasoned blues troubadours who play to knowledgeable audiences across Europe and the United States. Brooks hails from Statesboro, Georgia (yeah, he’s got them Statesboro blues) but is now based in England, while Hans is based in Vienna, Austria.

Both are fabulous guitarists, have a deep appreciation for, and knowledge of, the blues and the social history of the blues, and are engaging and absorbing performers. Going to a concert given by either man will entertain you, challenge you, and above all, send you home satisfied with a big smile on your face.

Getting both playing together for an evening, swapping songs, alternating the lead vocals, harmonizing and trading guitar licks would be really something, then, right? Well, the two guys have embarked upon a joint tour of Great Britain this month, playing 21 gigs in 21 days. Not to be missed – check out the schedule for the Steady Rollin’ Blues Tour here.

And, be sure and get yourself a copy of Brooks Williams’ new album, Lucky Star, out in July which features a couple of tracks with both Brooks and Hans playing together.

Down at the Crossroads spoke to Hans and Brooks before their evening in the Core Theatre in Solihull and asked them about their life in the blues and life on the road…

DATC: How do you two know each other and how did this tour come about?

Brooks: Well, I’ve known of Hans since the very beginning of my career. And we did meet at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1996, but we met properly for the first time when we went to Dallas in 2005, at an anniversary concert for a great venue called Uncle Calvin’s. And we have mutual friends and that was kind of the connection. And then a couple of years ago I did the tour here with Guy Davis. And about half way through the tour, it just occurred to me that the audience really like it when we did stuff together – it became apparent that that was the point in the evening when the show just took off. Even though each of us could do our own thing, there was something magical happened then. So, I started thinking that perhaps this could be thought of as something that happens every 18 months.

And the first one at the top of my list was Hans. ‘Cause I just thought our styles would complement each other. And I was really excited about the possibilities. And thankfully when I presented the idea to Hans, he said, yeah, let’s go for it.

Hans: And we also said we’d not do separate sets and then two songs together at the end. Let’s do the whole thing together. So we swop songs, but we’re on stage playing together all the time.

DATC: And what sort of music can people expect?

Brooks: Blues, but a range – some country blues, a little bit of Texas blues, some of the Delta in there, some really nice Broonzy-style finger picking. Stuff that we love, and we bring it together through the process of how we interpret songs.

DATC: And when you talk about re-interpreting songs – how do you go about that, when you pick up an old blues song, and feel, yeah, that might work. How do you reinterpret that from the original?

Hans: Well, you couldn’t reproduce it. So you can only go another way. I try to get the feel of a song, try to crawl into that.

Brooks: For me, there’s usually one lyric in the song that I latch onto. I mean I’m into the whole song, but there’s usually one lyric that’s my cue. So, we’re going to do Backwater Blues and when I was doing the arrangement for that – and there are so many beautiful arrangements, there are some great ones – but the line that caught me was, I think it’s at the end of the 4^th verse, where it says there’s going to be a lot of people with nowhere to go. It’s talking about the storm and the rain, there’s going to be a lot of people homeless. So, I thought, what kind of mood would there be in the guitar part, if that’s the line you’re ultimately going to get to? And so that affected the tuning that I used, the little guitar figure. And then as Hans and I do it, Hans brought this, almost moving bass line – almost like a kind of slowed down blues bogey, like a blues shuffle. It just great. It’s got great power, but it’s got a little edge of desperation. And it was just that lyric that it should all feel like that. Now I know that’s miles away from other versions, but I really like that lyric and where it takes me.

Hans: And I also think it’s good that it’s miles away from other versions! But then we have a song like Deep River Blues, which is pretty close to the original.

DATC: So for each of you – what do you admire about the other person’s playing and performing?

Hans: Well, Brooks has this great thumping guitar style, and beautiful slide playing. We both obviously listen to the same people – Mississippi John Hurt and Fred McDowell and people like that, so even though we come from places far apart, we both have the same kind of general influence. So when we talk about music or listen to records, we obviously know the same things.

Brooks: One of the things that I’ve always admired about Hans’s playing is something I would have aspired to in the early days when I was listening to his Flying Fish record. It’s that way of keeping the bass going – either alternating bass or thumping bass – but doing lovely figures at the same time. So it’s like two or three parts all at once. It moves the way a piano player moves. I like to hear motion. And Hans has a great sense of the songs that he chooses to cover. And a great sense of bringing all this to his own writing, that same feel, that same tradition – so you can put a song from the ‘30s and a song of Hans side by side, and they sit very well right next to each other. The lyrics are poignant and relevant in both cases.

Hans: And even though a song might be slow, it’s all, like, groove oriented. Which is very important, not to lose the groove. And it might be really slow, like behind the beat, or whatever, but it’s still moving and that groove is really important. And Brooks has got that totally.

DATC: And you mentioned Mississippi John Hurt. You get that in a player like John Hurt don’t you?

Brooks: Yeah, that fingerpicking, the way the thumb moves, yeah.

DATC: You mentioned some of the country blues players. When you think back to the context in which they played, the situation they were in, the instruments they played, what do you admire about some of those players?

Brooks: One of the things that grabs me about those early blues players is that they were so far ahead of the curve, so to speak, they were creating something that really hadn’t been created before. When I was learning to play and learning to play slide guitar, there were lots of people I could get ideas from. But with some of the early players, you get the idea there might have been only one other person they possibly could’ve listened to – or maybe in some cases, no one else! There wouldn’t have been the access to records – it would all have happened because they crossed paths with other musicians.

Hans: I’m sure a guy like Charlie Patton had nobody to lean on. They just created their own thing.

Brooks: I know the world has changed many times over. But fundamentally they were trying to make their way in the world and make some sort of living, to make a way in the world playing music, and that is powerful, considering what some of those players would have been up against, socially, economically. Those were some pretty huge mountains to cross, and just the fact that they did it and we’re still listening to it. And it’s still vibrant!

DATC: So both of you play to audiences in Europe and the US – is there still an appetite for this sort of music where ever you play?

Hans: People come and like the hand made feel of things – things happening on the spot, the voice and the guitar and that’s it. And they can see what we’re doing.

DATC: And it’s real music.

Hans: And sometimes we fly off, we get into some improvised bit, and people enjoy that. They can see that its happening here and now and it’s never going to happen again. And that’s the big charm of this kind of music

DATC: What about the demographic – is there a younger audience for this type of music?

Hans: I find that the audience is getting up there! But there’s always young kids in the first row who want to play guitar and want to see what fingering you’re using. But I think the general audience is getting older.

Brooks: One of the things I’d like to see – and I’ve been thinking about this pretty seriously for about a year – how can one expose people to the wonderful flexibility in the blues so that they can see how vibrant it can be for them? It would be exciting to see it moving forward in some way – I’m not sure what that way might be. And the two things that I’ve seen in my travels that keep the blues vibrant in the ears and eyes of people is firstly, blues has such a direct link to rock and roll, so that even some kid who is 13 and wants to play rock guitar, they’ve figured out they need to know how to play blues guitar; that that’s part of the process. So that’s a cool thing. The other thing is that when you find an audience that has figured out that this music – even though it’s set in a time and place and an economic and social situation – that it’s as relevant now for people as it was back then. It’s very alive. Even though some of the language in some of the older songs may be a little bit foreign to our ears, it’s really vibrant music.

DATC: And – unfortunately – increasingly relevant in the world we’re now living in.

Brooks: Yeah, absolutely.

DATC: You’ve both had long careers. What ways has the music industry change for you as a recording and performing artist?

Hans: Well, lots of colleagues complain it’s not working as well as it used to. I must say, on my part, I cannot really complain. For my part, I’m pretty happy, but I guess for new kids starting out, it must be difficult to get your foot in the door.

Brooks: The changes haven’t affected me. I had my best year in 28 years, last year! I’m still travelling that little bit under the radar and so some of the changes that might slow some aspects of the industry down, actually don’t reach me. And because there is less opportunity to hear roots music on the radio, people go online more to listen to online radio and what is interesting is they’re getting turned on to artists they wouldn’t otherwise know of. And so I’ll show up in a little town where I’ve never been and someone will say, oh I heard you on such and such a radio station which you only can get online.

Hans: Or you get somebody from Nepal ordering a CD! You know, I think continuity is really important. To keep doing what you’re doing, so people know what to expect. And if you do quality work over the years, that’s what they’ll expect. Keep doing what you love doing. And if people catch your enjoyment, you being happy doing what you do, that really rubs off.

DATC: So on that point Hans, we’re all getting a bit older – how does touring feel compared with when you were younger, and what is it about what you do that keeps you going?

Hans: I still enjoy playing and playing for an audience. Now this tour is a pretty hefty one – something like 21 days of concerts. So it’s good that we are sharing the stage and swapping songs, so you’re not singing every song! But I really enjoy playing, and as long as the health situation is good, that’s the way to go.

Brooks: You know, for the first 10 or 15 years of my career, I had to constantly just stay on task. I don’t know whether it was just me, or the nature of the travelling, I had a young baby at home, I was married and it just seemed like a lot of burden. But what has been an absolute pleasure in the last decade has been being able to sit back and enjoy – really enjoy – what it is I am doing. And to look ahead at a year and say, “Hey wouldn’t it be great if Hans wanted to come over, and we’d do a tour, and what about three and a half weeks, wouldn’t that be great?” And if we could just dream that? And here’s it’s happening and that’s really exciting. And I feel like, if at all possible, as long as I can keep playing, I’d like to have experiences like the one we’re having now – where it’s fun, it’s interactive, where I’m learning, where I’m loving the music and the audiences. And then, after the tour is over, Hans will do some solo shows and I’ll do some solo shows, and we’ll each play with our bands – but we’ll go back to all of that a little bit richer, and more inspired. It’s like, now, I’m finally at a point in my life I can enjoy it!

Hans: It’s exciting to do things you haven’t done before. Like, when we took off last week, we just said, here’s a list of songs, you pick one, I’ll pick one – and here we go! This is great.

DATC: And this sort of enthusiasm for sure comes across to your audiences. Great, thanks guys and best wishes for the rest of the tour!

 

High water everywhere – Charlie Patton, Typhoon Haiyan and Climate Change

In the spring of 1927, after weeks of incessant rains, the Mississippi River flooded levee after levee, inundating thousands of farms and hundreds of towns, killing as many as a thousand people and leaving nearly a million homeless.

The Delta was largely populated by poor black share croppers and who worked the land for white planters who ruled like feudal lords. It was an exploitative system in which white landowners made fortunes and black labourers could barely afford to put food on their tables. One of the towns badly hit was Greenville, where relief supplies to those left homeless by the flood were distributed on the basis of race, with the result that African Americans were often left with nothing. To add insult to injury, black men were rounded up and forced to rebuild the levees. The bitter experience of black people of their treatment by whites during the disaster led to a large migration of sharecroppers to Northern cities.

There were around 30 songs recorded by blues artists about the 1927 flood. Atlanta artist Barbecue Bob, describes losing his woman, who’s washed away in the flood in “Mississippi Heavy Water Blues.”  Texas bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson recorded a flood song, which he frequently performed in the Delta, as did Lonnie Johnson, who was based in St. Louis. Bessie Smith had probably the most famous song on the flood, although “Back Water Blues” was recorded before the flood occurred in February 1927. It was released just as the flood came, and as a result, became a big hit.

Perhaps the song most familiar to modern blues fans is Charlie Patton’s “High Water Everywhere,” which was recorded a couple of years after the flood, although given that Patton was from the Delta, it is likely that he had probably composed it earlier. The song tells graphically of the results of the flood and Charlie pointedly says that he wanted to go to the “hilly country,” but “they got me barred,” presumably a reference to the forced labour of black men on repairing the levees.

Here, as is always the case, with disasters, natural or otherwise, it is the poor who suffer the most. The World Bank’s 2014 world development report states that it is the poor who are most vulnerable to drought, pandemic, tsunami, violent crime, or financial meltdown. Natural disasters have the effect of dropping poor people or people living just above the poverty line, deeper into poverty. They destroy crops, healthcare facilities, the infrastructure and schools, resulting in malnutrition and often leading to the spread of preventable diseases.

We’re all aware of the devastating typhoon that hit the Philippines on 10 November. At this stage there are over 5,000 people who are known to have lost their lives, with many more still missing and fears the number of dead could rise to 10,000. In addition, at least four million people have been displaced by the storm. Most of those affected are people whose lives were already on the edge and who now face the most unimaginable struggle to rebuild their lives. If you haven’t already contributed to bringing relief to these people, could I urge you to make a donation to one of the agencies which are working there, such as the Red Cross, Christian Aid, Oxfam or World Vision.

Hours before typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, the head of his country’s national climate commission, a young scientist and diplomat, Naderev Sano, flew out of Manila, bound for the UN climate talks in Warsaw, Poland. As he took the floor to address the delegates of 190 countries the day after the typhoon struck, he was well aware of the devastation and suffering that had occurred back home. His own brother at that point was pulling people out of the rubble. Sano gave an extraordinary, passionate speech in which he clearly linked super typhoon Haiyan to man-made climate change and urged the world to wake up to the reality of what was happening from Latin America to south east Asia and the US. He lambasted the rich countries, and dared climate change deniers to go to his country to see for themselves what was happening. As he sat down, he began to sob and was given a standing ovation.

Sano has now called for a redefinition of “disaster”. “We must stop calling events like these as natural disasters,” he told the UN. “It is not natural when science already tells us that global warming will induce more intense storms. It is not natural when the human species has already profoundly changed the climate.”

The consensus of climate scientists is increasingly that super-storms are becoming more frequent. Haiyan was the third super-storm to strike the Philippines in a year, coming after seven major typhoons in October alone. The Philippine government’s raw statistics suggest that the region’s typhoons are indeed getting stronger. Overall, the evidence is overwhelming that climate change is most adversely affecting developing countries, says Oxfam, which works in most of the world’s most vulnerable nations. “As temperatures warm, many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens will face increased risks associated with more intense or protracted droughts, extreme rainfall and heat waves,” notes a recent joint report by London-based think-tank, the Overseas Development Institute, Met Office and Risk Management Solutions.

Those of us who live in developed countries generally have the wealth and infrastructure to withstand the worst affects of natural disasters; that’s not the case in poorer countries. It’s a matter of justice that the issue of climate change be addressed in a much more whole-hearted way by wealthy nations. The self-interested, short-term, climate-change-denying foot dragging needs to stop. We all need to take a long, hard look at the horrific images of human suffering coming out of the Philippines and urge our governments to increase their efforts in combating climate change.