Today I'm going to write about an album that changed my life:
Robert Johnson's "King of the Delta Blues Singers."
"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
Eerie, haunting, considered by some as THE blues album, this artist 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 choice, and I've never seen a blues band (per se) live before. I've never really sought out the experience or thought it would be something I had to do. To me, blues music is an exercise in repetition and offers not nearly enough commentary or interest to bring me to it intellectually. I guess that's my path to music and I have to feel it in that way to feel it in any way.
This style of blues, this one man/one guitar thing is 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. It's ("King") 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?
Robert Johnson is the ultimate outlaw, a musician that no first-world white person can deny. He never made money in his lifetime, he was an outsider among a highly disenfranchised minority, and he came to define a music style that laid the foundation for many CEOs to line their wallets. What more could you want? Well, the music itself crushes through 7+ decades of historical chutzpah and still speaks to me. What does it say to you?
References
Music
-King of the Delta Blues Singers, 1961, Robert Johnson.
Books/Websites
-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.
-Theories of Music Origin, Brown
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