Blues Music

One day I wrote Blues Music Story on a broken green Fujian, China university board with flakey chalk.

I discussed the African Diaspora, history, suffering and slavery on farms for small money and how they gathered to make music after long hard days in the sunshine of their love.

How the blues manifested as men and women left rural villages on economic migrations for city jobs like China now. Floating people in a floating world.

How the blues expressed feelings of loss and separation from family and friends. It’s an emotional, deep in your spirit soul music. 

I pulled out my blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a cochin.”

“Want to hear some blues?” 

“Yes!”

I blew sweet slow stuff picking up the tempo blasting rifts wailing train whistles. Giving them a real sense of loss forever.

“This is called, ‘Spoonful' by Howling Wolf.”

“When you’re a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates the oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales, considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of myths and legends - or a magician, seer and Adept this is natural. I am merely a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

After the blues lesson we practiced making a sandwich. Assemble ingredients: bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce. How do you eat a sand wish with chopsticks?

Let’s eat. Asian mantra.

New music echoed. Everyone ran to a window. 

Across the street an Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three story building.

It towered above a gated Jakarta community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees, displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yo-yo’s and orphans sleeping on broken bamboo bed springs or swimming to Utopia through flooded dreams. 

In his left hand he held a shining silver chisel. In his right, a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between the Stone Algae and the Iron Algae.

Between knowledge and wisdom.

Between an object and a concept.

Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. His chorale was an old tribal creation song remembering family and soft rice paddies. Wind carried his life song.

A slave girl offstage in life’s dramatic interlude using a brothel broom of thinned tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm. She created her symphony of sadness and neglect waiting to be abandoned like a vignette.

The Language Company