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“Can White People Play the Blues?” by Corey Harris Sunday, May 10, 2015
What is the blues? Life. Life as we live it today, life as we lived it in the past and life as I believe
we will live it in the future.
—B.B. King
I have a question. Can white people play the blues? Does anyone and everyone who call
themselves white have the right? Does it matter? I say that it most definitely does. Your answer
depends on where you stand in the debate. Those who have no personal stake in the debate and
those who have a clear understanding of history will answer the most honestly. But those who
have invested their energy into the art form while denying the history of the music and the people
will always aggressively defend their privilege to play the music and will fight with all their might
like a prospector guarding his claim in Native land. This is not about policing the music-making of
white people, nor is it about giving out permission slips or licenses to perform the blues. Does the
prospector worry about losing his claim if it was never really his to begin with? This is neither
about ownership, since everyone knows that blues is Black music, the product of Black survival
despite a system that worked overtime to snuff out Black lives. There would be no blues without
Black people, and Black people still set the standard by which all other players and singers are
measured. This is about being able to tell the difference between the blues of Eric Clapton and
B.B. King. Some people are offended by the question, calling it racist. The knee jerk reactions will
always be expected, especially in a nation that is in full denial of its past. Any uncomfortable
discussion is immediately called 'racist' by those who are comforted by this denial. This isn't
about race, but the culture and the history of a people. This is about why it matters.
In reality, white people around the world already play the blues, by the millions. There are
blues festivals around the world where the appearance of a Black artist from the US is a novelty
or even a rare exception to the usual all-white roster. There is no doubt that these white artists
are doing it because they love the music. They may even have some personal connection to the
music. But none of them ever asked permission from any Black person to do so. In fact, they
never had to. In the USA, and around the world, a white man did what he pleased to a Black
person. So, when did white people ever ask to play the music of another culture? This is not how
history works. In truth, just as they have laid claim to lands across the globe without asking the
original owners of the land, white people have had the privilege of playing whatever music they
want to play. When they do, the music they make is often promoted (by white people) as being
the same thing. But just as klezmer music performed by a Black man may be great entertainment,
it can never be the same as when a European Jew plays it. Why? Without culture, there is no
music. Music is the voice of a culture. Separate the two and the music can never be the same. Of
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course, it may be in the same style as the original, but the meaning of a song such as Son
House's “My Black Mama” will always be changed with a different performer. This is especially
true if the performer is not from the Black culture that gave birth to the blues.
Some people say that the culture of the performer (aka 'race') it doesn't matter. They say
that everybody gets the blues, music is universal. Anything other than acceptance of this position
is attacked as being 'divisive'. It is obvious that this position serves non-Black people well,
opening the door wide open for anyone and everyone. More disturbing is that being Black is seen
as incidental or meaningless—an insane position in an art form that Black people created to bring
meaning to their experience. It is curious that whenever white mainstream culture develops an
affinity for a particular type of Black music, this music suddenly becomes 'universal'. Now, Black
people and white people who value genuine Black expression are all told that the 'race' of the
performer doesn't matter. There is even a popular t-shirt that reads, "Not White, Not Black, just
Blues." The Black blues player wonders to himself, “well damn can't Black folk have nothing?”
The fact that Black people do not play traditional blues popularly as they did during the golden era
of the music (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s) means that many white players actually believe that they are
somehow 'keeping the blues alive' because Black folk don't like it anymore. In fact, it was the
blues that kept Black folk alive, giving them a pressure valve for the stress of living in Babylon.
The truth is that Black folks never stopped playing music, but the musical culture demands
change in reaction to the present times. The blues kept growing and spawning new forms of
music. Freshness in style is highly prized among Black folk and this has always kept the music
moving forward.
But what is 'the blues?' It means different things to different people, depending on their
history. Mainstream white America (and many Black people) has typecast the blues as the sad
music of broke down old Black folk. By this measure, to play the blues means to them that one
must have suffered. But how much? Is it only about suffering? No, but in this way people who
have no connection with Black folk from the south can feel free to claim their 'right' to play the
blues based on the pain that they or someone in their family or their people may have felt due to
mistreatment. Many of these arguments are based on who suffered more in human history, when
the music was never only about being sad and lonely or meeting some quota of pain. It was
deeper than that. The blues is a book of the life of Black people. There are happy blues, love
blues, homesick blues, preaching blues, east coast blues, west coast blues, gospel blues, jump
blues, and uptown blues. There is a blues for everything under the sun. As the saying goes, 'the
blues is news you can use.'
Blues existed in a particular space and time. That time is now clearly gone. From the
days of Blind Lemon Jefferson and Charley Patton to the era of Muddy Waters and B.B. King was
definitely blues time. Blues was the popular music and the lowest common musical denominator.
The blues of the thirties, forties and fifties, the way it was played and sung—can never be
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recreated, no matter how many modern blues fanatics rehearse the old songs. Blues is still
relevant, but now more as a reference point within other styles of Black music that it spawned and
not as a predominant style. Blues endures in Black music. It is our musical home. But it is a home
that is always under renovation. It was once said that Black people didn't have the blues until we
stepped onboard the slave ship. The sound of this ongoing tragedy imprinted itself in the music
and the memories of the people. How could millions of people be stolen from their ancient
civilization and thrown into the belly of the beast and it not matter? How could the experience of a
people who lived the blues not matter?
The blues was the voice of Black people's lives. It still is. The only difference is that it has
never stood still, it has never stopped evolving and changing. Whatever happened to Black
people, happened in the music. And since Black culture is obsessively fresh, as soon as the new
influence became standard, a new standard was applied. Black music is that tree that is always
growing. Africa is the root, the blues is the trunk and the other styles from jazz to gospel, rock n'
roll and hip-hop are the branches. This is what white people who are always asking, 'why don't
Black people play the blues anymore' simply don't understand. Many white blues fanatics and
players not only adopt the music, they adopt 'blues' ways of dressing and speech in a way that
can seem like a trip down a memory lane that they never really knew or understood. Though
Black culture is fresh and innovative, what white culture is presenting as blues is often no more
than nostalgia for a time they never knew. As one white interviewer once told me, "you recreate
the old blues so well. Don't you wish you lived in nineteen thirties Mississippi?" My answer: HELL
NO!!! There is a tendency among white blues fans to forget that blues was a reaction to the
brutality Black people experienced daily at the hands of the white power structure. People lived
and died the blues. Though there were good times, the music was a tool to overcome oppression
and depression.
The 'blues' was originally an English term for a kind of Black music that included
particular song forms, scales and ways of singing that were alive before the advent of sound
recording. To put it simply, the music existed in Africa and in America long before the white man
called it the blues. They just didn't know what else to call it. In the early days, white colonials and
their descendants in the United States wrote of the 'strange', 'eerie', or 'wild' sounds the Africans
sung during work, recreation or praise. It frightened them, but they were attracted to it, tantalized
by it. Even the most virulently racist slave-owner or overseer were regular visitors to the Africans'
quarters, to listen to the music and have a 'good time'. Africans who could play the fiddle well
were favored and hired out by their masters to play for whites. These white people could still
comfortably despise Black people and be mesmerized by their music, all at the same time. This
saga of attraction and repulsion, love and hate, desire and disgust, characterizes white
mainstream America's perception of Black people, from colonial times to the present day. By
indulging in Black music, by playing it, white people could enjoy all that they love and are
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attracted to in Black music and at the same time ignore whatever distaste they may have for
Black people. They can adopt the style of Blackness with none of the pain. They can cross the
color line and slip back to comfort and safety before nightfall.
Of course, we are all free to play whatever styles we enjoy playing. Music is truly
universal in the sense that all human beings respond to its language. But saying music is
universal does not mean that all people feel the same piece of music in the same way. It doesn't
mean that all music is the same. Neither does it mean that anyone can play it in the same way as
those who have a blood connection to the culture. Just as a Chinese man may love to play
mariachi music does not mean that it has the same meaning to him as to a Mexican. Newsflash:
playing and singing the blues are two vastly different things. This is why many very technically
proficient white blues players do not attract large numbers of Black blues fans. Singing, with
Black inflections has traditionally been the primary standard in blues. Early ads promoted singers
who accompanied themselves on the guitar, in the days before the guitar-hero pyrotechnics that
now pass for the blues. There was no such thing as a bluesman who did not sing the blues. Yet
today there are scores of white musicians who have become famous only of for their playing.
They do not sing. But for Back people, the blues is traditionally a vocal craft first and an
instrumental craft second.
The way that Black people sing blues lyrics has been imitated since the first white man
dared to play the music. Many blues fans, Black and white, cringe when they behold some white
blues guitar slinger who twists his face up in his best Black blues voice impression as he plays a
carbon copy performance of “Hoochie-Coochie Man.” There are many players who can play very
well in the style but find it difficult to sing. Many white singers have embarrassed themselves by
serving up cheap imitations of what they think Black vocals should sound like. They seem to
ignore that they also have a voice that can sing. The fingers can imitate riffs on a guitar, but the
voice is much harder to imitate. But isn't it the voice that makes the blues what it is? Instrumental
blues is entertaining, but the heart of the art form is the singing and the storytelling. The greatest
blues performers were great singers, without exception. Legends like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey,
Louise Johnson, Texas Alexander and literally hundreds of other Black men and women wrote
the rule book on how to sing the blues. While they often did play an instrument, if they did not
sing they could not move a Black audience. The concept of the 'guitar hero' is a purely white
introduction into the music, a product of an individualistic culture which is the opposite of the
communal nature of Black music. This is the 'rock star' approach where all the credit is given to
the 'front man.' This is totally alien to traditional blues where lengthy solos were not common and
the interplay between the players was more important than highlighting one individual.
White people already play blues and many play well in the style. While there are many
singers who have found their voice in the blues style, it will always be an imitation of the real
thing. It is true that because of their love for the music (and the profits that they have made),
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many white players throughout the years have demonstrated their love of the music with gestures
of acknowledgement of even financial support. When Stevie Ray Vaughn looked at Albert King
during an interview and said he had taught him "everything I know." Albert King laughed and said
"I taught you everything YOU know. I didn't teach you everything I know!" Stevie Ray Vaughn
could play some guitar, but he was no Albert King. No one is losing sleep over white people
wanting to play the blues. Playing music is a good thing. The real problem is the claim that culture
and history don't matter. That the sounds of 400 years of tragedy and triumph make no
difference in the music. Everyone may feel sad in life, but not everyone gets the blues in the
same way as Black folk. This does not mean that white people can't play the blues. It simply
means that it is not at all the same thing when they sing it. White blues lovers who want to sing
and play in the style should stop trying to sound Black. Keep it real and sing like who you are! Be
true to yourself! Express yourself, not your imitation of someone from another culture. This is
what true artists do. We all have a message, according to who we are. No, we are not all the
same, and that is a very good thing. A white singer can never sing the same songs as a Black
singer and have the songs keep the same meaning. The reverse is also true! Why? Culture.
Black people come in all complexions, so it is not even a question of skin color. Black people in
America have inherited a long history of cultural progress in reaction to real life shit. That shit still
matters. Culture and heritage is the dirt that the blues grows out of. That culture and heritage is
Black. The blues is Black music!
- “Can White People Play the Blues?”
- Sunday, May 10, 2015
