Category Archives: – Did you know ? Blues facts from within

– Christmas is when the greedy give to the needy

READ THE PDF-VERSION HERE Next year, I will celebrate Christmas on April’s fool day, and give Easter presents on Halloween.  In my 2014 agenda, I have noted to skip Christmas holiday. This is my way of protesting against the fake and commercialized institutional holidays that program our feelings, and wear out our feet running to […]

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– Toasting to the Blues and Rap

I admit straight away that, while the blues touch my deepest emotions, rap music does not strike a chord in me. Having reached the age where retirement is no longer an abstract notion, I can hide behind the (cheap, and probably invalid) excuse of a generational argument to justify my lack of interest too in […]

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– The Rabbit and the Wolf Blues: some notes on the echoes of the “ring shout”

[To read the article in magazine-format, click here] Speaking of his grandfather Omar, who died a slave as a young man, the Jazz player and composer Sidney Bechet once mused: “Inside him he’d got the memory of all the wrong that’s been done to my people. That’s what the memory is….When a blues is good, […]

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– If the blues overtake you, jump overboard and drown

This essay’s title is inspired by the lyrics of Peg Leg Howell’s “Rock and Gravel Blues” when he sings: “Let’s go to the river and sit down Honey, let’s go to the river and sit down If the blues overtake us, jump overboard and drown”. The song was recorded at 20th April 1928 in Atlanta […]

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– Bhel, black, blue: some thoughts on the inevitability and the curative power of the blues

In 2010, Peter Muir published his book “Long Lost Blues”, which David Evans qualified as “One of the most important and original books on blues to be published in the past decade” (The Journal of Southern History). Muir is, next to a scholar, also an internationally acclaimed pianist, composer, conductor, and, moreover, the cofounder and […]

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