“Blues: The New Generation (Including Me)”

First piece played on the new electronic keyboard: a Bach chorale for organ. I like the sound and always wanted to play one! Second piece…after reading this post I wrote. from the end of 2018 (“our” 2020 except worse unless you lost your partner at 54 or younger…). It’s a great tune. It has a groove I could play all day. And look: two musicians. Just two! So why not one? This already is helping me “keep my head straight.”

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As long as people suffer, grieve, are anxious or depressed, as long as humans are human, the blues is here to stay and isn’t going anywhere except straight into your gut. Forget the names you already know. I’m talking about young blues artists. Southern Avenue I posted about earlier this year. Kingfish Ingram. Marquise Knox. Jamiah Rogers. Melody Angel. Jarekus Singleton. And if you only listen to one blues artist this year, make it Cedric Burnside. Not because he’s the grandson of the Mississippi blues titan. himself, R.L. Burnside. (Although that would be an effing great reason in and of itself.). But rather because he is breathing new life into an old art form. Listen to his new album “Benton County Relic,” and if you only listen to one song, make it “We Made It.” It’s the end of a year like no other for many of us. Cedric’s words are timeless, but the music is totally fresh, depicting the choice you have to express suffering while still standing long enough for your friends to celebrate you exactly as you are. And actually, whether we are talking about sex or the blues, it is not about performing; it’s about playing. Playing the blues brims with possibility and the entire spectrum of human emotion. It reminds us all that within the tempest of our personal hell’s, we can sing. Even tho we have no clue how to solve our problems. We are worthy of love, and worthy of being loved. It’s hard to write this without welling up with tears, but our world needs much much more of the blues, not less.

“I come from nothin’

I done been lower than low

I keep my head straight

No matter how low I go.”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9OxDgqahdtQ&feature=share