HUM 223: 'Feel Like Goin' Home' -- program

Links here to information on the first video we'll screen in Humanities 223. It's called "Feel Like Going Home," and it's directed by Martin Scorsese. He put together a mini-series for Public Broadcasting System in 2003 on the blues, and we'll watch more than one videos from the series. "Feel Like Going Home" focuses on a traditional blues musician named Corey Harris. He's from Charlottesville, Va., he plays both blues and roots reggae, and this year he received a $500,000 no-strings-attached grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

On a PBS website that gives background about the entire "The Blues" series, Scorsese says:

For my own film, which was the first in the series, the idea was to take the viewer on a pilgrimage to Mississippi and then on to Africa with a wonderful young blues musician named Corey Harris. Corey isn't just a great player, he also knows the history of the blues very well. We filmed him in Mississippi talking to some of the old, legendary figures who were still around and visiting some of the places where the music was made. This section culminates in a meeting with the great Otha Turner, sitting on his porch in Senatobia with his family nearby and playing his cane flute. We were also fortunate to film Otha's magnificent November 2001 concert at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, which I believe was his last performance captured on film. It seemed natural to trace the music back from Mississippi to West Africa, where Corey met and played with extraordinary artists like Salif Keita, Habib Koité, and Ali Farka Toure. It's fascinating to hear the links between the African and American music, to see the influences going both ways, back and forth across time and space.

The links between Africa and the blues were always very important to Alan Lomax, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to include him in my film. I relate strongly to Lomax's instinct, his need to find and record genuine sounds and music before the originators died away. It's hard to overestimate the importance of what he accomplished — without him, so much would have been lost.

Otha Turner's music was a link to Africa, and Lomax spent a great deal of time exploring that connection. That elemental music, made with nothing but a fife and drum, has always fascinated me. When I first heard it, I was editing Raging Bull by night. I was enthralled — it sounded like something out of eighteenth-century America, but with an African rhythm. I never even imagined that such a music could exist. I found an audio tape of Otha's music, and I listened to it obsessively over many years. ...

If the photocopying machine is working (cross your fingers), I'll hand out a list of players in "Feel Like Going Home." But here's a link just in case.