For example, blues singer Corey Harris isn't as well known as giants like B.B. King and the late John Lee Hooker. But there's a good profile of Harris on the Afropop.org website. ("Afropop," of course, is African popular music (well, duh, that's why they call it that) or music like Harris' that's heavily influenced by the contemporary music scene in Africa. It has some good quotes from Harris. Like this one:
I want to reach people in other countries. I want to say something that is about my experience as a black person who has been in other places where black people live and observed how they do their thing. But I want to make it so that other people can feel it and understand it and say, 'Oh, this relates to me too.'And this:
A lot of the walls that we put up between one another--we're conditioned to do that. ... It's in the media and in our education for us to look at all the differences and then conclude that there are these huge walls between us. But I really feel that as humans we all have one soul. We got one heart. We got one blood. As the world's getting smaller, we've really got to learn about each other, and part of that is knowing where you're coming form. So I think that by trying to figure out what's inside of me musically and the heritage that I've got, that I can better live with others.Read the Afropop.org profile for yourself and notice how I find quotes for the blog? You can do that, too, in your papers! Right? I thought so.
So ... what does all this have to do with the themes we've been following in HUM 223? How does a common musical language allow musicians to transcend cultural boundaries?
In 2007 Corey Harris won a $250,000 "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation. He also received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Bates College, where he graduated. And he gave a speech at commencement you may (or may not) find interesting. (An uplifting speech is part of the deal when you get an honorary degree, and this one's from a guy who's managed to make a living doing something he loves. Might be worth a listen.) In 2008 he spent a week on campus as a visiting artist. Here's what his teachers at Bates said about him, and what he said to the students. It's a publicity video, but he also has some important things to say about his music:
Listen to what Harris says to the students. Does he transcend the boundaries of musical genre?
Harris continues to explore heritage and cross boundaries. Here he is, below, a concert this fall at Duke University fronting the 5x5 Band playing "Catfish Blues." It's a blues classic, but do you hear the rock in this performance? the jazz? or is there a mixture of all three? Do you hear just a little whiff of reggae, too? How does music transcend the boundaries of genre as well as culture? Just askin'. This performance features Harris on vocals and guitar, Peanut Whitley on keyboard (and musical direction), Ralph DuJour on bass, Ken Joseph on drums and Gordon "Saxman" Jones on saxophone.
7 comments:
it's more blues to me. i don't here any rock in it. the sax is good. it's well played. i prefer bands like dark sanctuary though.
There is a mixture of blues, rock and jazz...not so much reggae. The music transcend boundaries because it is all the different types of genres, put together, and each have their own "way of getting a point across." How he put everything together is clever. P.S. I think it's cool how I will be visiting where Corey Harris started out--Charlottesville--I'll have to look for some historical stuff about him.
I definately here a little bit of everything in this song. It crossed the boundries of genre because it successfully mixed several genres of music. Overall, it sounded very good and I really enjoyed it.
I think that Corey Harris’ music does tresend the boundaries of musical genre. His music is a musical language that he is trying to assert communication though. His music has crossed cultural boundaries incorporating all different kinds of genres like jazz, blues, and also a little bit of reggae in it. I liked how in incorporated all of styles in his music that was very cool.
Harris trascends the idea of genres when he talks about how blues can communicate with other genres such as jazz and reggae because of their common history. The performance definetly had the blues roots as it's base. The sax added the jazz feel to the mix for me. The way the player went out on his own at one point and did his own thing, was familiar to some of the jazz we looked at earlier in the semester. I liked the blues guitar near the end a lot also. Both the guitar and sax players were able to showcase their own different sounds but still had a sense of Familiarity with eachother and the song.
In the fisrt video of Corey has says that " Blues music can takl to Reggee, Jazz, Blues because Blues music can talk to each other due to having a common Root. Havinf a common root make is easy to travel with his music and be able to share and learn music from others. Corey says that Blues is the crossroad for a mix of many music.
The sesond video is blues in the classic state with the rhythms being constatant and the drums leading the way for the others to fall into lline. The saxaphone normally used for jazz is incorperated hear and the song takes on a more jazzy feel and it is played. The guitar (lead) takes a more rock in roll sound. As the instements come together and change the overtone with the blues backdrop the music begins to sound more like what is called R & B today.
I do think Harris transcends bounderies of differennt types of music and cultures. The song that I heard today I think mixed jazz, rock, and reggae together. With the the different instruments, the song was very unique. In some parts of the song it sounded very rock, but it would sound like a whole different type of music like reggae. I think Harris truly broke the boundies of different types of music, and really connected these three types of music.
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