HUM 223: Video questions, 'Feel Like Going Home'

From now to the end of the semester, we'll watch some of Martin Scorsese's Public Broadcasting series on the blues, beginning with "Feel Like Going Home," a show that Scorsese directed about blues singer Corey Harris' search for the roots of the music in rural Mississippi and in Africa. Later we will watch "Red, White and Blues," about what English rock musicians of the 1960s and 1970s learned from Mississippi bluesmen, and "Godfathers and Sons," about the blues' legacy among hip hop musicians. In his introduction, Scorsese says of the series in general, "... it seemed like a natural progression to ask a number of directors whose work I admired, each with a deep connection to the music, to make his own personal exploration of blues history. By having each of them come at the subject from his own unique perspective, I knew we'd come away with something special, not a dry recitation of facts, but a genuinely passionate mosaic." And this, "The teachers from whom I learned the most were always the most passionate, the ones with a deeply personal connection to the material."

What I want us to focus on is how - or whether - a shared passion for the music allows artists to bridge cultural gaps and create something new that changes as it crosses cultural boundaries. Here are some questions to think about as you watch all three videos. (They're from last year's final exam, but don't let that scare you. I still think they're pretty good questions, and they do sum up what I think is important about HUM 223.) Here are the questions:

In the TV show Godfathers and Sons, Chicago rap artist Common said, “Hip hop is definitely a child of the blues, and I think you’ve got to know the roots to really grow [as a musician]. It’s like knowing your parents, it’s like knowing your culture so you can be proud of that culture and take it to the world and say, ‘Hey, this is where we’re taking it. We’re utilizing the origins of this to take it somewhere else. We’re paying homage, and we’re taking it to a new place.’” In each of the three videos about the blues we watched this semester, we saw artists searching back to the origins of blues and reflecting them in other forms of music including jazz, rock and hip hop. How did bluesman Corey Harris’ search for musical origins in Feel Like Going Home differ from that of the English rock singers like Eric Clapton featured in Red, White and Blues and mentioned in the book Robert Palmer’s Deep Blues? How was it the same? How do Harris’ and the English rockers’ quests compare to the hip hop artists featured in Godfathers and Sons? How have the music and the cultural values of musicians from Africa, rural Mississippi and the Chicago of Muddy Waters’ day been reflected in the blues and contemporary popular music?

As you watch the first installment, which Scorsese directed himself, ask yourself:

• Does Corey Harris communicate a passion for his music? When he meets the old bluesmen in Mississippi and speaks with musicians in West Africa, is he interested in music? In art? In history and heritage? Or maybe in "all of above?"
  
• How do you respond to the music you hear? Whether it's Harris jamming with the old-timers or the West Africans? What does the music remind you of? How is it similar to, or different from, genres you listen to? In other words, ask yourself the three questions.

We'll have more questions for you later, and your final exam will be based on your response to these last three videos. So be sure to come to class this month and the first week of December!

More on "Feel Like Going Home." In his introduction Scorsese says:

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.

You can - and should! - read more on the linked page. Scorsese ends by saying:

People like to think of the great blues singers as raw, instinctive, with talent and genius flowing from their fingertips. But John Lee Hooker, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and so many other amazing talents, more names than I have space for here, are some of the greatest artists America has ever had. When you listen to Lead Belly, or Son House, or Robert Johnson, or John Lee Hooker, or Charley Patton, or Muddy Waters, you're moved, your heart is shaken, you're carried and inspired by its visceral energy, and its rock solid emotional truth. You go right to the heart of what it is to be human, the condition of being human. That's the blues.

As you watch the videos, listen for how many musicians talk about the heart, playing from the heart ... is that what the blues is about? But listen, too, for what they say about pleasing audiences, about making money? Is it about that, too? Can it be about both? If so, how?