Trying to find the essence of the blues in Chicago is like looking for the essence of trad in Ireland - it's everywhere and nowhere. What is the future for the blues,? asks Kevin Courtney
'WOKE UP this morning/Bank done repossessed my house." With the US economy going into a tailspin, Americans are once again singing the blues - only this time they may not even have a porch to sit on while they strum their guitars.
If ever the time was right to get out your old guitar and sing a lament for lost wealth, it's probably now, with the credit crunch biting deep, and hard times a-comin' round the corner. Last month, in Chicago's Grant Park, they sang the blues for four days straight but, judging from the smiles and good humour on show, you'd swear the good times were about to start rolling once again.
The Chicago Blues Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, and there was very little talk of economic downturn coming from either the bands onstage or the fans who flocked to the shores of Lake Michigan to take part in the world's biggest free blues festival.
Here, the buzz is all about the Democratic presidential nominee, local boy Barack Obama, and the prevailing mood is upbeat and optimistic. The newspapers may be brimming with articles about gasoline passing the $4 a gallon threshold, but the highways are still jammed bumper to bumper all the way from O'Hare airport to downtown Chicago. Folks round here seem to be taking the financial hits on the chin and just getting on with life. And in Chicago, the blues are an integral part of life.
Walking around The Loop in downtown Chicago, it feels like you're strolling on the set of The Blues Brothers- you expect to see Jake and Elwood screeching around the corner with the entire Chicago police force in hot pursuit. Walk the streets of the Old Town, and around what's left of Maxwell Street, where Chicago blues was born, and it feels like stepping into another era. Walk back down North Michigan Avenue, aka the Magnificent Mile, past the city's glitzy shops, though, and the recession feels a long way away.
The blues is to Chicago what Guinness is to Dublin, but though you can always rely on the consistency of a pint of plain, the blues are not so easy to bottle and serve up to a mass market. That hasn't stopped the city's administrators from trying to preserve and package the blues and present it to tourists as a museum attraction. Visit the House of Blues on North Dearborn, and you find yourself inside a faux blues club that's as far from an old-fashioned dive as Disneyworld is from the Mississippi delta. You'd have to head down to Buddy Guy's Legends on Wabash Place to get a more authentic feel, but to really experience Chicago blues in the place where it evolved, head north of the Magnificent Mile and into the Old Town, where such places as Kingston Mines on Halsted Street exude a musky blues funk that you just can't get in the tourist-oriented joints.
But trying to find the essence of the blues in Chicago is like trying to find the essence of trad music in Ireland - it's everywhere and nowhere, baby. Go about your daily business in this throbbing metropolis, and you'll see little sign of the city's bluesological heritage. But dig behind the backstreets of the Old Town and the alleyways around The Loop and you can get lost in bluesworld till the break of dawn.
Perhaps that's why an event such as the Chicago Blues Festival works so well - here's a way to bring the blues out into the daylight, and present it in a safe, pleasant environment for all the family to enjoy. Held in the spacious grounds of Grant Park, just south of the river, the festival attracts the kind of audience who probably would be too busy with family and career to spend their nights hanging out in dirty blues dives on the bad side of town.
THE LINE-UP IS safe enough too, with headliners Buckwheat Zydeco, Johnny Winter, Koko Taylor and - the festival's 25th anniversary coup - BB King. It's an older, black and white middle-class audience that arrives from the suburbs for this annual shindig - although there seems to be a shortage of young black blues fan. Most of the teens and twentysomethings here are white, and though they're plainly enjoying the music on offer, they probably care more that BB King once played with U2.
Music has to evolve if it's to stay relevant, and, watching the veterans performing their long-standing revues at the festival, it's plain that the blues needs to find some greater connection with younger audiences, particularly young black audiences. Raised on hip-hop, RB, pop and alternative rock, young Americans don't have much affinity with the music of their country's forefathers - and why should they? It's an oldies' game, performed by people in their 60s, 70s and even 80s. BB King is 82, and has to sit down on stage because he is suffering from diabetes. Johnny Winter is also getting on, and his health is failing.
Just a day before BB King's set, blues legend Bo Diddley had been buried with full rock 'n' roll honours. But will Snoop Dogg's presence at the funeral convert young music fans to the blues cause? The blues may have spawned rock, soul, funk and rb, but it's no use preserving it in amber when everybody's moved on. Bands such as The White Stripes, Black Keys and Cold War Kids may wear their blues influences on their T-Shirts, but most mainstream American pop has had its bluesier edges smoothed out.
Chicago blues was born in and around Maxwell Street, on the city's near west side, when young African-Americans migrated there from the Mississippi Delta during the Great Depression. The area, which once teemed with markets, street musicians and dozens of dingy juke joints, was the place where blues evolved from its rural, acoustic roots into an urban, electrified style, eventually spawning rock 'n' roll.
Sadly, Chicago's oldest neighbourhood was systematically demolished in recent years in a controversial urban renewal programme that displaced the area's poorer residents and replaced historic buildings with modern offices and condominiums. These days, perhaps out of guilt, the city is laudably concerned with preserving its blues heritage, but if you're looking for the next generation of blues legends, you may not find it in the Windy City.
STILL, THERE WAS a smattering of young bluesologists at the festival who were bucking the age-old trends, including blues guitarist Donna Herula, whose stated mission is to keep Chicago blues tradition alive. Most impressive was the duo of Cedric Burnside and Lightnin' Malcolm, two young bluesmen from opposite sides of the track in Holly Springs, Mississippi who proved you could take on a crusty genre such as the blues, and cook up something totally fresh and exciting. Burnside is a young black drummer who learned his craft from his grandfather, legendary blues guitarist RL Burnside; Malcolm is a white guitarist who channels the spirits of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix into his solid, steady technique. Together they blew away all preconceptions of what the blues is about - and knocked a few other stereotypes on the head to boot.
But the new young bluesmen are few and far between, and when the last old blues giant falls, you wonder who, if anyone, is going to pick up the baton and take it to the next stage.
BB King's performance - his first appearance in Chicago for 20 years - on the final night of the festival felt like a valediction: Buddy Guy and a representative from the Mayor's office made a presentation to King honouring his contribution to Chicago blues, and King reminisced about his chequered past, chatted about the great bluesmen who influenced him, and lamented the consequences of age, which means that "when something breaks, it stays broke".
He performed a medley of songs from his very early days when he was a young hotshot, and a poignant version of his biggest crossover hit, The Thrill is Gone. One day, the "king" of the blues himself will be gone, but who's gonna bring the thrill back into the blues? Who knows, maybe the credit crunch will provide some fresh inspiration.
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