Open the Blues Is a Healer
! at life – can’t hide what is in my face. How will it end, ain’t got a " iend, My only sin, is in my skin, What did I do to be so black and blue?” Armstrong’s celebrity stance as an entertainer caused rejection to later generations of African Americans who saw remnants of “Uncle Tomism”. However, this overlooks the struggles and strategising he used to gain acceptance across the racial divide. Likewise bluesman Sam Chatman’s lyrics: “Say God made us all; he made some at night, ! at’s why he didn’t take time to make us all white. I’m bound to change my name I have to paint my face, So I won’t be kin to that Ethiopian race.” The Presley Holy Shrine, Graceland " ese may be taken as irony or painful declamation. Either way, they had no I was searching out the location of the my understanding. However, they never resonance with black empowerment which, roots of this compelling music. I wanted quite got inside my skin to reach whatever in order to free itself from the victimised to pay homage to the heroes and heroines it is we call ‘soul’ in the way that these voices of oppression, tended to je% ison the from my adolescence that helped in! uence bluesmen and women did. By contrast, blues as part of that new consciousness, too. and sustain me in my encounters with many were barely educated, all black; all However, it remains true that this life, personally and professionally. " ese raised in deep poverty, grotesque social music has a near magical power to speak mentors and their work o# en raised me disadvantage and race discrimination, to the darker emotions about the pain of from the depths of my own occasional yet spoke to my condition, so unlike rejection, discrimination, disappointment, depressions, troubles and sorrows, and theirs in background.
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