Blues & the Spirit Symposium, Dominican University, May 22-24, 2008

Part 1. What do you learn at a Blues Symposium?

First of all, What is a symposium? I always wondered why an academic conference had such a fancy name. Here’s what the on-line dictionary says:

sym·po·si·um (sm-pz-m)

n. pl. sym·po·si·ums or sym·po·si·a (-z-)

1. A meeting or conference for discussion of a topic, especially one in which the participants form an audience and make presentations.

2. A collection of writings on a particular topic, as in a magazine.

3. A convivial meeting for drinking, music, and intellectual discussion among the ancient Greeks

Can you believe the last definition? A blues version of an ancient Greek college bull session! And that’s what Dr. Janice Monti, head of the sociology department at Dominican U. in the tree-line upperclass suburb of River Forest, IL, pulled off last weekend in organizing the first Chicago blues symposium. Living Blues Magazine had sponsored several years of blues symposia in Mississippi, but this was the first gathering to include heavyweight urban African American scholars and artists. The Dominican Sisters, smelling social justice at work, lent helping hands, prayers and smiles. Student aides and friendly sound men, like Papa G, whose long Polish(?) name I haven’t learned to spell, rushed to show us around. And there was no lack of music, drinking (be it water, coffee in the student snack bar, soda or evening wine!) and intellectual discussion. When you bring a hugely diverse group of 150 inquiring minds together, this is what’s bound to happen. Check out the on-stage talking heads: http://www.dom.edu/blues/biographies.html

The symposium was sponsored in part by an Illinois Humanities Council grant. Even though I’ve written and worked with Humanities folks for years, and have never forgotten those huge Humanities 1 lectures downtown in Morgantown’s Met theater with some of WVU’s leading professors, I still ponder the question: What are the humanities? So I went to the source of the symposium’s money. According to the Illinois Humanities council: “The humanities are the study of what human beings have thought, felt, and celebrated throughout the centuries and today. They grow out of an interest in the language, literature, thought, and history of humankind. The humanities emphasize analysis, interpretation, and exchange of ideas rather than the creative expression of the arts or the quantitative explanation of the sciences.”

So Humanities grants pay for discussions of history, theory and criticism of the arts, rather than presenting the art and music itself. However, Dr. Monti reasoned that music history is the expression of ideas and feelings coming out of a particular culture at a given time, and you can’t study music history without having music! She found other sponsors for art exhibits and live music concerts, receptions, and club tours during the symposium weekend.

After a tour of the black cultural centers of Bronzeville down on the South Side, the symposium opened Thursday night with a gospel invocation by the Imago Dei choir and blues musings by a panel of elders including community historian Timuel Black, poet Sterling Plumpp, writers Paul Garon and Jim O’Neal, a founder of Living Blues magazine; professor and jazz musician George Bailey, Willie Dixon’s widow Marie, author and Blues festival director Barry Dolins. Our group, the Larry Taylor Blues & Soul Band, www.larrytaylorbluesnsoul.com , was to play in a reception after the panel, and the musicians milled around, a little impatient with all the talk about blues and anxious to get up there and play the music.

In his role as ambassador for West Side blues, Larry encouraged other musicians to take turns on his stage. It turned into a magical evening led by Larry and his current bandmates (and fellow veterans of a Willie Dixon’s 1977 Berlin tour) Vernon and Joe Harrington, with West Side Wes on drums and me on keys. Our South Side buddy Killer Ray Allison was a guest star, contributing good-spirited singing and guitar wailing.

Other guests appeared in shining succession. Doris Fields, http://www.myspace.com/ladydandmission

West Virginia’s queen of soul, known as Lady D, did proudly in Chicago. Karen Wilson brought her jazzy voice from California and Mud Waters Jr brought his Delta and Chicago heritage and folks were treated to guitarist-singer Fernando Jones and extra-funky bass man CC Copeland. Everyone loved Larry’s version of Tobacco Road. Dr. Monti told us that the out of towners were impressed that Chicago had many great musicians they hadn’t heard a lot about.

For me, it was just a blast playing with these guys. Egged on by the audience, we kept going until the catering staff carted the food away. I only got to grab a handful of cheese, two crumb-crust tarts, and a half cup of wine. Probably all for the best!

The next day, Lady D found a homeboy. A fellow West Virginia native, James Abbington, gave a workshop demonstrating the function and sounds of gospel music vs. blues. She hopes to invite him sometime to share his observations in West Virginia. Our state is fertile ground for primary research on the legacy of black Appalachian church music and the Mountain State’s hidden history of jazz and R&B bands that toured during the prosperous 20^th century coal mining era. Doris also went to the Saturday fish fry and had a chance to hear Fernando Jones’ Columbia College blues ensemble http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5434/is_200803/ai_n25421015 (the first, long-overdue, college sponsored band in the country!) On the club tour she got to hear Chicago singers like Sharon Lewis and Peaches Staten.

Being a journalist as well as a musician, my favorite panel was about photographers and historians, called Preserving the Legacy. Photojournalist Marc PoKempner told how, by giving people copies of pictures of themselves, he gained the trust of musicians, clubgoers, and proprietors in the heart of the South Side, enough to take some amazing action shots of blues in the 1970s. Other artists on the panel, home videographer Carolyn Alexander and Maxwell Street musician and folk artist Frank “Sonny” Scott, had created their work with no formal training. Neither of them had much to say on the panel, but showed their arts in a reception afterwards, leaving the explanations to “the Fess” of Maxwell St., Roosevelt U. economics professor Steve Balkin.

Suzanne Flandreau, Head Librarian and Archivist, Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago, gave a graceful introduction to the panel. She noted the critics’ constant debate over the somewhat snooty terms “insider” and “outsider” art, and stated that the true insiders on the panel, having come from the local urban African-American culture that was being studied by the symposium, were, in fact, Frank and Carolyn. At the reception, professional photos by the late Raeburn Flerlage and others hung on the wall, with Frank Scott’s collage posters. Carolyn’s videos of blues bands playing at backyard West Side barbecues flickered on the screen as James Wheeler’s band played live near the wine, cheese and strawberries. Again, great feelings and great folks.

The heavy stuff was yet to come. Blog ya later.

Symposium Part 2  Promotion for the Living      

Here’s what I learned in school…that is, at Dominican University May 22-24 2008, in the first-ever Blues and Spirit Symposium—a pioneering effort to explore the roots of urban blues and gospel.

Music of any era seems to be the result of three forces: 1) Creation, or what musicians bring out of their heads and hearts, 2) Audience, the needs and demands for music in the culture and individual lives of the listening public, and 3) Promotion--what promoters and sponsors are willing to put on the stage (and, in the modern era, on records). In the age of mass media, promoters, the middlemen, have held the key. At times, like during the Swing Band era and the soul and rock’n’roll era of the 1960s and 70s, they make a brilliant connection between the artists and the hearts of people, resulting in music that uplifts and even leads society. Sometimes they pander to the lowest common denominator and produce mediocrity and trash. At times (like now!) they impose their own limited views of what music they think different groups of people prefer—including their own racial biases. Strict classification of music for marketing purposes tends to categorize and isolate everyone. Music gets confined. Communication breaks down.

This sums up what I learned from the summary of keynote speaker Dr. Portia Maultsby, www.indiana.edu/~aaamc/news.php?id=v65c4 ethnomusicology professor from Indiana University, co-editor of the comprehensive book, African American Music based on her impressive, pioneering studies. She is now writing a book on how African American music relates to the “mainstream” of American culture. The mainstream by implication has been Euro-American, but as things change to a more inclusive vision of America, the analysis of our nation’s music is certain to reflect this. When Dr. Maultsby slowed slides and played musical samples of the 20^th century history, the promoters’ racial contortions seemed quaint. Almost silly, until you consider the serious impacts on black musicians trying to make a living. Examples:

**In the 1950s, black blues musicians like the Bo Diddley (RIP), Chuck Berry and the late Johnnie Johnson, and Little Richard innovated the faster, eight-beat style that became known as rock-n-roll. Somehow the white music promoters thought the white audience would not buy records by black people, even though white teenagers were busy sneaking into black clubs, imitating black dances, and combing through R&B music bins. The promoters went on a search for a white man who could sing black music. Voila! They found Elvis Presley. In the 1960s, the music biz found that with the proper marketing, good music was purchased by people of any race. Soul hits by Motown, Atlantic and Stax went to the top of both pop and R&B charts. But then the industry stopped promoting soul music, and it’s hard to find old-school soul on the radio today.

**A white girl group, the McGuire Sisters, with their bouffant, turned up hairdos, found promotional support to cover one of my favorite doo-wop songs, “Sincerely.” The original performers, the Moonglows, a black group, could not get the same level of promotion. Dr. Maultsby showed their pictures on the screen, and you can find both versions on YouTube.

**Much later, in the 1980s, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan came along with a flood of musicians down in Texas. Stevie Ray picked up the guitar style of Chicago bluesmen Albert King, Hubert Sumlin and Larry’s stepdad Eddie Taylor and added a Texas hat. Promoters turned him into a superstar, still idolized by electric guitar players everywhere. Stevie Ray and his brother Jimmie cut their musical teeth in Antone’s club in Austin, Texas. Clifford Antone was a gangster who got busted for drug selling, which did not keep him from running the club. He loved Chicago blues, and he brought people like Albert King, Buddy Guy, BB King, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Reed, Luther Tucker, and Eddie Taylor down to his club—even James Brown and Ray Charles. the local white Texan musicians learned to copy their music. Before he died, Clifford Antone made a DVD where you can see all this for yourself.

Now white superstars Elvis Presley and Stevie Ray Vaughan always gave due credit to their musical teachers, but the business promoters basically took the blues guys’ music for the lowest possible price and left their careers to flounder. This type of musical thievery is still going on in various forms, aggravated by some promoters who assume that the black musicians are poor, ignorant and easily ripped off.

During the Saturday panel of musicians, (which, in Humanities jargon is called “lived experience,”) Larry Taylor put some issues on the table that he said are hurting blues music today. Nobody wanted to touch these issues. They were:

1. Exploiting Dead Musicians: the tendency of promoters to use name recognition and make easy profits from the music of those who have passed on.

2. Lack of Promotion for living, upcoming African American musical artists seeking agents, publicists, and radio exposure. (The internet has potential for help here, according to Bob Davis of Soul-Patrol, who spoke on the Industry Panel.)

3. Ignoring Potential Audiences: The myth, repeated constantly in the blues press, is that blues has a limited audience and that black people don’t like the blues. People DO respond to blues musicians, especially performers who make an effort to relate to them. Larry and I think this myth is being spread by some who want to define and control their tiny corner of the music business. We are looking for a wider effort to educate the public, expose people of all ages and ethnic backgrounds to the music, and win more and better jobs for the musicians.

Two of the other black musicians on the panel showed their fear of losing whatever crumbs they now have in the biz, by scoffing at Larry’s comments. A well-known band leader in the audience had told several people including Dr.Monti that he would bring up some issues, but at the last minute declined to speak. However, sifting through the evaluations, Dr. Monti said she found the attenders wanted future symposia to focus on the music business issues.

So roll out the water, coffee, wine, cheese and strawberries for next year. Let’s see if another Blues and Spirit Symposium can address how the business part of music can facilitate, enhance, distort or shut down the natural human communication between the performer and his or her congregation of fans.

I believe that, in this day of rising costs of putting on live music (travel, equipment, advertising, insurance), we need to discover ways of doing business that build trust among venues, promoters and musicians. This cooperation generates good feelings that make more people want to participate and come to live shows. Everybody profits and everybody wins. It can be done! The Symposium did it.

Labels: blues symposium, Dominican U. blues, symposium