The Blues: Calling For A Response

by Thomas "Tomcat" Colvin

This article was originally written for a major
weekly magazine in Manila, Philippines.

The blues are calling, Manila. Are you listening?

There's a worldwide blues explosion going on. In the U.S., birthplace of the blues, the number of music lounges devoted to blues has grown over 50 percent since 1990 to 1,360, according to Fortune magazine. Among the most notable additions are the House of Blues, established by the legendary creator of the Hard Rock Cafe, and Fleetwood's, set up by the Fleetwood Mac drummer.

If anything, the blues are even more popular in Europe. Many veteran U.S. blues musicians have lived there at some time or another. Europeans consider the blues a serious art form and treat these old-time bluesmen with reverence. Seventy percent of blues record sales worldwide, rather surprisingly, take place in Europe. The best selling blues album in the world right now is From The Cradle by English superstar Eric Clapton, who with this album pays tribute to the inspiration of his music all these years.

The blues have even surrounded the Philippines. Japan and Australia have flourishing blues scenes, with many well-established local players and frequent concerts by visiting blues legends. The Nighthawks and Little Sonny have just finished their tours of Japan; Charlie Musselwhite sets off next week on a three-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. Bangkok and Hong Kong, from time to time, attract internationally famous blues musicians for sold-out concerts. Even tiny Guam has the thriving Micronesia Blues Society, with its weekly open-mike jam sessions.

While the explosion is booming worldwide, in Manila it's more like a firecracker pop. But things are changing. There's sudden interest, scattered at the moment, but definite, crackling through Manila.

Of all countries, the Philippines should be listening intently to the blues. Many of the conditions that faced the U.S. bluesmen and gave birth to the blues, from the early days in the Southern cotton fields to the urban slums of today, bear startling similarities to conditions here in the Philippines. Consider this:

Poverty and hard times: Perhaps like no other music in history, the blues speaks directly about poverty and the difficulties of making ends meet. Brother, Can You Spare A Dime and Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out speak as eloquently today as they did 50 years ago.

Lost love: Relationships are often difficult, and "second wives" (and boyfriends for bored housewives!) are realities of life. The blues abounds in songs about this theme.

Sexuality: One of the major themes of the blues is sexuality. Lyrics often convey veiled sexual messages through words and phrases with double meanings. The auto mechanic in Body And Fender Man has more on his mind than "body work" on the car of his female customer. Some blues lyrics are downright raunchy. The blues even addresses the touchy subject of the allure of youth in such blues classics as Messing With The Kid and Good Morning Little School Girl.

Oppression: The blues were born during the era of slavery and tenant farming in the American south. Field laborers sought solace through field hollers and work songs that often relieved the stress of labor and conveyed conspiratoral messages about eventual freedom.

Street children: Blues history in the U.S. abounds with tales of runaway black kids earning a living on the streets through music. James Cotton, for example, a blues harmonica player still active today, left his home at age 9 with the consent of his parents, who realized he would do better in the big-city streets playing his harmonica than he ever would harvesting cotton in his rural hometown.

Sound familiar?

The American blacks discovered that confronting these fundamental, everyday problems head-on through their music was better than simply wishing them away. The blues were therapeutic: The music somehow lifted the pain, and life could go on in all of its complexity. To sing about your troubles is to conquer them. It's rather like Confession.

While born out of pain, the blues are liberating. The blues are also full of joy and exuberance. The "house party blues" cheered along the black nightlife in the rural south, and in the 1940s and 1950s, "jump blues," which compelled its audience to jump up and dance, took over the urban clubs and led the way to rock and roll. The 1990s blues clubs continue to vibrate with energy and fun.

Just what is the blues anyway? According to common knowledge, it's a musical form based on a traditional 12-bar progression of I, IV and V chords. In fact, it's much more than that.

For one thing, the blues is open to lots of chordal and rhythmic manipulation. A capable blues band can play all night and not sound like it's playing the same old thing over and over.

At the heart of it is the underlying pattern of call and response. The singer belts out a statement: I've got the blues all night 'cause my woman's done gone. And then, typically, there's musical space, inviting a response, offered up by the guitarist, keyboardist, harp, sax or trumpet player. The singer's call also allows room for the listener's response, too. It's like an intimate conversation, touching upon one's deeper emotions.

This call-and-response pattern creates an instrumental style that is distinctive to the blues. The instrumentalist, regardless of what he plays, mimics the voice: He weeps, wails, confronts, talks back. Notes are bent off pitch, tones become raspy. The point of the instrumentalist, as well as the singer, is to be expressive.

Perhaps the best definition of blues is: The blues are what blues players play. Even when playing non-standard songs, the blues player is immediately recognizable. It's his or her distinctive expressiveness that gives blues musician away. It's "the feeling" in the music.

From one point of view, almost every Filipino musician plays the blues. Ask any band for the blues and it will dish out a standard 12-bar blues jam, perhaps drawing on lyrics from an album by some well-known rock group like the Rolling Stones or the Allman Brothers. The problem is, it all sounds the same. Boring.

Sad to say, few Filipinos have really been exposed to real, honest-to-goodness blues. In fact, Filipino musicians and the discerning music public complain that they have little access to the blues.

Take a trip to the record stores in Megamall, for example. When asked where to find blues recordings, the salesperson most likely will look totally bewildered. Salespeople in one store are nowadays offering three cassettes. The Eric Clapton album is, indeed, a treasure. The other two, claiming to be "The Total Blues Collection," are trash. Half the songs aren't blues at all; all are uniformly poorly performed by unnamed musicians. Another Megamall store carries several volumes of the Blues Masters series on CD, but salespeople cannot come up with anything else.

And where were recordings by Albert Collins, Muddy Waters, and Pinetop Smith from the cast of blues legends? Or recordings by Robert Cray, Chris Cain, or the Uppity Blues Women from the contemporary blues bands that are stretching the definitions of blues in challenging directions? Even recordings by B.B. King and Robben Ford, which sometimes make it onto local shelves, were nowhere to be found.

What about radio? In the U.S., there are hundreds of radio stations that follow a blues format. In the Philippines, not even a single station offers so much as a Blues Hour.

In truth, only people with access to fully stocked record stores overseas have much knowledge about the blues.

Fortunately, things are changing.

Record megastores like Tower, Virgin, and HMC have opened up in Bangkok, Jakarta, and Singapore, as well as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Sydney. It's only a matter of time before they will manage to break into the Philippine market. Then Filipinos will have better access to the smaller U.S. labels, over 250 of them, that specialize in blues.

In the meantime, the local club scene is experiencing a blues mini-explosion of its own. Several new local bands are specializing in the blues. The Soul Dredgers pursue an honest, traditional sound, full of the expressiveness typical of the best blues. The Blue Rats are the most intent on spreading the blues, rehearsing diligently, playing regularly, and even talking about cutting what may be the first Filipino all-blues album. Mexicali Alabang features its own blues house band.

In fact, one can often find live blues all weekend long. On Fridays (and some Saturdays), the Hobbitt House features the Blue Rats. Saturdays is blues night at Mexicali Alabang. And on frequent Sundays, the Bottomline, also in Alabang, blasts out the blues, starting in late afternoon and going on until closing time.

Moreover, Club Dredd, that bastion of what's-to-come, hosted an extraordinary one-night Blues Festival in mid-January, put together by veteran promoter Eddie Boy Escudero. And from time to time, Dredd features the Soul Dredgers.

San Juan has its blues appreciation crowd that has pooled everyone's blues collections and gathers regularly to listen to blues among friends. Perhaps with the sudden emergence of the blues, this group will become more public and more easily accessible.

And there's more to come. Talk is underway about a regular monthly open-mike blues jam, to be proceeded by hour-long blues clinics for younger musicians. Other clubs in Manila are talking about regular blues nights, perhaps reluctant to surrender the blues spotlight to Alabang. Other established bands and top musicians are considering adding a track or two of blues on their upcoming albums. Jun Lapito has already done so on his recent recording.

Certainly, it's also time for an enterprising radio station to feature a weekly hour-long blues show. And aspiring musicians, as part of their essential musical education, can look more closely into the musical tradition that laid the foundation for so much of contemporary music.

Veteran bluesman Jimmy Rogers tells us, "If you can't dig the blues, you've got a hole in your soul."

Yes, the blues are busting out all over. That's the call, Manila. What is your response?

Tomcat Colvin is a crusty blues harp player from the American South. Resident in Manila for nearly ten years, Tomcat has been labelled by one local guitarist as "the elder statesman of the blues." Once a mainstay with Binky Lampano and the Newly Industrialized Combo, he now often sits in with the new generation of blues bands.