RE: [Harp-L] why i play the blues



Hi Harp-L

Time to be honest here.

My past of a classical/folk musician, and the music of my childhood was leading me everywhere else but the blues. My first contact with the blues was in 1994 I was 25 years old something like 6 months after I bought my first harmonica, very late though. It was a LP that I've borrowed from my father's friend: American Folk Blues Festival, and the track was "Sonny Boy Williamson blues" (played on a F harp). And beleive me for a french girl who has no cultural background about what was done in the USA, all these sounds produce by this guy was so WEIRD and disturbing, but SO GOOD....I was at the end of my 1st step classical study playing oboe something like 5 to 8 hours a day... And Classical music is VERY FAR from the blues. So the only 2 years I've tried to play harp in the 90's were attempts to imitate the tremendous shock I've had while listening to Sonny Boy and Jean Jacques Milteau.

Now that I'm back with the harmonica for a bit more than 1 year, I just discovered that I've done a mutation... Forgetting EVERYTHING about my classical studies (theory harmony, and so on) and focusing more on the feeling and what you american guys called the groove.

Deep inside me and to be honest I still don't know if I'm a blues player, because of the cultural aspect of this music. I mean that I know some of you guys like very much the way I'm playing the blues from the @mails and comments I've received, and I know that I've understood some things that allows me to play with the spirit of this music, but saying that I can play the blues sounds to me EXTREMELY PRETENTIOUS. Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Sonny Terry, Sonny Boy Williamson, all these guys were bluesman, there are some modern bluesman like Jason Ricci, who keeps the spirit of the blues and adapting it to the 21 st century.

As I said previously my only goal is to produce the note that will give shivers to me and people, to provide emotions and feelings, since I 'm so bad at words... This definition is leading to something very dear to my heart, for me the blues can be found in ANY music if this one is the expression of the feeling of someone being excluded from love, society.



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