CITYFOLK MONTHLY - August 2007

The Mississippi Delta and the Sahara Desert are about as unlike each other as any two places could be on this planet. Separated by a few thousand miles, the Atlantic Ocean and a cultural gulf of epic proportions, those two places have nonetheless produced music of such striking similarity—the blues of the southern U.S. and the guitar-oriented praise music of Mali—that the question of the blues having African roots has been pretty much settled. Those questions that do remain, however, have to do with musical influences, cultural memory and cross-cultural pollination. Mali to Memphis cover

Much has been made of the musical connections between American blues and the music of Mali. It was the inspiration for Mali to Memphis: An African-American Odyssey, a Putumayo collection from 1999 that features performances by American blues musicians John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Taj Mahal, Guy Davis, Eric Bibb and Jessie Mae Hemphill alongside Malian musicians Habib Koite, Rokia Traore, Boubacar Traore, Baba Djan (who’s actually from Guinea), Lobi Traore and the duo Amadou and Mariam.

Feel Like Going Home, a film directed by Martin Scorsese as part of the PBS series The Blues, explores the same ideas, but more convincingly. Again, the film is a mix of American musicians—Hooker, Waters, Lead Belly, Mahal, Son House, Otha Turner, Keb’ Mo’ and Corey Harris—and Africans, including Habib Koite, Salif Keita, Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Touré. Listening to Otha Turner play a cane fife in a fife and drum band in modern-day Senatobia, Mississippi, is like taking a trip a couple hundred years back in time and back across the water to Africa.

Conversations about the Malian roots of the blues inevitably begin with world music superstar Ali Farka Touré (1939-2006, pictured here), a guitarist and singer widely known as the “John Lee Hooker of Africa.” Touré began his professional musical career in the late 1950s and by the 1980s, was one of the stars of the world music circuit. The grandson of a sorcerer, Touré did much to introduce the world to the blues-like music of Mali through his European tours and collaborative albums with such U.S. musicians as Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.

Touré told a story about how he started playing music that reflects the deep hold of the spirit world. He was about 12 and walking along the edge of a field when a snake—a very specifically black-and-white snake—coiled itself around Touré’s head. He brushed the snake off and it fled into a hole in the ground. “At that point, I started having attacks,” he remembered. He had the “attacks” for about two years before being sent, bound in ropes, to a distant family who somehow cured him. Upon his cure, Touré was a good enough player to appease the spirits.

Now that’s a tale that would have resonated with Robert Johnson in the 1930s and John Lee Hooker (pictured here) in the 1940s. It fits perfectly in a blues cosmology of black cat bones, mojo hands, conjer women and love potions. This close relationship to the spirit world is one of the undeniable linkages between Mali and the Mississippi Delta of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

The first time Touré heard John Lee Hooker, in the late 1960s, Touré was stunned because he thought Hooker was playing Malian music. Hooker likely didn’t hear it that way—if he heard the similarities, he probably assumed Touré was copying him, not the other way around.

Both men were partially right. Aspects of Hooker’s music certainly “sounded” Malian, including the distinctive “boogie” rhythm, the emotional freedom of the singing, the idiosyncratic timing and so on. And Touré had almost certainly been influenced by American music (as Africans have been since the Fisk Jubilee Singers toured Africa in the early 1900s), though he claimed never to have heard Hooker. In fairness to Touré, that was probably true, as he sounded as much like, say, J.B. Lenoir or Lightnin’ Hopkins as he did Hooker.

Although the musical connections between the Mississippi Delta and Mali are somewhat convincing, there are a number of problems with the theory of Mali being the birthplace of the blues. In the first place, much of the music in Mali has little or nothing to do with the blues. Second, Touré himself rejected his label as a bluesman. “It annoys me when people call me that,” he often said, adding that Africans were simply incapable of “having the blues.”

There are theoretical complications on the American end, as well. If the seeds of the blues came from Mali via the trans-Atlantic slave trade, why was there such a long time lag between the arrival of the slaves and the rise of the blues in the 1890s? How does one explain the non-African elements of the blues? Finally, before records of Malian music began appearing in the 1960s, how would someone in America even hear the music?

Perceived similarities between two disparate styles of music do not necessarily imply connections or influence. It could be that the similarities between Malian music and the blues exist because both traditions drew from the same original source. Some scholars believe the blues, or at least some of its components, actually originated in India and spread westward with the travels of the Romany (commonly known as Gypsies).

Some feel that any lingering African content in the music made by blacks in the American south was a case of cultural memory, where earlier remnants of culture existed in the subconscious mind, not really “remembered” but there all the same. These “Africanisms” could thus enter the music without the musician even being aware of it, much less being aware of “where it came from.”

So, did the blues come from Mali or not? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a question we’ll never have fully answered, because it’s not answerable at this point. Further research is needed, even if it is of a speculative nature. Plus it’s fun trying to figure out the puzzle.

Twenty-six-year-old Malian guitarist, songwriter and singer Vieux Farka Touré (pictured here), who makes his southwestern Ohio debut with Cityfolk on October 30, has been hailed as “the biggest buzz of the year in world music” (Toronto Star). The son of Ali Farka Touré, Vieux is a new style bluesman whose music is more open to outside influences than was the music of his father’s generation.

“Music is personal expression,” says Vieux. “Everyone has their own ideas and their way of doing things. No one can replicate what someone else has done. I am working to follow my father’s path, but that path continues into new areas. I am of a new generation, so there are things that inspire me in today’s world that I put in my music, just as he did in his time.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter where the blues originated. The blues are universal, despite Ali Farka Touré’s bizarre claim that Africans were immune to the blues. What matters about the blues is what they have to say about the human condition and what they mean to singer and listener. The blues is a feeling, pure and simple, and even John Lee Hooker and Ali Farka Touré would agree on that.

MATERIAL CULTURE KEY INGREDIENTS: Post-Festival Wrap-Up by Marjorie McLellan

What summed up the material culture exhibit, Key Ingredients, for me? The Maya Tech folks cooking tortillas on stage with the help of their young children or the flamenco-like performance of the El Meson chef (shown here)? The taste of blueberries and rhubarb, cooked up by Sinclair Community College’s new chefs, which evoked the sweet promise of bluegrass gospel? The India Foundation presenters who were so eager to share unique flavors with the audience that they kept cooking up just one more dish in a 45 minute presentation. Or was it the ribs, the Italian sausage, the fresh fish, the gelato, the maple syrup, the Costa Rican coffee? I took home a bag stuffed with Indian spices, Latin American ceramics, and organic vegetables – so I’ve continued to enjoy the Festival for the past month.

The idea for Key Ingredents was inspired by the Ohio Humanities Council plan to bring the Smithsonian traveling exhibit, “Key Ingredients: America by Food” to museums in Ohio. The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, in partnership with Wright State University and Cityfolk, brought “Key Ingredients” to Dayton. The Cityfolk Festival celebrated Ohio’s food traditions and the “tradition bearers” who plant, harvest, and prepare the foods.

Featuring Ohio food traditions at the Festival should be a breeze, right? We already have a rich array of food vendors and so, it seemed, cooking and serving food samples would follow easily. It wasn’t such a snap, but material culture curator Lorrie Monteiro--a graduate student at Wright State University--the Cityfolk staff, presenters, and volunteers brought it all together. Lorrie became quite familiar with the public health department officials who guided us through the do’s and don’ts that guaranteed a safe event. Melissa Tierney, Cityfolk’s intern from the University of Dayton, designed the colorful panels that highlighted Ohio food traditions. Presenters came early and stayed late to set up their displays. “Millie from Maine” and Gia, an amazingly talented culinary arts student from Sinclair Community College, hosted the material culture stage. (My happy job was directing festival goers to the cooking demonstrations and food samples.)

As a long-time volunteer and now Cityfolk board member, I had greeted visitors, interviewed presenters, passed the donation bucket, and recorded sound at past Festivals, but this year I really came to appreciate the long hours that Cityfolk’s volunteer Festival Directors put in. I am grateful and awed by how they took time in their busy, long festival days to encourage and assist us.

Lorrie, who took off immediately after the festival for a museum internship in Oklahoma, wrote back: “This has been a wonderful experience. . . To take something from the beginning like a clean slate and fill it was very fulfilling and rewarding. The project became very personal and to see the delight on the exhibitor’s and visitor’s faces made it all worthwhile.”

CULTURE BUILDS COMMUNITY: 9th annual Twin Towers Community Appalachian Festival

Culture Builds Community (CBC) closed out its first year of programming with the Twin Towers Community Appalachian Festival on Saturday, July 14. The Block Leaders, a volunteer group of community residents, have been organizing this festival in their neighborhood every summer for the last 9 years. Cityfolk and East End Community Services Corporation supported this grass-roots community effort through the CBC program by supplying over $6,000 in funding which allowed the residents to bring in more entertainment this year—including the headlining bluegrass band, Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers, The Step ‘N Time Cloggers from Tipp City, and the family gospel group, Blaine Bowman & His Good Time Band.

Though many aspects of Appalachian entertainment, crafts and cooking are featured, this is an Appalachian festival like no other because it reflects the many cultures present in the community. During World War II, Twin Towers became a major hub for Appalachian migrants who moved there to work in the war factories and industries. In the 1960s, U.S. Route 35 was built through the community and many Appalachian people were displaced while massive amounts of shops, homes, and larger stores were forced to close. While the Appalachian roots and hopes are still strong in this neighborhood, today it is a hub for new groups of people looking for a better life: African Americans moving from the West Side of Dayton and other areas experiencing high rates of violence, Mexicans immigrating from Mexico or migrating from more expensive areas of the United States, and Middle Easterners settling here for the low-cost housing, the near-by mosque, and family connections.

According to Twin Towers Block Leaders president Diana Watkins, the heart of the festival is in “the community coming together as neighbors. It’s a time and place for our neighbors, kids and teens to participate in something we have planned as a community. Seeing everyone have fun and socialize together in the community is what it’s all about.”

Some people might think it odd to see a Mexican Folkloric dance troupe and an African American double-dutch team at an Appalachian festival, but the Twin Towers Festival is a community event, and so it’s going to look and feel like the community. According to Watkins, “It just makes sense for our festival. They’re our neighbors! Coming together with our neighbors is our main goal.”

This beautiful coming together of many cultures has not always been an easy transition for the community to make. There will always be growing pains during community change. However, cultural events and programming like this help to ease these tensions by building relationships, finding commonalities, and developing mutual appreciation for one another’s cultures.

Something new was added to the Cityfolk Festival this year: a booth just for teachers. 200 teachers from the Miami Valley and beyond stopped to visit. If you were one of our visitors you received a bag full of goodies – pens, frisbees, water bottles, t-shirts and classroom resources. You also signed up to receive this Enewsletter and Ciyfolk Teacher Corner BLAST (special email notices just for teachers, by teachers who value Cityfolk and want to share ideas).

The first CITYFOLK BLAST will be coming out in September – just in time for the new school year! We are excited to be working with staff members and volunteers to send ideas and special event information your way. If you have signed up, be looking for CITYFOLK BLAST – and if you haven’t signed up – do it today. Just email us with your name, school, and the email address where you'd like to receive updates.

PROFILE BEHIND THE SCENES: Kelsa Rieger

Last summer, Cityfolk and the East End Community Services Corporation hired Kelsa Rieger to coordinate our Culture Builds Community (CBC) collaboration. Kelsa’s experience as an organizer and community development planner--focused on the role of the arts and culture in community development and social change--is impressive. Under her directions, CBC has thrived and is going strong into its second year.

Kelsa’s other main passion is street dancing. She has over ten years of experience and training in urban street-dance styles including: house, hip hop, breaking, funk, salsa, samba and capoeira. Her primary training has been in the authentic Chicago night club scene, where she played an essential role in the development of a Chicago street-dance style called Hip House Jive, which blends the urban aesthetic of house and hip hop with the smooth partnering of salsa, swing and stepping.

You may have seen her at this summer's Cityfolk Festival (pictured here) with the Venus Fly Trap Crew: the first all-female, all-styles, underground street-dance crew in the United States. She is currently adjunct instructor of Hip-Hop Dance and Culture at Antioch College in Yellow-Springs, Ohio; Master Instructor of Hip/House/Funk at Jeannette Popp School of Dance, a regular guest instructor for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, and leads an urban-arts program for at-risk youth at the East End Community Services Corporation.

RECORDINGS I'M LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW: A Mix by local DJ Amin Drinks with great raw old-school hip hop beats, and The Kings of House by Masters At Work

LAST FEW BOOKS I'VE READ: The Vibe History of Hip Hop by Vibe Magazine, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham, and New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development by Arlene Goldbard.

FAVORITE LIVE MUSIC EXPERIENCE (onstage): I did a performance that opened up for Common (one of my favorite rap artists) at a small outdoor venue in Chicago. While he was performing he noticed our group dancing behind the stage. Near the end of his show he invited us up on stage to dance during his final few songs.

FAVORITE LIVE MUSIC EXPERIENCE (in the audience): Dancing with my boyfriend to an amazing string duet improvising a unique style of Brazilian choro on an island off the coast of Salvador, Brazil. Thinking of the experience still gives me goosebumps.

HIGHLIGHT OF CBC PROJECT THIS YEAR: There were so many wonderful moments, it's hard to choose. But one great one that comes to mind was seeing some of the little kids in the community freestyle their own interpretation of clogging on-stage with Rhythm in Shoes during the Cross-Cultural Community Celebration this Winter. Their footwork was full of energy and flavor and they captured the affection of the entire room.

FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD: Pretty much any dish from a really good Thai restaurant. Oh, and Cereal! I LOVE Cereal!

FAVORITE PASSTIMES: Clubbing at my favorite house music spots in Chicago, grocery shopping at specialty shops and markets, cooking, and hanging out with good friends and family.

DREAM VACATION: a whole summer clubbing in New York, France, Spain and Japan...and maybe a few other spots along the way.

Few would argue that Brazilian music is one of the richest musical traditions in the world – one that combines African, European and South American roots into an amazing variety of styles that continue to captivate audiences everywhere. Styles as diverse as choro, samba and tropicalia have influenced musicians around the world, but few Brazilian artists have had as substantial an impact as João Gilberto who, along with legendary figures like Antonio Carlos Jobim, created a style of music that continues to be updated, transformed, and incorporated into too many genres to list.

Bossa Nova emerged in the late 1950s and was a transformation of the samba, which was the prominent Brazilian musical style at the time. While samba music was centered around percussion-based street parades frequented by working class audiences, Bossa Nova appealed to more educated people in the middle and upper class. Gilberto and Jobim created a style which featured the basic rhythmic elements of samba, but incorporated complex melodies and harmonies, which were inspired in part by the American jazz that was so admired by many young Brazilian musicians. Early songs like “Garota de Ipanema” or “Girl from Ipanema” were enormous hits and the style soon garnered an international audience.

Among the earliest fans of Bossa Nova were American musicians like Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz, whose 1963 recording with Joao Gilberto Getz/Gilberto cemented the connection between Bossa Nova and American jazz that continues to this day. In fact, the early recordings were so popular that the Getz/Gilberto recording of “Girl from Ipanema” reached #5 on the pop charts in the same year that the Beatles had fifteen top 40 hits and stars like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole and Elvis Presley were competing for top positions on the charts. And it was not only Getz and Byrd that were attracted to the form, but the superstars of the day, like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, both of whom were early practitioners of Bossa Nova music. Soon, interpretations of Bossa Nova took a wild variety of forms, from the sparse, clean examples common to early Gilberto to the lavishly orchestrated arrangements that came later.

My favorite example of Bossa Nova in its original style – featuring no more than a guitar and a voice – is Joao Gilberto’s 1987 recording Live in Montreux. Featuring many of his greatest hits, this recording captures the stunning intimacy, the subtle rhythmic texture and lush harmonies that attracted so many fans in the late '50s and early '60s. In this masterful performance, Gilberto carries the listener on a wave of shifting rhythms that are the key to his music and the style itself. Brazilian composer Carlos Lyra once said that the samba rhythm moves side to side, while jazz moves back and forth. Jazz swings and Bossa Nova sways, and nobody sways better than Joao Gilberto on Live in Montreux.

From time to time, stories on NPR, in the New York Times and in other places catch the eye (or ear) of the Cityfolk staff. These are stories about traditional music, handicrafts, ways of life...stories that deepen our understanding and appreciation for the folkways of the world. We will keep bringing as much of this to Dayton as we can; in the meantime, take a listen to this:

If you find a story that you'd like to share with other Cityfolk ENews readers, please send us the link and we'll put it the hopper for possible inclusion.

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