“The blues is not the creation of a crushed-spirited people. It is the product of a forward-looking, upward-striving people.” (Albert Murray)
Great artists are amazing to me. The fact that an old time blues player can transform sadness into a music I feel with my own heart suggests there is a common coin in human suffering and a deeper beauty that encompasses grief as well as joy.
A blues guitarist invites us to feel something deeper within our melancholy. Somehow, by singing a song in a minor chord and playing a note within that chord with a certain dissonance, blues artists are able to help us “hear” something beautiful within sadness.
The dissonant sounds in a blues song are called the “blue” notes. Sometimes, the blue note is played a little flat. Sometimes, a string is stretched to produce an uncomfortable sharpness. Sometimes the blue note is only implied as the artist shifts from one note to another.
The blues, like gospel music, were born out of the experience of an enslaved people. They are not like the superficial affirmations well meaning friends say to make us feel better. The blues invite us to sit with sadness until we can feel our own hearts through their music. The blues do not rush to find a cure for human sadness. Their great art is to sit in the pain until our hearts remember a common humanity deeper within us than our individual storms.
As I say, I am amazed at old time blues artists. It is a strange experience to feel my own heart strings plucked while listening to someone else’s sad song. Perhaps the lesson here is that it is sometimes better not to try to rush out of the sadness resulting from the human condition. If we can feel each other’s pain through the stretching of a string, perhaps we are never really alone so long as we can slow down and listen to the music of a broken heart.