The Accordion Player.

Yeah, I sold out to the man. Suit, tie, 9-6, and a spot on the rat race. But when I give a few coins to a mustachioed old man playing the accordion (side note: never underestimate the brilliance of accordion players- See Edith Piaf’s l'accordeoniste for an example) by Sloane Square station on the second day of the job, he pulls me to one side. My suit means nothing, he knows I was a busker - am a busker still. He knows that buskers give to other buskers. We start chatting about location, places he’s played, and past performances. I play some harp, he picks up the key by ear and plays a rhythm accompaniment. A few more coins start dropping into the worn instrument case at his feet. Then he launches into I did it my way. Sure, it’s a bit cheesy, but I know a few lines of old Frank. Between my harp and my baritone there’s now a small crowd of people angling to drop silver in the box. Commuters not interested in our attraction are blocked off the path by the bustle and have to walk on the main road around the bus stop in order to get past. The song crescendos and a small cheer goes up. We laugh it off and shake hands. Time to get back to the rat race. ‘This one’s for you my friend’ my fellow musician shouts in a harsh polish accent, launching into a jazzy polka as I strut down the road with arms outstretched and fingers curled. Perhaps the only thing a suit is good for is dancing jazz. Sell out, I may be; I still have my busker’s cough.

*

Weeks of passing the accordionist by each morning took its toll. At first we continued to hi-5, shake hands and, occasionally, play a tune. But the longer I worked, the more I became a suit passing him by; the more I became a phantom instead of a man. He can still see the glimmer in my eye from before: the glimmer of someone who knows what it is to set an audience alight, the spark of someone who once burned everything for what they loved. Wearing a suit has a similar quality to that of being a busker: it makes one invisible. No - that is not quite right. Invisibility is not so transparent as to be the essence of suits and buskers alone. The fear and fatigue that have come from working twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is as much a motivator to write and to play music in what time remains, as love of those passions ever was before I wore a suit. Ideally, it is a mix of fear, fatigue, and love that call the muses to action. And if you don’t work for what you love, and burn for it, then life will have that quality of wearing a suit. Then you will become invisible. 

The Eternal Library and the Importance of Second Hand Books

In the basement of my favourite bookshop, W & A. Houben, I was able to find a book that not even the British Library could supply for me. The basement was a treasure trove of rare finds and former editions that could be picked up at a bargain. Obscure historical texts, leather bound works of Philosophy, and first editions of classic literature, to cheap second hand classics, it had it all. Afternoons were spent lost among the titles. Alas, to my heartbreak, the shop has since closed down and another franchise cafe has taken root.

It is a common cry called when independent bookshops and libraries face bankruptcy. The overused African proverb that “when an elder dies, a library burns” is put in context when actual libraries have their budgets cut and are shut down. The topic often causes community outcry and even national attention, yet the closures still take place.

However, in an odd turn, capitalism has provided a viable alternative. The rise of second hand book sites, not least of all through selling on amazon, allows one to pick up used books at competitive rates and to then sell them on after they have been devoured. The cost of purchasing a second hand book is returned after it is read and the book is sold on again. Postage paid, is postage reclaimed, most packaging can be reused, or, if it cannot, book sized jiffy bags are available for as little as 50p. It is in this way that the postage system accommodates what is perhaps the largest popular library in the world which is always open and in flux; a library that transcends international borders and is not confined by late fees. The need to sell books on in good condition deters vandalism, and one can take out as many books as one chooses. The downside and loss comes from the loss of space, instant gratification, and presence to knowledge which one has with libraries and second hand book shops.

Furthermore, the importance of second hand books should not be overlooked. No matter how much they might like to, very few readers can afford to buy, grow, and maintain extensive personal libraries- though most like to try. Second hand selling makes the works one desires available and neutralizes the cost. Moreover in the same way that musical instruments are meant to be played until they are worn dead, so books are meant to be read, and knowledge shared, rather than left to decay on shelves.

The eternal library of second hand selling is by no means ideal; it assumes the reader has the startup cost, private space to read the desired work, and that they are linked through technology and a postal route. Nonetheless, it is expanding knowledge beyond its former horizon. May that practice spring eternal.

Roses In The Thames

I was sitting in a bar in Euston with a bunch of people who genuinely believed themselves to be vampires when it occurred to me that I stuck out like a sore thumb. The goths, as a whole, have always been my allies, however these guys had taken it too far, and my black suit and shirt along with my discourse on the brilliance of Sir Christopher Lee was not enough to convince them of my comradery. It seemed bizarre, I thought. Most of these ‘vampires’ worked for transport for London. So that’s what became of all those make-up wearing white and black checkered phantoms I knew at school, they had disappeared into the underworld of the underground. A few weeks later I would learn from an American writer that the gothic scene in Texas is based around Morrissey. This defies all reason. I love The Smiths; I hate Morrissey.

 I’d gone to the bar in the hope of acquiring another person’s soul. In blues folklore, there is a well-known legend that one can sell their soul to the devil at the crossroads at midnight to master their chosen instrument, only I’m quite fond of my soul, so I thought maybe I could sell another. -Deals with the devil always go down well, right?- Indeed, my solidarity with the goths comes from my love of the blues which, as is well known, was the first genre to be branded ‘the devil’s music’. However, there was no solidarity with these goths who convulsed against the intruder in their midst.

 The solution to my exposure was not hard to find as the bar was a dive, half bottles of wine were going for three pounds each, and I’m a fast drinker. Three half bottles later and I could have blended in with the Royals or, at least, that’s how I felt after bringing that third empty bottle back to the bar and bowing to the bartender. I’d had enough of the staring down from the phantoms in black with fake plastic teeth; it was time to bust out of there. 

But where could I go to next? The British Library was just round the corner, but it would be closed by now and is not the place for drunks. Camden was a short walk away, but going to Camden alone, already drunk, seemed to be asking for trouble. Only the Southbank seemed to enter my mind, yet that is hardly surprising as I adore the Southbank; nowhere in London is more beautiful. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again I’d reached the station at embankment. As I staggered across the bridge to the south side of the river, music from the many buskers covered my shoulders like a warm blanket shielding me from the cold. First the trio of afrikan drummers that made my feet bounce, then a punk guitar player thrashing out incoherent power chords. Finally, I found a north afrikan jazz trio on brass with an accordion accompaniment: now you’re whistling Dixie. Leaning against the rails of the bridge I soaked in their improv over expanded dorian and mixolydian scales that had enough blue notes and chromatic jazz runs to make my back shudder. Music has always had a profound physical effect on me. When it hits just the right spot, my shoulders twitch and I become entranced, lost to everything else. After emptying the change from my pockets into their hat and giving the trumpet player a high five I staggered on to find my next cultural experience.

This came in the form of the royal festival hall. The RFH’s bench spotted foyers across its five stories is one of my favourite places to sit and write during the day, or crash out in full view of the public after a long night performing. Many a time I have laid on a couch in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness as businessmen and overly formal types held informal meetings against the skyline of Parliament, Somerset house, the Eye, and the other major attractions of London. Tonight I admired a photography exhibition, currently in vogue, that littered the main foyer and open space cafes and bars on the ground floor. The subject matter was refugees from environmental disasters. You gotta know the blues to play the blues and these guys knew the blues. These guys had the blues, the mean reds, the down and outs, and they had it up to the nines. Ghosts of greyscale and high-def colour shot frozen still in angles only an expert could achieve haunted every corner. As I chicken walked across the foyer through the haze of wine, the faces of the condemned jeered at me from the facades, while my outstretched arms mimed jazz movements attracting the attention of several other patrons. Disparate peoples in rags stood in torrents of rain, tornados, and the wrecks of their former dwellings as London’s bourgeois debated as to whether they should sympathise with the subject matter or admire the photographer’s aesthetic; Disaster and destruction has always been crucial to art.

I had more political objections. Was the whole thing not a farce? A statement of irony? I declared to an audience amused at my slurred outburst. The west’s reaction to these disasters was to send in a flash photographer to chronicle the suffering of others. By the time the shots had been edited, organized, and displayed, the next catastrophe had occurred somewhere else. All that was left was a perverse and empty reminder that we should value what we have and not gamble with it in helping others.

It made me think of the old days of the grand tour when the nobility used to traipse around Europe fucking whores and drinking in brothels after going to the opera at night, while pretending to read books and gain an education at major institutions during the day. Clothed in the rich colored, gold trimmed, fashions of the late renaissance, to the black and white formal cut suits of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, they graced the grand decadent cities of Europe with their own brand of decadence which they would later bring to statecraft. They did not hide their corruption but rather strove to exceed such decadence with their own exploits, searching for some perfect excess of passion. At least the old nobles were honest in their debauchery.

Now, the rich send their young to third world countries to contribute to community projects during their gap years. This is, arguably, an ethical improvement to the lavishness of old. The downside is that, like the nobles before them, many return with a superiority complex unlike any other. No doubt they found some other vain chauvinist on the tour to fuck while making anthropological observations on another culture’s way of life. They gained an experience they would ultimately use to scramble onto the rat race like all the other rats. Had I met that photographer then in vogue, I would have found a smug professional courting compliments and sympathizing with patrons that shared his suffering. He wouldn’t understand that you have to know the blues to play the blues. The royal festival hall had not provided the soul I was looking for.

The time was approaching nine o’clock when I stumbled out onto the river bank. I sat on a bench and thought of my current exploits. It was time to clean out the table or run home empty handed; I needed to ante up. I thought back to the buskers on the bridge. As amazing as they were, those cats didn’t have anything that I didn’t. I took a look around and noticed that I was in a prime location for busking: A location where people can walk past freely and aren’t trapped by the sound, and with enough people walking past to make the endeavor worthwhile. I pulled out my trusty 10 hole diatonic and started reeling off my repertoire and improvising new licks.

It was the devil’s music. Rough blue notes that were once outlawed by the Catholic Church rode out and haunted those that strolled by in the evening. The chill of brass reeds grating over a slow bend that makes expression on the harp possible caught my audience and fascinated them for a moment or two. A black spectre going ballistic in improv by the slosh of the Thames is quite a sight after all. 

“Hey that guy is shit hot,” came a woman’s voice. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about me or my playing. I looked up and saw two gorgeous couples smiling back at me- she was talking about my playing. It had been an American voice, from the east coast. I’ve never met an American I didn’t like and, through habit, have learnt the location of their accents. Her eyes had lit up in the way that only love and passion can do. Music can do that to people. Smiling back, I opened up the conversation and the five of us began to shoot the breeze. I invited them to sit down and they did. They had been on a double date, though I could tell it had gone so poorly that they were in as much need of an adventure as I had been. Their love of blues, their experiences of England, and my interest in America circled through the conversation. They kept hitting the conversation back, not in that forced way of feeling one has to reciprocate to the question asked, but in the natural way of being quite taken by someone. They invited me to flitter with them further on down the bank.

I wasn’t doing anything better, so why not? I picked up the silver and copper that had been thrown to me and we ambled down the bank lost in the underpasses of the great bridges, shouting aloud to hear our laughter reverberate in the underpasses. I thought the night air and synchronized breathing needed to play the harmonica would have sobered me up, but my legs continued to dance a tune that I didn’t recognize. After walking for a short while, the street lamps flickered on to reveal the greatest terror of the night: we had, to my repulse, arrived at the Tate Modern Art Gallery.

The Tate Modern is a vile place where many a good man has lost his mind. Built out of a million bricks, it was originally Bankside’s oil-fuelled power station until it was converted into an art gallery in the year 2000. It feigns a false chic of postmodern irony; that a powerhouse of electricity is now a powerhouse for art. I went dizzy as I looked up at its great, sinister chimney which leered over me. The chimney which once belched black smoke onto the skyline stood against darkness again as night had now descended. Its façade of a million bricks is as much a prison as it is a ‘site’ for viewing great art. Since its rejuvenation it has been a magnet for many terrifying experiences -indeed, I believe the land it is built on is cursed. Whenever I have visited the gallery the experience has been so disappointing that I have broken off all contact with those I visited with. As such, visiting the Tate has been the kiss of death to several former relationships and I have since done everything within my power to avoid visiting the building.

The Americans seemed disturbed by the seething contempt that struck my face, but they did not know what horrors this building held. The TATE is so packed full with school children and tourists that it is impossible to find a moment’s peace to enjoy the works it contains- for it does, occasionally, display some awe inspiring work. But the greatest horror comes not in the form of loud, sticky, photo chronicling groups, but in the form of people who pretend to know everything about the works they stand before, when it is clear they know nothing. The worst wear blazers and polo shirts and use art in an attempt to tower over others like the chimney they themselves stand beneath; they use art to be chauvinists. Alas, the Tate simply is not a space for experts to deliver humble lectures and insights to curious audiences, both in love with the form(s) before them. People are sardined into rooms where more time is spent negotiating a path around the other spectators than it is appreciating the spectacle one came for.

Thus the horror comes not from the consumption of art by some god awful building- all art is consumption. Nor in who consumes it (I am not a chauvinist who feels art should be denied to sticky school children, herds of tourists, or pretentious wankers in polo shirts. Indeed I, almost, feel that those groups need art more than anyone else), but in how it is consumed. In the galleries, great works are warehoused next to over-flowing bathrooms managed by immigrant cleaners formerly exploited by middle men companies that paid them less than a minimum wage. Bins are loaded with sticky sweet wrappers and bottles from the overpriced cafes that feature on every floor. The whole enterprise is parody.

It was a tragedy that struck me to my core; though it seemed as much an opportunity to do something bold and daring, a beautiful artistic motion that would liberate the art inside and re-ignite that beauty again, as opposed to letting the institution ruin the evening. It was an occasion to rise to, to conquer, and overcome. I would find a room with a Picasso, a Dali, and a Man Ray all within close proximity, and then I would liberate them from the nightmare. I would take out my harmonica and play a scathing blues lick, let the sound reverberate through that empty hall where the machinery, boilers, and burners once stood. I would make the furnaces ring again; I would play something beautiful that all those artists would have understood, but that the herds would find a vulgar breach of the peace. I would perhaps have a minute or two before I would have to escape the building’s prison officers and flee into the night. It would be pure improvisation like the surrealists themselves: a postmodern statement decrying the prison ‘site’.  Or I would do what I saw Godard’s trio do in the Louvre in his band a’part, and run through the gallery, around every floor, up every escalator, taking in everything as quickly as possible, with guards in hot pursuit. I would do something, anything, that would bring the gallery back into the world of freedom and spontaneity; back to that moment of someone doing something beautiful without resignation which sets the landscape into new significance. That landscape of paintings and sculptures would understand and thank me. I had to do something, any act of defiance that would break the parody.

“We have to liberate them! We have to save them all!” I cried. The amerikarnas were further distressed by my outburst and I realized that my discourse on the Tate’s horrors and lobby for intervention to save art from the prison had only been rehearsed in my head.

I tried to explain my cause to free the Tate from within, however all my comrades understood was that I wanted to do something frantic and off the wall inside the gallery. Negotiations reached that patronizingly simple stage one has to adopt with drunks: ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea’, ‘perhaps you’d better sit down’, ‘no no, it’s best not to do that’. Before long it was too late. The guards at the entrance were staring at me. I had been clocked and, if I did make it in, any act of liberation would be swiftly prevented. I sighed at the Americans, ‘you bastards probably wouldn’t sell me your souls anyway.’ The women laughed at this, but the men had had enough. The amerikarnas said their goodbyes, content that I had welched on my former plans.

I caught a seat on a bench in the shadow of that awful building that now jeered over me. All there was left to do was to start busking again and, with its tourist attraction, the Tate’s only redeeming quality is that it has a number of busking posts outside. I took up position and then a scene caught my eye. A couple, both parties movie star beautiful, were breaking up in the loud dramatic attention grabbing way everyone fears when they have to end it. It looked like the break-up from hell. Both stood crying and screaming at each other against a chilly waterloo night skyline. Finally, the man revealed his last resort from his bag, a bouquet of roses to apologize for whatever he had done. She was stumped for a moment, and then she grabbed the bouquet and threw it over the bank into the river. My kina gal. The stems scattered in the air, drifted for a moment, and then gravity tugged them into the tides.

And that was it. That was all I needed to see for the night to be worthwhile. I caught the next train back to Richmond, bought some chips from the best chip shop in the world, and then wrote a song about what happens when your woman throws the roses you gave her into the Thames. 

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/roses-on-the-thames

Introducing Scott Joplin: Solace in Amerikarna.

In the course of Scott Joplin’s life, America progressed through post-civil war reconstruction, economic depression, and recovery with the surging growth of industry, urban life and electrified cities. It was a period when African American’s sought to utilize the new opportunities of emancipation, and debate was hot as to how to overcome the ‘Jim Crow’ system that had replaced slavery. As the undoubted king of rag time, a style which, as a prelude to Jazz and Blues, is perhaps the first real American grown genre of music to spread across the nation, Scott Joplin has earned the deserved reputation as a decisive and brilliant composer. His life, and indeed his work, is an example of an American dream of progress, education, freedom and emancipation; even if it was, at times, illusionary.

 Born in Texas C.1867, two years after the end of the civil war, Joplin entered a world that was still finding itself between visions of progress and fears of white backlash. The abolition of slavery may have marked the beginning of Jim Crow and, consequently, the birth of the civil rights movement, yet emancipation also brought new opportunity. As C. Vann Woodward has argued, the reconstruction era Joplin was born into was not as racially polarized as the rigid Jim Crow system that would rear its head at the turn of the century. Indeed, the Joplin family found a breath of civilization when they moved to the new railroad town of Texarkana, when Scott was still young. There he was able to get a basic education and showed himself to be a natural on many communally held instruments; in particular he expressed a love and flair for the piano. Despite her poor wages, his mother was able to purchase a piano for Scott before he was ten as well as attaining lessons for her son from one of her employers. Within the close knit Texarkana community word of Scott’s potential spread and allowed him to cross the ‘colour line’ with relative ease and support, receiving lessons from local white composers and teachers. The exact identity of Joplin’s music teacher(s) and their influence is still unknown; nonetheless it is significant that, by his mid-teens, Scott could not only read and write, but also read, play and compose music.

“Ragtime”, the style synonymous with Joplin, derives its name from the genre’s use of syncopation and consequent “ragged” feel of timing. With his education and talent supporting him, Scott cut his teeth and dived into ragtime as an ‘itinerant’ musician travelling the American south and mid-west. Like Leadbelly’s experiences in ‘fannin’ street in the 1910s, the patrons of itinerant musicians in the 1880s were brothels, saloons, parlors, and other ‘red light’ areas. While most were solo gigs, there were competitions among players, famously at the Silver Dollar bar in St Louis, and there was also the chance to interact and recruit other travelling musicians and create a larger act for the road.  

Through his travels, Joplin was able to escape the rural south and made it to Chicago. His biographers are unanimous in noting the importance of Joplin’s presence at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition in the city (A.K.A. the Chicago World’s fair). It is still disputed whether Joplin played in the fair’s program, though he certainly played in the local bars and hotels that supported the influx of visitors to the city. The meaning and significance of the fair for Joplin is still contested. The ‘city of lights’, so called as it was the first attraction to ever make large scale use of Edison’s light bulb, was a monumental attraction that boasted of modernism and American progression. As an event, the fair showcased numerous musical talents, including ragtime artists, to huge crowds of visitors from across America and the world which showed an obvious potential for growth and distribution of the genre. It is noted that after the fair Joplin began to realise his potential as a composer as well as an entertainer, which his biographers attribute to his experience in Chicago. Indeed the fair’s emphasis on progress and science resonates with the complex, almost scientific, sound of many of Joplin’s rags. However, the fair’s significance for African Americans was a negative one. The fair had displays that were degrading to African Americans and were subsequently criticized by W.E.B. Du Bois. Joplin’s exact stance towards the fair is unknown, though his biographers have speculated that the disparity between its vision of progress and the negative portrayal of race created a challenge that the performer sought to overcome with his talents.

With this new role as a composer in mind, Joplin first settled in St Louis where he published his infamous Mapple Leaf Rag with the music publisher and store owner John Stark. His compositions earned him a good living and he migrated to New York at the turn of the Century to continue his work. The industry of the city allowed his work to be disseminated across the country through the output of the printing presses. Of course music has been printed since the Renaissance, but never before had it achieved such an industrial output. The companies that bought Joplin’s works were often vertically integrated, with owners, like Stark, controlling factories where a range of Pianos, diverging in quality, were constructed; publishing houses where music was printed; and stores where both goods were sold. Such companies marketed their pianos, and Joplin’s rags, to bourgeois households, particularly targeting the appeal of the instrument to housewives, playing on their domestic role of entertaining the family and guests.Through such a medium, Joplin’s music was disseminated and became popular across America’s households.

For the last fifteen years of his life, Joplin struggled to produce his magnum opus: an opera entitled Treemonisha. The opera’s composition and production was fraught with setbacks. While still composing shorter pieces, and working in the red light scene to support himself, the opera’s only production during Joplin’s lifetime was met with mixed reviews, as the composer could not maintain an orchestra and was forced to play the score as a solo piano part. But the publication of the score received excellent appraisals from New York’s critics, to Joplin’s delight. As he worked to adapt the score for another production, he was hospitalized having contracted Syphilis, which he died of 1 April 1917. Although ragtime survived underground for decades, Joplin’s music had a popular renaissance in the 1970s, in part aided by its rediscovery by classical artists, as well as the popular appeal of the film The Sting, which featured several of Joplin’s most famous compositions. Treemonisha also, finally, got the full production it deserved in 1972.

Many of Scott Joplin’s biographers have tried to situate him between the opinions of W.E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington; the two major leaders of the African American community in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. With almost no surviving sources of Joplin’s personal life, it is hard to fathom his precise views on the issue of racism and prejudice. Though Du Bois and Washington disagreed about the speed and manner with which African American’s should attain the equality they deserved, it was axiomatic to both that education and cultural development would be a key factor in achieving that freedom (respectively through the Talented Tenth and the Tuskegee institute). From the libretto and composition of Treemonisha, it is clear that Joplin sought to propagate this view, namely, that the road to progress and greater freedom lies in opportunities of education and learning, of which Joplin himself was a prime example. Indeed, it is a timeless maxim applicable to all.

***

For my part, Solace, a Mexican Serenade, remains one of my favourite compositions. Though, as the first song that I ever ‘multitracked’, I have done it little justice. Nonetheless the second half of the song has a carefree feel that is sublime and a joy to play. Joplin’s waltz, Bethena, is perhaps the sweetest in the genre. I also couldn’t resist recording The entertainer. Although it is overplayed, it is also his most famous work.

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/solace

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/bethena-a-concert-waltz

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/the-entertainer

An Introduction to Modified Piano Scores.

As alluded to in a previous article, one of the major drawbacks to playing the harmonica (particularly the chromatic) is that few classical compositions have pushed, or even grazed against, the boundaries of what the instrument is capable of. Where players have made leaps and bounds, composers have remained in the dark. Thus, in order to practice the instrument with sheet music, players have had to adapt scores intended for other instruments in order to expand their repertoire, and challenge their practice regimes.

The piece that first inspired me to adapting piano compositions to the harmonica was the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s infamous Piano Concerto No.2. Where I was first intrigued by the woodwind melodies, I am now set on mastering the piano line on the harp and the guitar. I hope to have it ready by the end of the year.

In the meantime, I have adapted several, well known, piano compositions to the instrument, which I hope the reader and listener will enjoy. To provide a more diverse sound, I have used the guitar to play the ‘left hand’ of the scores and further make the piece my own.

Nonetheless the disparity between instruments causes a certain consideration of technique and personal preference. Where double stops could have been used on the harmonica, I have abstained from using them. This is not through lack of technique but rather my personal distaste of the sound. The only form of ‘tongue blocked’ double stop that I enjoy playing on the chromatic Harmonica is the harmony produced from playing octaves, and I have used this technique liberally. Of course the right hand harmonies available on the piano are more complex, however I feel I have retained the essence of the melody at all times. With the guitar, I have been too busy, over excited, and, consequently, lazy to play the left hand note for note at all times, but have again tried to adapt scores to the capabilities of the instrument with the time available to me.

Thus I have added notes to scores and taken them away. Conservatives will be appalled, I hope the rest will simply enjoy and recall that all any performer can do with a score is interpret and, likewise, enjoy.  

Sam and Bazza's awesome adventure in Teddington

After a day of strumming by the riverside, serenading waitresses in a French café for free drinks and brownies, and helping the blues brother start his career as the next auteur, I’m surrounded by several teens wearing baseball caps and playing some distorted stuff out of their smart phones, as I walk past the local gym. All of a sudden I’m 13 again, and thinking of aversion tactics to counter the school bullies. ‘Oh lawd’, I think, ‘I knew today was too good to be true, I’m gonna get the mickey taken out of me, and then some’. “Hey man”, the most aggressive looking one says, “do you like muddy waters?” I’m struck dumb. I listen. That’s not distorted crap coming from the Iphone, its muddy waters I can’t be satisfied. I’m not back with the bullies, I’m among friends and allies. Now smiling I reply, ‘Brother I don’t just love muddy waters, I playmuddy waters’. “Go on then mate.” I put down my guitar, pull out the trusty 10 hole diatonic, and reel off Manish boy, I needs to be loved, and Got my Mojo working. “brav that is sick”. I can’t remember exactly what Montaigne said about perception, but I remember the morals behind his argument. A high five later, and then I’m walking off into the distance. When you’re a ‘musicianeer’, everything is la vie en rose.

Nine Below Zero.

And there I am playing blues at the bus station at 3:42 am. Just like in Oxford, the greatest person I feel solidarity to is the window cleaner who has arrived to straighten up the bus stop. The man who has lived. The man whose parting words are, ‘don’t worry my friend, you keep playing the blues like that, and you’ll recover from your broken heart, quickly’. A man who tells me of his former work as a security guard, who tells me, as always, that it is the manners of a person that make them. If you can’t say please and thank you, you’re a chauvinist and you ain’t worth nothing. The whole evening of trawling around god knows where was worth it to speak to a man who knows the truth, even if it is only the truth of a moment. I’d do it all again, and sing ‘nine below zero’ till my heart broke if it meant I crossed another window cleaner like that.

LEADBELLY

You caused me to weep,

You caused me to mourn,

You caused me to leave my home.

Good night Irene,

Goodnight Irene,

I’ll get you in my dreams.

“Now, don’t you bother nobody, don’t make trouble, but if someone try to meddle with you, I want you to protect yourself.”

-Leadbetter Sr on giving his son, Huddie, a pistol for his 16^th birthday.

           On the surface Leadbelly can be seen to embody a number of contradictions. He was a singer and multi-instrumentalist as much at home playing in brothels and gin jukes, as in the trendy New York Greenwich folk scene which he graced in the 1940s. On the one hand he has the reputation of being a tough guy who supposedly murdered one man over a woman, and attempted to kill another several years later. On the other hand he was often described as a quiet, gentle, and friendly man, who was kind to children to the point where he adopted orphans with his second wife, and famously arrived late to a recording session when a group of children and families begged him to perform as he was walking through a park on his way to the studio. He performed songs in support of Roosevelt’s election, yet his later association with workers’ unions brought him to the attention of the FBI. A man who decried racism, as well as the treatment of the Jews during World War II, yet humbled himself to the Lomaxs and would do almost anything for a buck. The contradiction continues in images of the performer. In photographs, he is dressed alternately in farm, and prison, work uniforms; to the dress of smart suits, bow ties, morning, and dinner, jackets.

What is lacking in these juxtapositions is context, not only of Huddie Ledbetter’s life, but also the world in which he lived in; the world of the American south between 1900 and 1940.  In his youth, Huddie showed a natural flair for music when singing on his father’s farm, and when playing musical instruments at school. In rural Louisiana and Texas, where Huddie grew up, music was a part of everyday life and performed many social functions within the African American community. At weekly church events gospel singing, spirituals, and call and response preaching; music announced salvation from hardship. When working in the fields, and later when Huddie was on the chain gangs, singing eased the soul, and the beat made the work more efficient and bearable. At dances music played the backdrop for courtship, and in families it was used for children’s lullabies and playtime. Music also performed an individual function in the form of ‘hollers’. In the rural south, where families could live great distances apart, hollering as one worked or travelled announced the arrival of someone, the presence of a friendly hand nearby, or the regularity of a neighbor walking to work or the local town. In a manner comparable with social media today, it let others know that the person hollering was okay, and available should those who recognized their voice need their friend or neighbor.

In this world Huddie distinguished himself as a singer and multi-instumentalist. At school he was described as a quiet hard working boy, who availed himself to communal instruments. When he worked on his father’s farm as a teenager, guitars and banjos afforded an escape when resting. As his talent grew he received invitations to play local parties and dances. Within the range of blues street singers, gospel events, spirituals, string bands, hollers, jigs, dances, parties, and, by the time he was sixteen, saloons, and brothels, there was ample opportunity for Huddie to find work and ready audiences. Although of course there was a disparity between the civilized performances at religious meetings, and the uncivilized world of brothels and drinking houses. In the latter, violence and debauchery was a part of everyday life. Knife fights, shootings, and quarrels over women were constant occurrences in such places, particularly on ‘Fanin street’ of which he was in particular demand to brothel owners to attract and entertain customers. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty, Huddie cut his teeth playing such joints and had to learn to survive them. Whereas Ledbetter was always described as a kind boy, such environments were not always kind back. Already strong from years of manual labour, he was good at ‘knocking’ (fist-fighting), and was given a pistol for his sixteenth birthday (not an uncommon present as it was often needed for hunting as well as matters of honor and defense), which he readily used at an after dance fight to scare off an opponent soon after receiving the gun.  As a performer and ‘musicianer’, Ledbetter’s talent distinguished himself from others at dances, attracting both the affections of women and the jealousy of men. Several times in this period Huddie returned to his parent’s home after an evening’s work scathed and bleeding; worse off for the fight. At twenty he contracted gonorrhea and had to quit the circuit while he took “Lafayette’s mixture” to treat the disease.  Now somewhat disillusioned with the underground world he preferred  the civilized world of the church, but still found it necessary to visit red light districts for work and attention. Nonetheless on the red light circuit, Huddie had met countless other inspirational musicians, most notably Blind Lemon Jefferson, and gained a mastery over the music of the scene.

Tragedy befell the Ledbetter family when Huddie was arrested for his aggression with his pistol. In order to pay Huddie’s legal fees, his parents had to sell their farm and land. However, as much as it was necessary for Huddie to defend himself, there was a wider motive behind his arrest. Oil companies had taken interest in, and purchased, the property surrounding the Ledbetter farm in texas, and sought to bypass the family’s decision not to sell up. Arresting Huddie was a means to this end in forcing the family to sell through bankrupting them as they struggled to pay Huddie’s legal fees.

Miraculously, Huddie broke out of the local jail, evaded the police, who shot at him as he fled into a pine forest (In the pines, in the pines, where the sun never shines, and I shiver the whole night through), and he escaped with his first wife to New Orleans, where he adopted the alias Walter Boyd. It was there in 1917, that he was then convicted for the murder of William Scott. The circumstances of the murder are unclear, the evidence suspect, and there is serious doubt over Leadbelly’s guilt. Indeed, ‘Boyd’ and Scott held a complex relationship of friendship and Jealousy. Scott was even married to Huddie’s cousin, but the two regularly quarreled over women at dances, and it was after such a quarrel that Scott was murdered, and ‘Boyd’ was blamed.

Now in prison and working on a chain gang, Huddie tried several escapes, however after the ordeal of his final attempt, where Huddie was chased down by hunting dogs, he accepted that escape was impractical or, at least, was not worth getting killed over. Instead he led the hardest working gang, and wrote songs to the Governor of Texas in appeal for his release which was granted in 1925 (ain’t you glad, that the good judge done signed my name, oh the judge done signed my name).

His return to the music circuit was short lived. Huddie was arrested and imprisoned again in 1930 for attempted murder.  This time it was for cutting a white member of a Salvation Army band. Huddie’s side of the story was that the band had taken offence when he began dancing to their tune and that he was acting in self defence. The other side was that a racist remark had inflamed Huddie, and provoked the fight.

Now in the hellish Angola prison, where he gained the nickname Leadbelly, after four years he once again achieved bail through promoting his musical talents to the governor, famously with the help of John Lomax, and his son Alan. Upon his release the Lomaxs continued to record Leadbelly, and John took him on as a chauffeur, a degrading role that Leadbelly accepted for its stability as he was determined never to return to prison.

Following the exposure of the Lomax’s recordings, Huddie became estranged from the family as he found fame and popularity among wider audiences. He endorsed Roosevelt’s presidency writing several songs for the presidential candidate. Yet his sympathy for America’s labour movements later brought him to the attention of an FBI watch list of potential ‘un-American’ popular celebrities. He became an icon in the New York Greenwich folk scene, appeared in Hollywood films, and, ultimately, became one of the most influential folk singers of the 20^th Century, indeed, of all time.

As far as Leadbelly’s style goes, the performer is famed for preferring a 12 string guitar for its louder sound. His voice was likewise powerful, and he had a style of tapping his feet into complex syncopations to accompany his playing. As a multi-instrumentalist, he was also competent on banjos, mandolins, and the accordion.

Along with his obvious talents as a great musician and performer, Leadbelly’s expansive knowledge of folk blues and country music gave his work and fame a greater significance. He was an anthology of southern folk music, claiming to know more than five hundred songs, who acted as a bridge between the old and new folk scenes. For example, one of his most famous songs, Goodnight Irene, has its roots in the 1860s. The Lomaxs recognized this significance right of the bat and their first book Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly is as much an appreciation of the singer’s archival like capabilities, as it is an examination of musical style.

With such an incredible life as Leadbelly’s, it can, naturally, be framed in a variety of ways. But what sort of a life was it? A man who at the mercy of white systematic oppression, at risk to African Americans jealous of his talents and tastes, forever trying to survive the economic struggle of a travelling musician yet who continued to play the music he loved and lived so well; it is the life a man constantly adapting to the hostilities and possibilities of his environment. As many of his autobiographers have argued, it is the life of a loner.

***

I have recorded a version of Goodnight Irene, in tribute to Leadbelly. I can’t sing and I don’t do it justice, but it was a pleasure to play it. 

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/irene-goodnight-mp3

https://samsmusicandmusings.bandcamp.com/track/goodnight-irene

Notes from Buskers and the underground.

The most wonderful thing about buskers on the underground is the reverberation. The flat tiles of the station corridors cause the music to bounce and echo, allowing the sound to haunt its travelers. Usually, and especially if the performer is a novice, such travelers carry on their journeys in complete ambivalence, and have been conditioned by former trips to forget the unwanted sounds as soon as they hear them. Sometimes, however, the traveler is in just the right frame of mind, and the musician is playing just the right style, that the two enjoy each other’s company and patronage for a moment or two. A saxophonist improvising over summertime on a glistening sunny London morning, and a Dixie band playing minor jazz in a snow-kissed Oxford winter are two recent, personal, examples that come to mind.

I recall that I was first haunted by such a player one Christmas evening at Piccadilly Circus, when I was 13 years old. After a day of exploring the blues and jazz, vinyl and CD section at the Virgin megastore (formerly Tower Records) nearby, I heard the wail of the blues and deserted my companions to find the source. There he was: Harmonica Matt. With an amplifier plugged up to an old shopping dolly, a belt of harps around his waist, and a Sure ‘Green Bullet’ mic clutched around a harp, cupped in both hands and pressed to his mouth. He paused only to growl into the mic and distort the amp. I dislike the stereotypes forced upon harmonica players in general culture, that the instrument can only be played by the downtrodden; tramps, the homeless, cowboys, dying soldiers, and old farm workers. Matt lived up to this stereotype. I couldn’t tell whether he was drunk, or just confused by the wild haired teenager who stood before him, fascinated with his playing, but, after a moment or so, he seemed pleased to see a 13 year old kid with such an interest in the instrument. When he finished his song, we exchanged words about the instrument, his playing, and his equipment. He received my compliments, and I bought one of his CDs. 

A few weeks later I came across The Holloway Brothers performing in Kingston where I marveled at the lead singer’s jazz harp technique. When I purchased a CD from him we again discussed the instrument and his approach. He offered to jam with me right there on the street, however I had forgotten to bring a harp with me (sharing a harp is a hygienic faux pas) and I missed out on a golden opportunity. Since then I have considered it a bad omen to leave the house without a harmonica on my person, or at hand nearby.

In homage to Matt’s first haunting, I wrote a song about him when I got home that evening. Ten years later, I have now taken the liberty of recording it as I first played it, and have included it here.

https://soundcloud.com/samsmusicandmusings/harmonica-mattwav

***

‘Even if he starved to the very best of his ability, and so he did, nothing could rescue him anymore, people walked past him. Try and explain the art of starving! It needs to be felt, it’s not something that can be explained.’

-Franz Kafka, The Hunger Artist.

On one of the street corners in the back lanes of Kingston market I pass by an old man playing a chord harmonica; a simpler form of the instrument compared to the diatonic or the chromatic. I pull out my diatonic and play music with the old man. After I finish playing we exchange a few words and then I hurry off to eat. I work in a stationary shop and I am on my lunch break. I walk by the Thames listening to houseboats creak on the causeway. I sit by an old converted WWII torpedo boat docked to the mooring that, with the presence of its old military colours, is a minor local attraction.  On the way back to work I have since acquired a few coins in change and I place them in the busker’s hat as I pass him by again. He stops playing and talks to me more eagerly this time, and I am pleased to learn of his life. His name is Raymond. He is Italian, and finds my obscure Portuguese surname and heritage to offer some comfort of continental solidarity. He has played since he was ‘yea high’ and has also mastered the accordion. He tells me how he chooses locations and how he appreciates even a few pennies thrown into his hat. He takes any sum as a compliment no matter how large or small. Busking, he explains, is not the means to make a monetary fortune, but to receive acknowledgement from those that appreciate one’s style and talent, even if only for a moment.  We exchange compliments, well wishes, the shaking of hands and pats on the arm; gestures that indicate friendship, and demonstrate mutual respect and appreciation. He is a good man. I think to myself about buskers. From great artists, to mainstream sellouts; those with fanbases, and patrons who pay in advance of performances, carry the luxury of a safety net that every performer dreams of. Buskers and underdogs have to try it by the teeth.

And I realise that these are the people I stand for. Everyone dreams of easy fame and winnings (and why shouldn’t they?), and those that gain them either become saints; or vain chauvinists, but to go out into the streets with nothing but talent, necessity, and conviction, takes guts. I realise that I stand for those who try it by the teeth.

***

My new year’s resolution for 2015 is to start performing live again. The main avenue for lone musicians, like myself, is to attend jam nights, or open mic nights.

The most awful thing about jam nights is the show-off wankers one has to play with (and I am fully aware of the hypocrisy that, in this regard, it takes one to know one). Jam nights are where one hears a thousand notes per minute played over the same old scales with the finesse of a raging bull. It is the arena where everyone from the novice to the master ‘fancies themselves’.

Open mic nights are more preferable as one can perform pieces prepared in advance and without the intrusion of strangers. The environment is more relaxed, and I have come across some truly great players who have welcomed my own modest talents with friendly open arms. Along with open mic nights, I have taken to busking before work. Buskers belong to that category of people, and that philosophical concept of being, where an individual can exist in plain sight, yet still be invisible. While I have made a little profit in my performances, as Raymond told me, the rewards are not riches, but a few chance encounters with like-minded patrons who hear just the right thing at just the right time. 

Stereotypes and the Harmonica

‘In the piano scores of songs there are [now] strange diagrams. They relate to guitar, ukulele and banjo, as well as the accordion –infantile instruments in comparison with the piano- and are intended for players who cannot read the notes.’

-Theodor Adorno.         

   When I told a former university lecturer that I played the harmonica, she replied, jokingly, ‘gee Sam, I didn’t know you’d spent time in prison’. Her response typifies stereotypes of the instrument; that it is designed for the amusement of the downtrodden, the lowest classes, and the outcasts of society. Such negative typecasts have been solidified in popular culture through a variety of forms from Hollywood films, to toy replicas of the instrument that are little better than whistles. In the former case, the dying American civil war solider calling for ‘dixie’ to be played on the harp [slang for harmonica] one last time, the prisoner in the exercise yard, the old toothless bum playing blues at a railway station, or the folk singer droning on the instrument while simultaneously strumming the acoustic guitar, are all popular (mis-)conceptions of the instrument and its cultural place.*

   Part of this negative image arises from the construction of the instrument itself. Anyone can inhale and exhale into the instrument and produce a sound (which will be in a western harmony-hence the term harmonica-and sound ‘pleasing’). This gives it an appearance of ease and, therefore, ‘accessibility’ suited to the ‘untalented classes’. Condescension to the instrument is as much a disdain for persons of these stereotypes and an opportunity for the critic to feel a sense of superiority, instead of a chance to appreciate a new instrument and sound. The quote from Adorno [whose snobbish views of culture I abhor] at the start of this piece is a prime example of this mentality.

   Yet anyone can produce a sound from any instrument with relative ease, but few can then play that instrument well or with any technicality, and even fewer can play brilliantly [see my article on Stevie Wonder for an introduction to a brilliant harmonica player]. Indeed, whenever I have allowed a friend to try playing the harmonica, the most they managed was awkward chords; not one of them could play a single note melody! The more complex actions of bending, over-bending, trills, tongue blocking, vamping, and varied vibrato techniques, would be far beyond their grasp at a first playing/lesson, and are probably beyond their knowledge of sounds associated with the instrument altogether.*

   That is not so say that there is anything intrinsically wrong with refraining from complex techniques [see style and form (forthcoming)], but rather that the wider capabilities of the instrument should not go unacknowledged. As Kim Field notes, in is brilliant book: Harps, Harmonicas, and Heavy Breathers, whenever a ‘serious’, or classical piece of music is composed for the instrument it is written and framed with stereotypes in mind, and often with an ignorance of the instrument’s full capabilities (C3-C#7 being the full range of a sixteen hole chromatic harmonica). Thus, there is the ‘street-corner concerto’, or Milhaud’s Suite for Harmonica and Orchestra in three movements entitled ‘Gigue’, ‘Sailor Song’, and ‘Hornpipe’. However, along with Blues and Folk, the instrument is adept at Jazz, Classical, Soul, Funk, Rock, Reggae, Hip Hop or any other style of music one cares to name - as is any other instrument. Within the musical families, the Harmonica breaches a fine line between the brass and woodwind sections. It has brass reeds but the fact that it uses reeds would probably place it in the woodwind department; a position similar to that of the saxophone-which is made of brass but produces sound through a reed. Its sound is so unknown and misunderstood that I often have to tell people that the music they are listening to is produced by a harmonica. On such occasions, harmonica players performing through distorted amplifiers are often thought to be guitarists or electric pianists, while acoustic players are mistaken for clarinets or saxaphones.  

   Of course every instrument has a sound and a persona associated to it. When considering the Harmonica’s, and further considering its familial place, I would have to agree with one of the arguments presented by Field. With its proximity to the mouth, the Harmonica has the feel of a lost voice.

*Being a big Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone fan, my favourite portrayal of the Harmonica in mainstream film is Once Upon a Time in the West, despite the factual error that Charles Bronson mimes on a tremolo harmonica in the film, when the performer on the soundtrack alternated between a diatonic and a chromatic as the piece dictated. This only strengthens my argument: There are different types of Harmonicas and people often associate the limits of one with the other.

*Whenever I have then shown would-be players such techniques, I am glad to say, I have never failed to provoke a smile and a sense of pleasure, albeit accompanied by surprise, in the listener.

Classy Huh? 

Pitch

Between the boundaries of the lowest note and the highest harmonic; the notes of a musical instrument can either go up, down, or stand still.