Boogie Blues to Blame

I took refugee in blues, only to find out that it backfires.

Because every time I hear that twelve bar tunes, I remember that boogie rhymes.


I'm such an idiot.

Some says life is an adventure.

So I think, it would spoil the fun if it's planned beforehand, right?

To enjoy an adventure is to push ourselves toward uncharted lands, unknown seas, primeval forests, undocumented ruins, and so on, and so on.. Challenging our own sense of fear to instill wonder and awe every time we stumbled upon something new. Ever wandering, ever in awe.

And thus, life is too. Provided the first sentence is an acceptable statement..

When Son House began his supposedly life choice as a pastor in a Baptist church around 1920s, he wouldn't expect to be "expelled" several years later because of his bad habits. Further little chances he expected his life would be turning again, this time since 1925, when he decided to grab a guitar and began learning some blues, the kind of music he had been adamantly hostile to in his preaching years. Now, he is primarily famous as a blues singer and guitarist, and mostly noted for his emotional singing.

When Buckminster Fuller began his early school years, struggling in his seemingly incompetent mind to understand geometry, as he couldn't understand the basic abstraction to imagine a chalk dot on the blackboard represented a mathematical point, he wouldn't expect that years later, he would be renowned as an innovative architect, designer, and visionary. His most famous creation that last until this day, and has been seen as a pinnacle of modern architecture, is his geodesic dome: a lattice structure that could maintain his sphere shape and sustain his own weight without practical limits, lightweight, and stable.

And you must have known, albeit a little, about a particular patent clerk, which had his job provided by his relative because he had been jobless for years; a man, who wouldn't expect that his thoughts and scribbles he occasionally pondered in his free time at work, would be the key to unlock the ability to develop the most devastating weapon of mass destruction in 20th century. A weapon, that definitely ended World War II. That man would also, in his later years, be considered as one of the greatest physics scientist in this world, and his name would become somewhat an idiom of genius. You know that man.

And I, I wouldn't expect that when I first blowing my dad's harmonica, back then on my elementary school years, and then leaving the instrument since my high school years, that I would eventually going back to that instrument and eventually getting a (just a little!) proficiency in it.

Up until my third year in university, I have been listening to a diverse genres of music, but mostly easy-listenings and bossa nova. I did have a little collection of blues, but I wouldn't expect that I would be so passionately absorbed by that genre, up until the beginning of 2013. 

How did that happen?

The first momentum is in not so far a past, at the last quarter of 2012, when I heard one of my friend playing Robert Johnson's guitar licks some night in the terrace of HMM's base in campus. I asked him if he ever know about Robert Johnson, and he surprised that I know of him too. Been a not-that-close friends since we knew each other when we get to the same undergraduate program (which is mechanical engineering), we had been playing some Robert Johnson's songs together, he with a guitar, I with my dad's harmonica. 

And he did pique my further interest in blues, and further revelations that blues, since its early beginnings, have been incorporating the sound of a particular kind of harmonica, the "blues harp". As I further dig into the subject, I found that my dad's harmonica is actually commonly used in folk musics and Asian musics (the folk thing actually have been known by me for some time, as I had been listening to Bob Dylan before that), and it is called tremolo harmonica. But to play blues, you have (not really that strict, actually) to play blues harp, or diatonic harmonica. And so away I went, to Gramedia book store (yeah, a book store) to buy my very first, Blues Harp, in the key of A.

I honed and honed my skills playing the harp, learning some tricks, bending, warbles, wah-wahs, etc, initially only to satiate my curiosity with this instrument, and the many dimension of blues sounds I can create. About the genre itself, at first I only focused in making some cool sounds and a particular "blues" tunes, as it basically quite a simple chord progression to learn: the "twelve bar blues".

But then, the second momentum happened.

I don't really want to elaborate the story behind this momentum, and I don't think I really need to. What is clear is this: because of that second momentum, I feel like I finally getting (a tiny bit of) the soul, the driving force behind the blues tunes that makes it a distinctive genre of music. And because of that second momentum, I was drawn more intimately about the true value, the true face of blues.

Blues emerged sometime around 1890, and had shaped itself, maturing around 1930 to 1950 as a particular genre. Coming from, and primarily played by black folks in the United States, as a mean to channel their lamentations, distresses, and frustrations as a shunned minority and their hard roles as workers mainly in plantations, burdened by poverty, even after slavery had been abolished and peace returned after the Civil War, primary (and even to this day, in some cases) blues songs' lyrics has never strayed too far from hard day's working, love lifes turned bad, living penniless, or desperation living as a whole. That, and blues tunes, incorporating mainly "blue notes", really created a sound of wailing, despair, yet always struggling to keep head's high and trying to be able to smile at one's own misfortunes, a kind of irony.

The name "blues" itself derived from more than one source, primarily thought to be from "blue devil", the term of evil spirit in old African myth, that harasses men's life with sufferings and despair; and the second is from the feelings of despair itself; sadness, feeling blue.

And so, blues is mainly about feeling blue, with style.

A particular thing happened in the past. 

Basically a sensitive person, I couldn't stop my feelings to turn blue.

But I'm a man.
I would not wet my cheeks with tears.
And so, I began playing my harp.
This time, with the true soul of the Blues.

Because I can only admire the beauty of the moon from afar, with no ways possible to reach it with my hand.

But enough about the second momentum.
I surely would not expect that.

This time, I have six harps; all primary keynotes, with the key of B absent. I don't yet buy that one.
Right now, I have a chance to play alongside an emergent indie band, which has been submitted their songs in SoundCloud recently.

It's really a wonder; I have never ceased to be fascinated by the fact that some events could really turned a man's world upside down.

I'm basically a man that's living in the now. I don't really like spending my time wondering about the future; it's all vague, a mix of gray, white, and black; never really crystallize into a particular shape.

But now, already deciding something, and evaluated all my emergent options and interests this past two years, I find myself at a crossroad. Not that kind of Robert Johnson's Crossroad Blues, although some elements may be the same ..

But a crossroad, that whatever path I choose, I would always be sure to have that feeling linger, because, looking from a point of view, they're all the same.

And I would set the blues, again, as my guide.

It actually has been quite a while since I drew that picture, which is on the cover of a notebook I bought from TOKEMA. But it is definitely some time after the second momentum. At that time, all I thought was about crossroads; as a representation of my indecisiveness and gloomy future, ever wondering how this story of mine would end.

It will always have a special place in my heart, nevertheless. 

However it will turn out. 

However lame or dull the ending.

However painful it was.

However beautiful it was.

And so, to end this post, I give to you a Skip James' song, with his overwhelmingly deep, ever saddening minor E tuned guitar's sound.

Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues
by Skip James
1931

Hard time's is here
An ev'rywhere you go
Times are harder
Than th'ever been befo'

Um, hm-hm
Um-hm
Um, hm-hm
Um, hm-hm-hm

You know that people
They are driftin' from do' to do'
But they can't find no heaven
I don't care where they go

Um, hm-hm
Um-uh-hm
Mm-hm-hm
Um, hm-hm-hm

People, if I ever can get up
Off a-this old hard killin' flo'
Lord, I'll never get down
This low no mo'

Um, hm-hm-hm
Hm, um-hm
Hm, hm-hm
Hm, hm-hm-hm

Well, you hear me singin'
This old lonesome song
People, you know these hard times
Can't last us so long

Hm, hm-hm
Hmm, hmm
Hm, hm-hm
Hm, hm-hm, oh Lord

You know, you'll say you had money
You better be sho'
But these hard times gon' kill you
Just drive a lonely soul

Um, hm-hm
Umm, hmm
Umm, hm-hm
Hm, hm-hm-hm

(guitar)

Umm-hm
Hmm-hm-hm
Umm-hm
Hm-hm-hm
Hmm, hm-hm-hm

(guitar to end)
~