Corey Harris – It’s all about showing my process of education
ND: Did this generation’s arrival on disc change what appeared to be a lack of interest in older blues forms among the younger African-Americans?
CH: Over the years, especially since I’ve started doing electric music, I’ve got a new contingent of younger fans who might dig me, and listen also to somebody like Ben Harper, or maybe Medeski, Martin & Wood — for want of a better word, and I think they need one, the jam band crowd. To me, “jam band” doesn’t mean anything, except maybe that the bands do endless noodling!
III. YOU HAVE TO IMITATE TO FIND YOUR OWN VOICE
ND: To the degree there was that lack of interest, or even antipathy, to blues among a lot of younger black audiences, it seems related to identification of the music with old rural guys crying and complaining — exactly the same thing said by proponents of relentlessly upbeat radio country about older honky-tonk, bluegrass and old-timey music.
CH: I hear your point, and in some ways agree — but a large portion of what’s hip in hardcore hip-hop is not cheery. There’s an aspect of every culture where people are kind of embarrassed by the true root of that culture; to them, it’s skeletons in the closet.
But I really don’t get why people say that young black folks don’t get on the blues; it’s just not true. It was never “Honey, put on a blues record!” People just tell you artists that they like. And if you go to the ‘hood to eat or something, on the jukebox it would have B.B. King, Kenny Lattimore, Earth, Wind & Fire, Roberta Flack, Little Milton. And the way black people create, musically, is always trying to be fresh.
ND: So the biggest negative for acceptance of older blues is that it’s old.
CH: Exactly. I don’t know exactly what it is, but when I look at white American expression of blues, or of any musical form that’s not what they grew up with everyday, a lot of times it’s kind of on a nostalgia trip — or it can get like that.
ND: Or from some idea that it’s “exotic,” whether it’s blues, or country, or what have you.
CH: Exactly — which you can tell, when to play the music you have to look the part, then you have to make up a name for yourself. But it’s really very rare that you’ll see black people doing a retro thing like that. It happens, but on the whole, it’s about, “Yo; that’s old; throw it out!” In hip-hop, it’s like you have to see a new thing every week. If you’re not new and fresh, a word used a lot there, then we’ll just forget about you.
ND: If you plain like music that happens not to be from your own time, and you want to play it, how do you approach it? Do you see the need for a lot of homework to “get” the time and place — even if the point is to mess with the music and change it?
CH: It’s a concept of getting to know the tradition, not aping it; but you’ve got to do homework in some way or another. If you go to any art museum, you’ll see a bunch of aspiring artists copying the works of the masters. You have to imitate to find your voice; that’s a period you go through.
ND: What was the most challenging part of that period for you?
CH: Being able to play well on the guitar, and to understand what I was playing. Vocally it came a lot easier, because I’d always been able to do that, you know. I can sing, and was familiar with certain styles, while trying to make my own.
I first was playing rock ‘n’ roll tunes, my own tunes, church songs; what I knew was a pretty limited hodgepodge of things. I grew up in the suburbs, so a lot of my friends were white, and I was exposed to music maybe I never really bought or got down with, but then, some of it I really did. My first gig was probably on the streets in Denver or Boulder, where I started out. I had a little rock band, with some friends, guys I knew from history class or marching band.
ND: And what did you play?
CH: We played bad music. We sang really low and atonal, but we could write some pretty cool songs!