Hello! This is the Devil Again With a Few Closing Words...

I've been lying around in the background watching and listening to Ben and Ruth while they follow my scent trail around the US and Canada, seeking to discover the roots of MY music, the blues. They unexpectedly met me, as you may remember from a previous blog, leaving some small bones of inspiration, catching them in a small juke joint in Louisiana, where rock 'n' roll was being played. 

Yes!...and it hasn't escaped me, being a French Bulldog, (everyone sees me as a red human with horns and a forked tail,... grunt... insulting) that Ben has been saying some pretty pesky things about the French, yahhhh, snort!, they're the French, whaddya expect...why do you think the blues and the offshoots of its litter is connected to me?!

Folks. People say that the Blues is my music because of the deal I made with Robert Johnson back at the Crossroads. Ben and Ruth  heard the echos of the deal for fame and immortality traded for my trademark and recognition. Maybe... Some say that my music is just a metaphor for cheating in a relationship, a bad boss, or evil in the world...snarl...really? Charlie Patten did sing, "Devil Sent the Rain Blues," and Lonnie Johnson, "Devil's Got the Blues," Peetie Wheatstraw, "Devil's Son-in-Law," and of course Robert Johnson sang, "Cross Road Blues and Hell Hound On My Trail," and much more. I've really just been a comforting companion, trotting along near their feet to reflect their hearts' desires and emotions.

Some church folks have claimed that my music has influenced its members to stray from the flock, sanctified men and women leaving to follow my heartfelt howls. Others have blamed their sexual adventures, exploits, discomfort, guilt, and embarrassment on my influence. I'm just barking to make sure people are aware of their intentions and to keep the intrusion of confusing thoughts out...doin' my job, that's all.

People lead me on a metaphorical leash, laying blame for their deeds and misdeeds, but in fact I'm just the trickster, awakening options and experiences in life, allowing them to make the best choices to become complete people. Take it from me, folks, life is not all one-sided and what is one's tasty bone is another's dried tasteless white skeleton...Stop whining!

The blues emerged from the South where Ben and Ruth spent a lot of time digging into my roots and smelling the hardships and struggles that people experienced. This history is written in my music. The irony here is that  while the blues is primarily associated to me, so have jazz and rock 'n' roll been! Does it seem strange that the sound reflecting the deepest emotion of humanity has my name attached?

I'm just a playful reminder that you like to play, people...and it can be fun!

The blues brings people in touch with themselves and their primal instincts, for which I am famed and blamed, but I'm just a dog, doin' what's natural. I can't help but bark about injustice and inequality, and my bite has helped many to wake up and change their world to better the pack. 

Ben and Ruth stumbled upon me during their travels, listening to my music which resonates from and to the heart of humanity. They have traveled from deep in the South, meeting those displaced from their country and forced to find a new life in a greatly demanding and changing world. They have lived in the houses of those enslaved to enrich the lives of others, mistreated and considered inhuman...boy, I can relate to this! 

They traveled the same roads where many walked for days, weeks, months, years to find comfort and sympathy. I've followed them from one-lane roads in the Bayou onto the busy, traffic-clogged streets of the inner cities, walking the sidewalks that great songwriters traveled in sole-less shoes and penny-less pockets. I've crossed rivers with them and stood at the crossroads to remind them of the place where conscience and consciousness resides. I've made sudden stops and U-turns on deserted country roads to discover remnant World War II German prisoner-of-war camps, listened while the echos of long dead barely remembered musical strains passed into time. 

My music remains a constant reminder of vigilance, to be always alert to one's senses, to the hearts and minds of those crying out to be heard. I gotta say, friends, as man's best friend, despite my reputation, this has been and will be a great journey...have to take a walk now...down that long highway...see you there...

Even Grizzlies get the Blues

Our drive through the Canadian Rockies into Lake Louise was with great anticipation of seeing bears, as we once did in Alaska thirteen years ago. 

During our drive along Trans-Canada 1 in the Banff, Canada region, we could see that both sides of the road were carefully fenced off and every mile or so there were wild life crossovers and under-crossings, fenced to allow for the safe movement of wildlife from one side of the highway to the other.

Grizzly ambling through undercrossing

Up till fairly recently, the numbers of wildlife killed on the highways were exceptionally high but today, thanks to attentiveness to protective passage, this has dropped significantly. Wildlife is not only using the crossings, but learning their locations, as observation cameras are showing us. One fascinating video even showed wolves hunting by splitting their pack into two halves on each side of the highway and then driving a small herd of caribou across the passageway directly into the waiting jaws of their crafty team members.  

The animal muse of discovery was not with us on our drive in to our hotel near the lake so we took a long and white-knuckled 14-minute tram ride up to a 6,850 foot mountain top where Grizzles live and hang out. We participated in a very informative lecture on the health and safety of the approximately 60 bears that live in the region. They are all tagged and tracked carefully to ensure they are not only protected but are given free rein to completely "own" their environment. As there are so few bears and so many of us shlepping up and down trails, skiing, hiking, driving, and whatever, the bears can be very easily habituated to us. Many of us remember seeing pictures of bears next to touring cars in Yosemite and Yellowstone. People love and hate bears. They are depicted both as monster killers and lovable Pooh Bears and when sighted, people often want to stop their cars and either offer them food or...this will deplete the dumb gene pool...pose their kids in front of them to be killed or maimed...humans! 

There is an educational program afoot to teach us how to live with what our Native American brothers and sisters considered their honored respected family. As you can see from the map below, once upon a time the grizzly ranged over a vast portion of our continent:

Grizzlies are 90% vegetarian and though quite curious, don't stalk us for dinner. They estimate that there are about 25,000 bears left in the entire Canadian/Yukon region, a major reduction from their previous population. They are thought to have descended from Russian Brown Bears about 100,000 years ago and crossed to Alaska across the Bering Strait about 13,000 years ago. Their eyesight is equal to ours contrary to belief, but have noses that are...100,000 times more sensitive than ours!

Which puts us at a distinct disadvantage when trying to hide our Snickers bars! In fact a bear probably knows what we ate last night from a mile away. Generally though, they like berries and the large amount of calories necessary from their intake to survive, thank goodness. Bears have evolved over the thousands of years from the huge creatures that once walked the earth, 

or today we probably wouldn't be here to admire their presence. A poll was taken in the provincial parks of Canada if people would come to visit if they couldn't see bears. Only 15% said they would, so you can see what attraction we feel to our fuzzy brown and black cuddly Teddy Bear-like family?

Our animal conservationists are working full-time to try and reverse the loss of the grizzly and I'm pleased to say they are making headway. Bears are not dumb lumbering creatures, and when they are habituated to us, which is pretty darn easy considering our population explosion on this planet, we try to relocate them. The problem is that even after a movement of hundred of miles they return. Now those are some serious map skills! Another factor is that bears learn to live in their environment. Pretty environmentally sensible, eh? If you move a bear to another place it doesn't do well and wants to go home, so habituated bears often are killed as a last resort. 

Mother Canadian bears raise their young as a pack for up to three years to allow them to learn all the ins and outs of being a bear in that location. This is incredibly important training on the mother's part and here in Lake Louise, a pack of four seemingly full-grown bears are often sighted walking together -- though it's really mom and her three cubs. One mother was seen with her younger cubs in a snow field teaching them to lie on their bellies and toboggan across the snow for fun, which demonstrates what the First Nation people already recognized, they are our brothers and sisters in spirit.

The last grizzly bear seen in California, which has the Griz on its flag, was in 1922, shot in Tulare County.

For those of you who live near San Francisco, you can see the stuffed remains of the last living grizzly bear in California, which was the sitting model for the image on the flag, at the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

Ruth and I never did see those bears during our travels, despite vigilant scanning of the terrain while driving, but we came away from our journey with a deep respect for that "grizzled" furred family that thankfully remained hidden from our sight but not hearts.

Blues lesson from John Lee Hooker into the present

We discovered  this very cool picture at the BB King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi, one of the finest cultural, musical, and historical collections about the blues that we have seen. We studiously copied the chart on the picture behind the display case glass until we were able to find the actual picture, thanks to the power of Google. Guessing from John Lee's young face, his clothing style, and the chart above him, he appears to be approximately 30 years old, which would make the year about 1947. Note that rock 'n' roll doesn't exist and country music, here called "hillbilly," wasn't known as country until the 1940s.

The fun part of studying a drawing like this 70 years later, is making the additions to the flow chart.

The blues previous to about the mid-1950s was called "race music," then its moniker was changed to "rhythm and blues," to  reach out to a larger audience. Rock-and-Roll was a direct offshoot from this and hillbilly/rockabilly, so we can make the mental line drawing there. Thank goodness rock didn't carry forward the name "race" music, as this seems terribly anachronistic today. It's funny that what was considered mainstream back then is now rock 'n' roll.

So where does rap or hip-hop go on this chart, and where did they originate? Well...looking at our chart, there are strong connections to rip-rap and field hollers, or work songs. We do know that in the 1970s, rap became a form of African American teenager street art; and this early, simpler style is considered "old school" in contrast to the more complex rap of today.

Some of  this music owes its roots to reggae from Jamaica, which by the way, gets its name from a slang word that means loose woman: "streggae." It seems that reggae got its start sometime in the 1960s, partly from the power of Jamaicans listening to American clear channel radio, playing rhythm and blues, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and country. (Do you remember my blog about the good ol' days of the power of clear channel radio?!) African influences also were strong in creating the reggae sound.

John Lee Hooker, in the 1940s, would have been blown away at how multi-cultural musical genres combined in such magical ways. The music even came back to the "popular" circuit in the 60s and 70s through the Beatles in the song, "Oh-Blah-Di, Oh-Blah-Da," and Three Dog Night's, "Black and White."

So much can and should be written about the reggae branch of our tree, but I'll have to let it slide for now...back to rap...the word "rap" was the hip way to express the simple act of speaking in the 1960s; it didn't come into use musically for another decade. Rap used to be called "Disco Rap," until Keith Cowboy was teasing a friend somewhere in the mists of the funky 70s, who was going into the army. Keith rapped out "hip/hop/hip/hop," mimicking the cadence of soldiers marching. That, they say, is history...

Speaking of history, one of the first examples of rap in modern rock/folk music was the song "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by Bob Dylan, written in 1965. I've included a video link here which cannot be directly embedded due to copyright issues...oh! and who do you see in a cameo side shot in this film?