PUBLISHED: AUGUST 1, 2013 12:01 AM EST
UPDATED: JULY 31, 2013 7:43 PM EST
Blues fans know Corey Harris as the genius who melds his steadfast love of pure Delta blues with an insatiable thirst for indigenous music from around the world.
Though he forged his reputation with acoustic blues via 1995's Handy Award-winning "Between Midnight and Day," Harris soon began working West African, reggae, jazz, Cajun and country and other styles into his roots-blues vision.
In 2007, the MacArthur Foundation labeled Harris a genius, too, bestowing him with one of its annual "genius" grants worth $500,000. That news came out of the blue to this blues man.
"It really did. I didn't have any advance notice and I never did find out how I got it," Harris said.
The grants come with no strings; they're awarded to encourage further artistic exploration. Freed from financial pressure, Harris dove headlong into several projects.
"It gave me the time to write the book I just finished on Ali Farka Toure," he said. "It enabled me to travel to Mali and do research. And it enabled me to produce my own recordings without having to go to a record company for an advance or a budget."
That book on one of his heroes, world-music giant Toure -- whom Harris collaborated with on 2002's "Mississippi to Mali" -- has yet to be published. In January, Harris released "Fulton Blues," while "True Blues" -- a live project with Taj Mahal, Shemekia Copeland, Guy Davis and others -- was issued on CD and DVD in May.
"Basically (with 'True Blues') we were showing the roots and the traditions of the forefathers," Harris said. "The foundation of the blues is still happening today; people are still practicing that. It's not all wailing on electric guitar all the time."
"Fulton Blues" -- inspired by the story of his Virginia neighborhood -- mostly marks a return to his acoustic-blues roots.
"(Fulton) was a historically black neighborhood, and around the late '60s and mid-1970s and into the 1980s the land was appropriated by the city for industrial use," Harris said. "The historical structures and the whole community were leveled.
"A lot of people still exist and are still around who came from that community. I heard about the story, and even though I'm not originally from there, it inspired me to write the tunes. It's basically a blues record, a roots-blues record, but it's not completely acoustic."
Read more: http://www.goerie.com/article/20130801/ENTERTAINMENT0301/308019982/Corey-Harris-and-Rasta-Blues-Experience-play-Saturday-at-Blues-&-Jazz-Fest
0 Comments:
Post a Comment