The fundamental appeal of the blues lies largely in its simplicity of form and humor of expression. The elasticity of its format carries intrinsic drama, the suspense resolved within each verse, with a cumulative effect carrying over to the end of the given performance. It is a rare creature indeed that can muster the patience and discipline necessary to touch and hold the essence of the blues, thus the preponderance of posers who adopt the superficials, but ultimately never grasp the truth of the music. Perhaps because those verities that real bluesmen and women address are simply not palatable for most of us, the audience for the genre, while staunch, has never become an integral component of the mainstream and has instead become relegated to the periphery, global communities devoted to the idiom (though not always its most astute practitioners). Hyperbole nevertheless abounds, often obscuring the real thing(s) in favor of the cosmetic, but ultimately rendering what is genuine that much more of an artistic north star.

Rick Berthod
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