Everybody’s Preachin’ the Blues

So I finally decided to take the hit the other night and sat down to watch “Babel.” (It was good; we can talk about it later.) But I must admit that I’ve largely forgotten the movie itself, largely because of the horribly distracting trailer for “Black Snake Moan,” a film which opened on March 2 and whose concept can be described in one word: epic.

This imaginatively titled tour-de-force pairs a reverent black bluesman—clumsy contradiction or clever irony, you decide—with a white nymphomaniac. Naturally, the bluesman (played by Samuel L. Jackson and named Lazarus, which is almost too much for me to handle) tries to cure her. It was only a matter of time until someone made this movie.

The film’s only saving grace is its soundtrack, a compendium of Delta blues both new and old, running the gamut from Son House to the North Mississippi Allstars. The trailer itself features “When The Lights Go Out,” a great track from The Black Keys’ 2004 album “Rubber Factory.”

But after finishing the clip, I was left wondering several different things, only one of which merits reprinting here: have the blues ceased to exist in mainstream popular culture? Part of the reason “Black Snake Moan” drew my attention was the relative rarity of hearing blues in a popular context (read: not on NPR or PBS). I’ve always loved the blues, but I recognize their relative obscurity and never expected to encounter them in any conventional, popularized setting.

Several days before the infamous viewing, I had emailed the Harvard Coalition for the Advancement of Rock and Roll (HCARAR) to solicit musicians for a regular blues jam session.

To my surprise, more than half-a-dozen individuals responded, from singers to keyboardists to bassists to guitarists with massive Stevie Ray Vaughn fetishes. We planned to meet this past Saturday, in Lowell’s “music practice room.”

Of course, for the first hour and a half—until a late-arriving guitarist broke the silence—there were three musicians in the room, including me. Though the paltry turnout was disheartening, I hoped for better luck in the future.

The following morning, I found myself describing the premise for this column in the midst of a typical “I have too much to do” grievance. Varun, one of my ever-supportive roommates, tried to defuse my angst, commenting: “It’s okay man, no one’s going to read or care about blues anyway.” Ah, sweet relief.

But I’m not so sure. Time and again my professed love for the blues has been echoed by others, albeit usually by fellow musicians or delta junkies. Still, there clearly exists some interest in the form, dusty though it may be.

So why hasn’t the father of rock and roll reentered the popular spectrum? Has “contemporary rock” drifted so far from its roots that the roots themselves no longer hold any value for average listeners?

At least for the hopeful, several recent events suggest that blues might not have disappeared for long. Over the past decade, much of Robert Johnson’s work has been compiled, remastered, and re-released.

Johnson, considered by many to be the authentic voice in prewar blues as well as the originator of the devil-at-the-crossroads legend, stands as a persistent example of the mythological power and primal appeal of the blues, most recently inspiring Eric Clapton’s 2004 tribute album, “Me and Mr. Johnson.”

In that same year, Aerosmith released an all-blues album entitled “Honkin’ on Bobo” to critical acclaim and my own personal satisfaction. Further evidence that a blues revolution might yet linger just below the surface is found in Martin Scorsese’s 2003 PBS blues television series and subsequent CD releases.

More recently, Rolling Stone’s February 2007 “Guitar Gods” issue heralded a recognition of the blues in the mainstream press, if not in the mainstream public. John Mayer is described as a “blues preacher”—for the evidential purposes

I appreciate the distinction but let’s just say I find this a completely ridiculous classification—while the actually talented Derek Trucks is cited as a slide guitar luminary. In the fine print, Jack White is described as a “crawling king snake,” praised for his “fusion of prewar blues grit and Stooges napalm,” and (falsely) likened to the legendary Blind Willie McTell.

And now we have Samuel L.

So what stands in the way of blues’ triumphant return to the center stage? Is it our diminished attention spans? Our preconceptions about the form as the province of old, (mostly) black men?

It’s true: the blues is not a form conducive to exaggerated structural shifts, revolutionary melodies, or stunning technical perfection; my jazz instructor loved to make fun of my penchant for blues-based pentatonic scales and predictable I-IV-V chord progressions. But this elegant simplicity and emotional purity is the very essence and charm of the genre and, I hope, its ticket back into the business. Just maybe not through “Black Snake Moan.”

—Staff writer Nathaniel Naddaff-Hafrey can be reached at nhafrey@fas.harvard.edu.