EMP gets the blues
Book review: 'Runway Jury'
Seattle gets the blues: EMP celebrates 100th anniversary of America’s musical genre
Celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the first documented blues music by W. C. Handy, Seattle’s Experience Music Project (EMP) is helping to celebrate the Year of the Blues with one of the largest blues exhibits of all time.
EMP Director Robert Santelli is responsible for promoting the initiative in the U.S. Senate which made 2003 “The Year of the Blues.” Santelli is a noted blues historian, with seven books on rock ‘n’ roll and blues behind him, along with more than 20 years of research in blues. His musical background helped promote the individual creativity in EMP’s latest exhibit, “Sweet Home Chicago: Big City Blues.”
The exhibit begins by tracing the first steps of blues throughout the United States, and un covering the strong beginnings of this explosive new genre.
The introduction of the exhibit is broken into the three largest influences during the birth of blues music, starting with “The Delta.” It is an arguable topic where exactly where the blues was first heard. However, there is no denying that some of the blues strongest roots lie in the South. In the South, particularly the Mississippi Delta, the blues gained a distinctive style that had never been heard before. Throughout Missippi’s western flood plains, the poorest people began to sing and create harmony with whatever they could. This music became a new way of life and a passion through which black southerners could express their souls in beautiful, rhythmic music. This exhibit enriches the audience with the background on original pioneering blues artists, and the circumstances in which the blues was first created.
During the 1930s and the early ‘40s when Chicago was a thriving city for many southern migrants, a small city-within-a-city, Bronzeville, was born, and with it a new world of blues, jazz and nightlife. In the “Bronzeville” exhibit, EMP explores information on the general city culture and the culture of the blues that was in the midst of forming. Chicago’s nightlife was the stepping stone for the blues to extend its beat. At night the city came alive with a new music that had never been heard before.
A second wave of southern migrants arrived in Chicago during the Second World War. In the “Crossroads” exhibit, EMP describes the accomplished blues musicians who came to Chicago and the changes their music underwent in this new, rougher social climate to create a new, distinctive sound.
Through these first three phases, the history of the true blues is unfolded. But “Big City Blues” only begins there. With artifacts such as outfits, letters, original concert footage, musicians’ notepads and almost anything imaginable, the blues seeps into vistors’ soul as their feet glide from one room to the next.
One noteworthy area is “Spreading the Word,” the place where you learn how blues inspired and touched the souls as it slowly spread from Chicago to around the world. Segments of this include a history of bands’ bus tours in “On the Road 1,” the acceptance of blues from white Chicagoans in “Blue-eyed Blues” and the rebirth of the blues for European audiences in “On the Road 2.”
All is wrapped up in “Legacy.” This section summarizes the transformation of the blues into the guitar-based sounds that fill the air today. Here the blues is viewed through its ups and downs, and its survival.
“Sweet Home Chicago: Big City Blues” is open now through Jan. 4, 2004. EMP, located at the Seattle Center, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday; and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. For ticket prices and other information, visit www.emplive.com.
For more information on the Year of the Blues, visit the Web site, www.yearoftheblues.org.