Pablo wants to be a black man. Pablo wants to sing the blues.
He plays old blues classics on youTube and strums along at the hostel. Sebastian with a smattering of silver eyelashes against the black sings with a voice so delicate. Pablo’s passion for blues comes alive as we listen to his story of its beginnings.
“It is the mother, and the father, of everything.”
Blues, they say, was born out of repression and creative restriction of the African Americans and Chinese slaves. Their language forbidden and the drums no longer played. In the battlefields of civil war lay forgotten guitars…that soon had soul sung back into them.
“but the story, it is nothing if you don’t play the scales…”
And we listen as the story comes to life from the diatonic chords and then the extra chords and “then the devil that came into the strings”
Andy challenges the story, says he will find a different theory, but really its like Pablo said and this story is not a story at all without a guitar in hand and bluesy beats along the way.
The room fills. The guys from South American living in Barcelona are going to start a band. Shake the eggs and I think of Jes; guitars and bongo drums and a glass of red wine.
And we sing… “champagne don’t drive me crazy, cocaine don’t make me lazy, ain’t nobody’s business but my own/ Candy is dandy and liquor is quicker, You can drink all the liquor down in Costa Rica, Ain’t nobody’s business but my own…”
Taj Mahal sang that song.
And tonight I sang a little blues myself.
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