[...] Now I find that this tradition informed the blues shout, the African wail that also gives me the shivers. I always thought of the blues as the true roots of my American musical soul. As the daughter of a white Southern mother, I felt a kinship to the blues. It's the music of African Americans, but just as with the Islamic call to prayer - if you grow up next door to it, hearing the real thing, as I did in Greensboro NC when we went on Sunday drives in the country, or visited black churches as part of some civil rights event or other - you fall in love with the sound, and it becomes part of your DNA, your soul imprint. When I am in America, I miss hearing the call to prayer. When I have lived in the Middle East for too long, I miss hearing the blues. [...]
| We found Dove's Eye View's "Muslim roots of the blues" on Jonathan Curiel's San Francisco Chronicle article "Muslim roots of the blues" over at the redoubtable Body and Soul
posted in weblogs on August 19, 2004 1:05 AM | t (0)
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