Ramblin' on My Mind: New Perspectives on the Blues

1. Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism in the Blues: An Africanist Perspective

1 Bourdon, Blue Notes, and Pentatonism in the Blues AN AFRICANIST PERSPECTIVE GERHARD KUBIK A Memorable Visit On the afternoon of August 1, 1997, David Evans, Moya Aliya Malamusi, and I set out to visit the blues singer and guitarist Robert “Wolfman” Belfour at his home in Memphis (Fig. 1.1). Moya, who had intensively studied the music and lyrics of blues-like bangwe (board zither) playing minstrels in his home area in southeast Africa during the 1980s and 1990s,1 and I had long wished to make the Wolfman’s personal acquaintance. For some time I had played to students in various parts of the world his recordings released on the CD The Spirit Lives On,2 including“Poor Boy LongWay from Home,”“Old Black Mattie,” and “Catfish Blues,” among others. Robert Belfour was born in 1940 near Holly Springs, Mississippi. His father was a blues singer and guitarist who was of considerable inspiration to the son,who tried to imitate his father’s music already when he was five years old. At his father’s death, Robert, aged thirteen, inherited his guitar. He began to listen to blues musicians such as John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and others on the radio, while working on a dairy farm during the day, playing blues guitar in the evenings and weekends. By the time he was about eighteen, he played at juke houses in the area. In the 1960s he changed from acoustic to electric guitar and moved with his wife to Memphis. It was only relatively recently that he began to appear at festivals, making his first overseas tour in 1993 to Germany. Robert Belfour’s music pertains to a stylistic cluster of the northern Mississippi hill country heavily relying on the concept of the “riff,” similar to the style of other older Mississippi blues artists from 12 . GERHARD KUBIK nearby such as the late Junior Kimbrough (who at one time was his mentor), R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and the late Fred McDowell.3 Fans have given him the name“Wolfman,”thereby perpetuating the concept of fear-instilling alter egos that had permeated the blues world since the days of Howlin’Wolf (1910–76) and,more recently,the She-Wolf (Jessie Mae Hemphill). Robert turned out to be a warm, friendly and circumspect person with no signs of any hidden ferocity. He escorted us to his study, a room full of paraphernalia including historical personal photographs and posters from his trips to Europe. He plugged in his pick-up to a small amplifier and first tuned the guitar to the standard tuning, which he calls “natural,” the third string slightly flattened, with his fingers in an E-chord position. As he began to perform, he allowed me to videotape the entire session, several songs, and his talk with David Evans. It was probably the first time that Belfour received visitors from southeast Africa.4 Although rooted in a somewhat different style, Moya—a guitarist and one-string bass player—was certainly not a total stranger to the blues. In the group in which Moya has played since his childhood, there are some songs in the 12-bar (more often in a strangely reduced 10-bar) blues form.5 For almost an hour, we were voluntarily fastened to three chairs in Robert’s study, face to face with the artist. Moya listened to this music with obvious Fig. 1.1. Robert Belfour in front of his house in Memphis, August 1, 1997. (Photo used by permission of Moya A. Malamusi.) AN AFRICANIST PERSPECTIVE . 13 delight, his eyes concentrated on the elaborate fingering patterns on the guitar. In conversation with Evans, Belfour talked about events and significant encounters in his life, and he portrayed his father from memories, saying that his father had once tried to teach him one particular pattern that he never mastered.In the process of his narration and performances he retuned his guitar to an open chord tuning which he called “Spanish”: high to low, E–C-sharp–A–E–A–E. This is somewhat similar to the tuning Moya and other musicians in southeast Africa have used when playing hauyani (“Hawaiian ”), using a bottle as a slider;6 in relative notation (from the highest to the lowest tone) G–E–C–G–E–C; sometimes also G–E–C–G–F–C.In southeast Africa the term“Spanish”is also...