|
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
16/04/2004 The Blues - a revelatory new TV series
Martin Scorsese's seven part series, The Blues - A Musical Journey, started its eagerly-awaited run on Brit TV last night - a mere seven months after the acclaimed series was shown on PBS in the USA. Freeview channel BBC4 has started airing the series on Thursdays at 9pm, with repeats on Friday evenings. Last night's introductory programme, Feel Like Going Home, directed by Scorsese himself, was revelatory. It compressed 150 years of blues history into 90 minutes, demonstrating the music's sources in West Africa and the emergence of a distinctive hybrid in the Mississippi Delta. While its coverage of country blues was generally outstanding - Robert Johnson and Charley Patton were well represented - the highlights were some astonishingly evocative footage of Son House, John Lee Hooker and their Malian contemporaries, Salif Keita and Ali Farka Toure. I'll be buying the series' tie-in CD introducing Son House tomorrow morning. If the rest of the series is this good, the blues will be well served. I just wonder whether enough people will be watching: I can't help feeling that the blues is as relevant to most people as steam radios or horse-drawn carriages. Highly recommended, nevertheless. Next week's programme is the Mike Figgis-directed Red, White and Blues film, focussing on the 1960s Brits who picked up the blues torch - "Van Morrison, Eric Clapton" et al. It's being shown out of sequence, but the BBC doesn't seem to be tampering with the original films. The most tempting film in the series appears to be Godfathers and Sons, looking at Chicago (aka Chess) blues, with the scion of the Chess dynasty, Marshall, offering his insights. As it's also available on DVD, the series forms part of the ever-growing library of TV introductions to musical genres for grown-ups, alongside equally outstanding recent series like Ken Burns Jazz and Lonesome Highway. There are still wide gaps waiting to be filled: introductions to opera, classical, world music, electronica, to name but a few. Further info: www.pbs.org/theblues
[Previous entry: "Neil Cleary - nobody’s fool"] [Next entry: "Opera in London - stronger than ever"] Search entries:
Copyright © Music
for Grown-Ups Ltd. 2005
www.musicforgrownups.co.uk
|
[Archives]
[Previous entry: "Neil Cleary - nobody’s fool"] [Next entry: "Opera in London - stronger than ever"]
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
Site design by watson press website design & authoring |
