Blues

[tectak]

Thanks Tectak, I'm surprised that the breadth of your knowledge doesn't span the bible in enough depth to be aware of what the psalms have to say. However yours is a useful criticism in that if you didn't realise the psalms include comment on hardship, pain, forbearance (mercy) and the strength (usually faith) to overcome then there may be a need to clarify that. There's an error in the punctuation of the 1st stanza (for which I squirm first and apologise second). As suggested by Poetry&Physics above, if the full stop is edited to a comma it is one sentence likening (the) blues to psalms in the respects mentioned. In so doing an implicit suggestion is being made of the 'credibility' of blues, but only if the bible is a credible source for the reader. For those for whom it isn't, blues suffers much the same fate as psalms do to atheists, ie. they're merely old folk songs, which in themselves carry at least, an air of authenticity which is rarely denied blues music even if much else is! You're probably aware that the most famously used blues structure is the "12 Bar" format. I deliberately cut the meter(?) off short in the last line of S1 to mirror the words.

Like psalms that tell of hardship and pain,
forbearance and strength from bearing chains,
Blues makes one weep for this unholy world
way before the twelfth bar.

Felt the blues to my roots
when I had no boots
and wandered down Nowhere Street;
but they melted away
on the revival day,
I met a feller
who had no feet.

Hi pete,
Yep, I have forgotten my choir boy days when we had to chant three bloody psalms a week. They never did much for me and I have noticed that the dirge-ridden element of "church" seems to have empied the pews......you can't get a choir boy for sex or manna these day....well, maybe sex if you believe the Irish Times.
But Blues....now you're on my patch. I spend a lot more time than I used to on guitar, so 12 bar is easy-peasy. The shift away from black gospel based "Glory be" to the more contemporary jazz root-stock blues is almost complete in commercial music...thank god or Jimmy McGriff, so I look back over 50 years of change and still feel the music in me.
Good luck with this one...I can feel The No Feet Blues cummin' on.
Best,
tectak