By IPS Correspondents
SYDNEY, Apr 23 1996 (IPS)

The blues, a musical expression that embodies in haunting lyrics and rhythmic accent the passion and pain of black life in the United States, has found a strong resonance in Australia.

But the fans are mostly whites — not members of the country’s aboriginal community who would be expected to identify more with the music. And few aboriginees are active blues musicians.

This was in evidence recently when some 20,000 people flocked to the three-day 7th Annual International East Coast Blues Festival held at Belongil Fields in Byron Bay, the world famous tourist centre.

There the stark visual evidence was that the majority of Australian blues musicians and fans are white. That led some ardent fans to question whether the true history of the blues has been lost to the avaricious nature of music consumption in today’s world.

Considered the biggest blues festival in the Southern Hemisphere, the festival had on show more than 50 Australian and international musicians. It was seen as an important testimony to the evolutionary qualities of the blues genre.

Blues can be traced to slavery when Africans eased the drudgery of plantation life in the Americas by singing songs that conveyed their experience of daily life, and love. In contemporary society, the music has broadened its base.

Now the style is used by different kinds of people around the globe to express their own emotion and pain.

The broadening of the music’s appeal and rendition caused misgivings in some circles about the likely impact on its authenticity. In the 1960s the famous Black American writer, Langston Hughes, used the lyrics of Willie Dixon’s song “What’s happened to my blues” to raise the issue.

He wrote: “You’ve taken my blues and gone – you sing ’em on Broadway – And you sing ’em in the Hollywood Bowls. When you mix them up with symphonies – And you fix ’em – so they don’t sound like me. Yep you done taken away my blues”.

An Aboriginal observer and blues enthusiast at the festival reiterated this sentiment, but added that issues of cultural appropriation always surfaced at music events.

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