Terry Blade -- Chicago Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues
Chicago artist Terry Blade locates himself in the past, present and future with Chicago Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues
Terry Blade can't stop pushing boundaries with his music. As we discussed a few years ago, Blade sees his music in conversation with the past and future. That conversation is literal in Chicago Kinfolk, an exploration of Chicago blues musicians through a sampling of public domain interviews about the essence of the genre, alongside Blade's original compositions and his version of "That's All Right." The song made made Elvis famous, but its originator, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, never saw a dime.
Blade also revisits some of his own work, such as "Be Around No More." While the version he released first was layered with electronics, this is closer to the initial demo, and it brings us closer to Blade's multi-dimensional voice. "Fallen Sons," a response to gun violence and the hidden history of Black cowboys, takes on a spiritual element amidst the hypnotic loops that make Blade's music so weighty.
Chicago Kinfolk locates Blade in a lineage of artists who seek to make sense of the world, upholding emotion and the mystical bond between singer, audience, and muse no matter what the music itself sounds like, no matter the training, no matter the technique. "Raw" doesn't need to mean "unpolished," and even if it did, who would care? The urgency for expression in an uncaring world is too important to be up for debate.
