From the raucous invitation to shake your moneymaker on “Let ‘Em Roll” to the biblical you-can-run-but-you-can’t-hide moralizing of “What Man Have Done,” Corey Harris and Henry Butler take listeners on a roots-music journey on their boisterous new collaborative album, “Vu-Du-Menz” (Alligator).
Though a generation apart, the 31-year-old Harris and the 51-year-old Butler are united by a slice of geography they once shared: New Orleans. Butler grew up and still works there, an accomplished post-bop jazz pianist with a distinctive Creole kick. Harris spent five years in the Crescent City, busking for street change with an acoustic guitar while teaching, before he landed a recording contract with Chicago-based blues label Alligator in 1995.
It was meant to be. Though hip-hop was seizing the consciousness of most young African-Americans in the ’80s, the teenage Harris gravitated toward old blues records. He later graduated with a degree in anthropology from Bates College in Maine, and made two trips to Africa, where he studied everything from linguistics to the native polyrhythms of Cameroon.
Harris’ first two albums for Alligator established him as a contemporary heir to the acoustic blues tradition, but he found a true voice of his own on his electrified 1999 release, “Greens From the Garden,” a sprawling concept work that touched on blues, Afro-pop and soul while addressing the gritty subject matter of rap. Last January, Harris took another detour in tandem with Butler, exploring New Orleans rhythms with a vengeance on “Vu-Du Menz.” Harris, who will headline Buddy Guy’s Legends on July 7 with his own band, spoke about his lifelong musical journey in a recent interview.
Why’d you seek out Henry Butler as collaborator?
We had met in New Orleans after the street-busking days, and he joined me on stage to jam on a few tunes. We liked each other’s playing. Plus, I was really intrigued by the idea of putting lyrics to music he’d written, and I envisioned piano on the songs I’d written.
Would you recommend busking to every aspiring musician?
My playing benefited from hearing all the different types of music, the different rhythms they have in New Orleans, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. It was very difficult, and I worked hard to get away from it. Your fortunes are very much day to day playing on the street. It’s not the best way to have a long-term music career. I never got any big tips, but usually when Mardi Gras would roll around you’d make more.
For most young men of your generation, hip-hop was the soundtrack. How did rap influence you, if at all?
My sister had the first Sugarhill Gang record, and I grew up listening to Kurtis Blow, Rick James, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Schooly D. I’m still into hip-hop. It was the music of my generation and still is. But living in Denver in the ’80s, there was no hip-hop scene. It was very much a New York, East Coast thing at the time. Yet it had an influence. Today my favorite lyricists are hip-hop MC’s like Pharoahe Monch, KRS-One, Outkast, Black Thought from the Roots. I try to make my lyrics relevant to what’s going on, and say something that makes people feel something, and I think rappers do that better than anyone at the moment.
When you came up, people had you pegged as a traditionalist or revivalist, but your contemporary lyrics always suggested to me you weren’t trying to re-create anything.
When I first started playing, that might have bothered me a bit. But you can’t worry about what other people think. The main thing is to remain true to the music you hear inside you. When I started out in the street, I didn’t think there was any commercial application for what I was doing, and I didn’t worry about it. I still don’t.
You’ve been cast in the role of a blues savior. Does the label fit?
I make a distinction between what’s being sold in the marketplace and what exists in the world. There are a whole lot of really good blues musicians who people will never hear about because they will never make a record, but they are better than a lot of flash-in-the-pans out there selling millions of records. As something that can be bought and sold, the blues of John Lee Hooker’s era is definitely on its way out, but there are people out there who will keep the music going. They may never be recognized, but it will still be out there. Just like there is no one around from Bach’s era to play the music exactly the way he did, but the music is still here, and there are still people interepreting that music for today. I think that’s the main thing: We have to keep up with the times. We have to make what we’re singing about relevant and not just get into this endless nostalgia bag, talking about stuff we never experienced. You look back at the 20th Century, the great artists talked about what was happening then. Robert Johnson wasn’t singing minstrel songs from the Reconstruction era, he was singing modern music. All those cats were modernists. They were doing stuff that 15, 20 years before was totally unheard of. That’s the tradition I hope to continue.
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