Corey Harris

Corey Harris channels the raw, direct emotion of acoustic Delta blues has earned substantial critical acclaim: Murky, sardonic, playful, and restless, this may just be a bluesman’s answer to Stankonia.

On Stage

  1. from 20:00 h to 20:10 h and
  2. from 22:15 h to 23:00 h

Corey Harris

Corey Harris

Corey Harris has earned substantial critical acclaim as one of the few contemporary bluesmen able to channel the raw, direct emotion of acoustic Delta blues without coming off as an authenticity-obsessed historian. Although he is well versed in the early history of blues guitar, he’s no well-mannered preservationist, mixing a considerable variety of influences – from New Orleans to the Caribbean to Africa – into his richly expressive music. In doing so, he’s managed to appeal to a wide spectrum of blues fans, from staunch traditionalists to more contemporary sensibilities.

Corey Harris was born in Denver, CO, on February 21, 1969, and began playing guitar at age 12, when he fell in love with his mother’s Lightnin’ Hopkins records. He played in a rock & roll band in high school, as well as the marching band, and developed his singing abilities in church. Through Bates College in Maine (where he majored in anthropology), Harris traveled to Cameroon to study African linguistics, and returned there on a post-graduate fellowship; during his time there, he soaked up as much African music as possible, entranced by its complex polyrhythms.

After returning to the U.S., Harris taught English and French in Napoleonville, LA, and during his spare time he played the clubs, coffeehouses, and street corners of nearby New Orleans. His local reputation eventually earned him a deal with Alligator, one of the pre-eminent blues labels in the South. In 1995, Alligator released Harris’ debut album Between Midnight and Day, a one-man, one-guitar affair that illustrated his mastery of numerous variations on the Delta blues style. The record won rave reviews and even some mainstream media attention, marking Harris as an exciting new presence on the blues scene; it also earned him an opening slot on tour with ex-10,000 Maniacs singer Natalie Merchant (by Steve Huey, YAHOO).

Roughly around the time that OutKast and Goodie Mob rose from the South to represent country manners, several fleet-fingered musicologists were similarly rehabilitating the reputation of acoustic blues. The tradition of Son House and Charley Patton had long been maligned as shabby and backward by young black bluesmen who favored the flashy urbanity of the music’s Chicago descendants. Along with Keb’ Mo’ and Alvin Youngblood Hart, however, Corey Harris was among the young African-Americans who steeped themselves in the styles and ethos of Delta music in the mid-‘90s. He soon became the most strikingly original blues writer and performer since Robert Cray. Of these three, Harris internalized the Delta ethos most startlingly.

On Between Midnight and Day, Harris performs solo, brawnily adapting blues structures to his own idiosyncratic sense of rhythm – no mean feat for an anthropology major from Denver. On Fish Ain’t Bitin’, a three-piece brass section (two trombones and a tuba) and simple percussion occasionally augment Harris’ National steel for an off-kilter New Orleans feel. Meanwhile, his own compositions, which name-check Mumia Abu-Jamal and insist on the persistence of lynching, put the time-honored plaints of poverty and racism in contemporary perspective. Harris was the most stylistically omnivorous of his Delta-influenced fellows, which meant that he’d never settle into one style forever. He goes electric on Greens From the Garden, which roams from reggae to Cajun even as it consolidates Harris’ ability to integrate blues licks and lyrics alike into a modern idiom.

“Seen the devil last night, walk like a natural man,” he observes on “Basehead,” “Had a pipe in his mouth, a rock in his hand.” The roots retrenchment of Vu-Du Menz, a duet album with pianist Henry Butler, apparently exorcised his old-timey jones, since Harris was further out than ever when he returned to his electric guitar. Downhome Sophisticate rambles from Neville Brothers cover to roadhouse boogie to Central African soukous, too busy accumulating styles to attempt anything as neat as fusion. Murky, sardonic, playful, and restless, this may just be a bluesman’s answer to Stankonia.

Mohamed Kouyate

Mohamed Kouyate is a young guitarist from Guinea whose musical ancestry dates back the pre 13th century. The 13th century marked the climax of the most epic West African Kingdom, under the leadership of Sundjata Keita; if it weren’t the staunch opposition of Soumangourou Kante – who resisted the unification of the Mandinka empire under one man ruler-ship, Sundjata’ epic would have been diluted. These Mandinkas kings had one thing in common – music. Music was an integral part of their day to day living; each had a griot-family appointed court musicians. If some of the greatest Kora players can be traced back to Sundjata, Soumangourou was the protector of the balafon tradition. Mohammed, like virtually all Kouyate griots, is a direct descendant of musical historians anointed by Soumangourou Kante himself.

harris and kouyate

Mohamed Kouyate (r.) with Corey Harris

At the age of 7, Mohamed K. started his musical career accompanying his father – a balafon player – performing from one social function to another. He picked up the guitar at the age of 15th, an instrument he now uses, to add melody to centuries old collective rhythmic memory. After years of apprenticeship with the contemporary musical instrument and style, he experimented with the “Groupe musical de la rue.” During this transforming experience, he met with Marly Baba, a maverick Guinean guitarist, who introduced him to Jazz.

In 2000, he formed the “Conakry Cocktail”. This group became his bridge between tradition and his new found contemporary self. Consequently, he rubbed shoulders with Conakry’s best, among them the saxophonist Momo Wendell Soumah – Guinea’ strongest Jazz act – and visiting foreign musicians such as France’s “African Express;” and chief among these internationally established acts, the African American eclectic Bluesman Corey Harris, with whom he travelled to the US – as the guest of the US Embassy in Conakry. Mohamed now lives in Paris where he is one of the emerging talents whose traditional background gives an edge that many of his peers would love to have.

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