Blues Am Deich — Blues on the Levee

History Forward

Blues Am Deich 2009 To do a Blues festival where the music was as raw as it traveled from Africa to the banks of the Mississippi, Where the genre was explored globally with all its emblematic musical and thematic characteristics, where the blues served as a rallying medium for the global black experience – which will hopefully serve as a point of reference for the Afropeans (Europeans of African descent), and lastly - but paramount - would conquer the heart of the audience, was our goal on October 10, 2008.

With the 2008 line-up, stripped to its bare minimum, we hope that we’ve illuminated the triumph of human spirit – as we wanted to. The end result speaks for itself; for your appreciation, please, go to www.bluesamdeich.com and follow the 2008 link - where the entire concert was documented and archived in multimedia formats.

We have stressed the importance of Rivers and Levees in the formation of the Blues - as America’s contemporary 20th century modern musical Godfather. Following the Mississippi was the only way out of the plantations of the Deep South. Along this river, all the way up to Chicago, Blacks found the way to maintain the essentials of the Blues while the new environments did their job in offering us different styles. Last year, we’ve followed rivers as far as Douala, Niger, Rhine, and the Mississippi to the banks of the Elbe, in 2009 we’ll add the Congo and the Euphrates to the list of Rivers to hypothetically spill their soul into the Elbe.

We’ve maintained that the Blues was the best medium, in its global sense, to tie in other genres such as: R & B, Soul, Jazz, Reggae, afrobeat etc, on the same platform.

As a quantum leap from last year, this time, we are taking even more daring steps – among them bringing the festival outdoor on the top of the Elbe Levee, where it was meant to be, facilitating bigger band formations, with a much sharper multicultural edge, and Soul as Goethe would have wanted it sang.

We would like to thank the musicians’ labels: Melting Pot Records, Perwer Enterprises and Ruf Records, for their cooperation with Southway in reaching a mutual favourable agreement. This was essential, since Blues Am Deich (Blues On The Levee) is more than just a one-stop concert; it is also a generator of creative-content - to be made available to the public at large.

Blues Am Deich 2009: Bridging Blues To Soul

We are pleased to announce the 2nd edition of BLUES AM DEICH – Blues on the Levee, inviting you to join us again, on September 4th 2009, for an outdoor evening of Blues/Soul music, on the main Elbe Levee, at Gerwerbepark Grünendeich (“Pioplatz”) near Stade/Altes Land.

Blade 2009 will stay on course using black music as the backbone of a multicultural festival in Germany. This time, it is to be an evening of Blues/soul extravaganza featuring FLEUR EARTH EXPERIMENT, BIG DADDY WILSON and Special Guest SIVAN PERWER.

The philosophy of Blues am Deich is to go beyond style and to dig deeper into the feeling. Last year, we borrowed an old saying from Son House, a legendary Bluesman, “One has to have the blues to sing the blues.” This year, we will present an artist who defines the saying - far from its Southern US delta origin, an artist who symbolizes the spirit of Kurdish cultural struggle – SIVAN PERWER. His songs have travelled on the banks of the Euphrates River through Kurdish territories the same way Son House’s did travel from the Mississippi River to the big cities.

As the most famous Kurdish musician SIVAN PERWER is widely recognized as an extremely charismatic and talented artist. Armed with his vocal pitch and an array of string instruments strongly resembling traditional blues instruments, Perwer peacefully advocates for the rights of his people. In 1991, Perwer appeared at the “Simple Truth” Live Aid Concert at the Wembley Stadium in London alongside Peter Gabriel, Sting, Paul Simon and Tom Jones to raise awareness of the situation of the Kurdish population.

The festival will furthermore have a strong representation of Afropean artists. We are delighted to have attracted highly promising acts from the Afro-German musical community. They will sing in German promising to make this a night in which the German language is put to the soul-aptitude test:

FLEUR EARTH EXPERIMENT (FEX) is a Cologne based group, whose lead singer Fleur Earth has inserted her Afropean attributes into a musical format that would have made a contemporary Wolfgang Goethe proud. FEX’S magical potion is the laying of timely German lyrics on a bed of authentically arranged soul music - at times coated with reggae flavor. Der Spiegel Online puts it this way: “This is soul with lots of groove and a critical agenda: something we usually only know from the US. The Afro-German Fleur Earth could now become the German Erykah Badu - With creative lyrics and a powerful sound.“ FEX will feature tracks from their newly released „Soul des Cabots“ album (Melting Pot Records).

Representing the African American factor, with its hegemony on the global black culture, BIG DADDY WILSON will introduce his new album “Love is the key,” (Ruf Records). As Thomas Dorsey and Skip James did, Wilson transcends the Mojo Pouch versus the Bible dichotomy. Coming from a strong tradition of Gospel music Wilson has managed to bridge the church and the crossroad-blues music erupting into a powerful spiritual performance on stage. “…the most important thing with Blues is, what you feel, it’s not all about the show or a certain style, Blues is a feeling. I want the people to feel me,” says Wilson “ I want to take them by the hand, and take them back home with me, down the dirt roads of North Carolina.” Wilson D.