15th Dec 2007, The Factory Theatre, Sydney, Australia
| When a C.W. Stoneking show last graced Mess + Noise, we learnt his shtick is “within half a centimetre of a Black & White Minstrel Show”. Not so. There’s no denying Stoneking borrows, plunders and downright rips off the playful end of a delta blues tradition born of the blood, sweat and tears of African-Americans delivered into servitude. But where a Minstrel Show trades on cliché, stereotype and barely concealed disdain – shared by a complicit audience - Stoneking’s show is tribute, celebration, a revival steeped (crucially) in respect.
The question of ‘authenticity’ is a sticky one, but idealising blues as solely the domain of blacks with dirt and cotton under their fingernails is highly problematic. Authenticity claims rooted in racial difference, no matter how well intentioned, simply reinforce racial stereotypes – da black man got riddim. The blues are everywhere. The musical style that shares its name is steeped in a tradition, but a living one. And so it was when Stoneking slinked on stage in a weary black suit, fedora tilted just so and caressing a battered though cherished Dobro. He sauntered rather than ran through traditional blues patterns, mumbling his gravelly growl alongside. Ros Jones emerged with her tuba, holding down a steady bass as the innuendo-laden hokum of ‘She’s a Bread Baker’ brought a few titters. Ed Fairlie’s trumpet and Kynan Robinson’s trombone soon arrived to bring The Primitive Horn Orchestra to full strength, skilfully adding playfully hewn harmonies. A turn of pace and time signature marked the first calypso for the night, a creeping change of focus for Stoneking from the pre-war delta to Haiti and beyond, back to the jungle, his mumble traded for a Cab Calloway swing. Discarding six-string for banjo on the upbeat ‘Rich Man’s Blues’, Stoneking was joined by wife Kirstin Fraser for the first of their two playful duets. The show’s second half shifted to reveal Stoneking the storyteller. Improbable, meandering tales of cockfights in South American markets, sunken ships and paddling to Africa with his banjo, or cross-dressing funeral band plagiarists in New Orleans served as amusing backstory for songs such as ‘Dodo Blues’ and the ominously swinging ‘Don’t Go Dancing Down Darktown Strutter’s Ball’. These tales, on first glance disposable, serve a higher purpose – they place Stoneking as a musician within a blues tradition, as an extension of rather than addendum to the form. The sounds may be of another era, pilfered from another world, but the myths are Stoneking’s own. A bower-bird with an insatiable eye for all things blue, he has built his own nest through hard work and a respect for an artform that lives and breaths. The surest way to ensure the blues goes the way of the dodo, dies a dusty museum death, is to insist it remains solely the realm of a downtrodden African-American underclass. CW Stoneking loves it too much to let this happen. He is not channelling some ancient spirit or higher force; he’s simply stewing up a welcome new brew from an age-old recipe. |
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