Living the Blues - Is life hopeless?

As a teenager, I remember hearing Robert Johnson and Blind Blake for the first time. The music grated on me terribly, but at the same time I found myself going back to it over and over. Trying to play it. More than that, trying to understand where it came from... It was like alien sounds from another planet. If you've never heard Robert Johnson, I'd suggest you have a listen before reading on.

At the same time I was listening to it in the 80's, "The Blues" was having a second revival. Eric Clapton, BB King and John Lee Hooker, among others, were re-igniting an interest. As a guitar player and a musician I was smitten. For all sorts of reasons, the Blues is perhaps the most important music ever played, for our society. It is literally the roots of all popular music from rockabilly, to metal, country and even hiphop.

More than that though, there is something different about the blues. Gritty, vulnerable, unpretentious but oozing character. A sort of ragged, broken glory. Of course the characters who played it were also ragged and broken. There's a saying that, "you have to live the Blues to play the Blues". This is true for nearly every famous Blues musician. Tragedy, loss, excess and waste exemplified in almost every case. Robert Johnson was the personification of the whole genre, aptly named the "Father of Blues".

Blind Blake

In fact, what the blues mirrors is tremendous suffering.

Racism, exclusion, exploitation, poverty, oppression, sickness, depression and the desire to escape all these things through music, drink, drugs and sex. All the brokenness of an African American community that had barely escaped slavery only to become second class citizens and easy scapegoats.

The blues came from the brutality of that slavery.

James City Slave house

From that slavery came songs praying for escape, rest and care. Most of them, like a lot of blues tunes, were based around crying out to God. Songs we call, "Negro Spirituals" these days. It's a shame they've come to be viewed so romantically. They're anything but. They're songs of desperation. "Lord, come and save me" is really what they cry over and over.

I looked over Jordan,
And WHAT did I see,
Comin' for to carry me home,
A band of angels comin' after me,
Comin' for to carry me home.

"Swing low, sweet chariot"

For me personally, the older I've got and the more brokenness I've seen in our world, the more the blues has been place of solace and comfort to me. Last year, as I recovered from a near breakdown, I spent many hours playing the blues on my guitar. Sometimes singing, often as George Harrison penned, just letting "my guitar gently weep".

It always surprised me that so many different people had such an interest in the Blues. It's literally three simple chords, played over and over in what might seem a pointlessly repetitive structure. Yet still, it's magnetic. For some it's the swagger, for others the virtuosity of many of the musicians. What I've come to realize is what draws many people to the Blues is it's the portrayal of suffering. They resonate with that suffering and a desire for hope that goes with it.

In fact, what the Blues and Negro Spirituals tap into is a long tradition of "lament".

This week has been a very difficult one for me. I've yet again watched brokenness, loss and suffering. Again, I've found some release and comfort playing those three chords. At the same time, I accidentally tapped into the much more ancient tradition of lament. Coincidentally, it seemed, I'd been reading "Lamentations" in the Old Testament of the Bible. Amongst pages of terrible suffering, loss and brokenness I found these verses...

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness of the gall. 

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. 

Yet this I call to mind and therefore have hope:

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. 

They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 

I say to myself, "the LORD is my portion therefore I will wait for Him." 

The LORD is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him; 

It is good to wait quietly for the salvation for LORD. 

Lamentations 3:19-26

God has a plan, I just need to wait and trust Him to bring it to fruition. He's already started it in Jesus. So as good as my guitar feels and sounds, I've found real hope in a different place. A place that doesn't depend on my feelings, music or my ability to cope. There's no easy road ahead, but I feel confident to cry out, like those before me...

"Lord, come and save me"