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Giving away the blues
Every afternoon, as the sun starts to get lower, I can hear the sounds of budding musicians around us starting practice. There's a pianist in a flat nearby, and somewhere else is an acoustic guitarist who strums away for about an hour.
- By Gautam Raja, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:32 June 2, 2008
Every afternoon, as the sun starts to get lower, I can hear the sounds of budding musicians around us starting practice. There's a pianist in a flat nearby, and somewhere else is an acoustic guitarist who strums away for about an hour.
It's all very peaceful and harmonious... until I join in. I pick up my instrument and rend the afternoon with a horrendous wail, a sound that oscillates between train horn and cat being dissected alive.
Yes, as if I wasn't annoying enough by myself, I've recently purchased a harmonica.
My problem has always been that I love music to bits, but can't sing. I'm not completely tone deaf though. Sing a note and I'll hit it. Hum a tune and I'll probably be able to tease it out of an instrument such as a recorder or piano. This, as far as I was concerned, was enough to pick up that guitar.
Even so, I'm not sure why, when asked by the teacher whether I wanted to play rock or classical, I said classical. I'd file the nails of my right hand and sit with the guitar in position - on the left thigh, my left foot on a footstool.
Each class would begin with the teacher walking around me for a few minutes, making sure I was sitting correctly before we began playing exercises by sixteenth century composers.
I lasted a year or so, and just as my playing got slightly better than shaky, I became more interested in standing up, hanging the instrument around my neck and trying to play Ritchie Blackmore instead of Ferdinando Carulli. I played acoustic and dreamed electric, and eventually, didn't play at all.
A few years later, I got the other bug that infects many a teenaged boy. I wanted to play the saxophone. But good ones were expensive and the locally made ones so bad that bleeding cuts were not uncommon.
So I decided on the trumpet instead. Not nearly as sexy as the saxophone. In fact, you just have to say the word "trumpet" and people start laughing. Try it now. It's even funnier than "trombone".
Cheeky sound
I grew to love the instrument and the fat, cheeky sound it made. But the trumpet is hard work, and I think it was just too painfully apparent that Wynton Marsalis I was not. I stopped after about a year, but not before the instrument taught me to love jazz, a treasured discovery.
Now take the harmonica. You can sneeze into one and still play a chord. This (along with Bob Dylan, I'm sure) has led the harmonica to be, not just underrated, but not rated as an instrument at all.
So when the musical itch came back recently, I decided to keep it cheap and simple: I bought a "blues harp", a 10-hole diatonic harmonica.
I was surprised to discover just how much mastery of the instrument blues playing involved. Luckily, the harmonica typifies the blues more than any other instrument, for nothing else can wail as mournfully.
That's enough for some basic "down and dirty" blues, and I'm able to connect emotionally with the harp in a way I never did with the guitar or trumpet. I can see how telling the world about your sadness (or afternoon energy slump) makes it all go away-and this is the very basis of the blues, if not all popular music.
In real terms though, it means that I'm in a pretty good mood as the sun sets, while my neighbours all sit with their hands over their ears, sinking deeper and deeper into depression.
Music is for sharing.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.
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