Blues with a Clear Conscious

The Blues is an acquired taste. According to Wikipedia, the Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs and European-American folk music. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or “worried notes”), usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

That is the definition. But what does it represent? It is the mix of traditions, the collective narrative of the people who have sung the Blues that makes it a genre that one must embrace fully, wear with pride. The Portuguese have a word “saudade” — describing a melancholy that cannot really be described. It is a sadness, a longing, a dark, late afternoon with rain on the way. These feelings are infused into the Blues and to experience them one must live a life with an aspiration for something greater than yourself, perhaps then infused with saudade, due to the inevitable nature of disappointment.

I have long believed in the value and impact of the independent sector. I have seen amazing work being done in the nonprofit community. We save lives, change lives, connect lives. We teach, listen, build and create. We work nationally and locally. We have a strong business orientation and a sense of purpose. But do we mitigate the systemic change that needs to happen, given the increasing concentration of wealth? By seeking philanthropic support, we seek funding, in reality permission, to make a difference in the world. Should we?

I don’t know the answer to this question, and I am fully aware that now more than ever the sector will be called upon to mitigate the pain of the masses. In aspiring to help, those in the sector seek to improve the lives of the others. But I am wondering if we really do make it better?

So, I believe I can listen to the Blues with a clear conscious. I am grateful and sad.