In its 25-year history, CBC Radio’s Saturday Night Blues has amassed a wonderful library of interviews with blues personalities. Going back to 2008, we tap into a chat with Bob Brozman for a look at some atypical blues.
With his Reso-Phonic guitar in hand, Bob Brozman has travelled the world in search of music. Discovering, playing, writing, blending and researching music is what Brozman does. He is the epitome of an ethnomusicologist. As his website says, “His rhythmic dexterity resonates with elements of blues, jazz, Gypsy swing, calypso and even the most modern hip-hop and ska beats.”
It is one thing to have influences that colour the styles and sounds a musician creates. Brozman has studied those influences so deeply that they become part of his musical language. He is an author, National Reso-Phonic guitar collector and archivist of Hawaiian music. During his studies at Washington University, however, his focus was on delta blues.
After years of working Japanese, African, Indian, Australian and other sources of global music into his work, Brozman released an 18th album in 2007 called Post-Industrial Blues. On it, he mixes the old-school ideas of what the delta blues was all about with a modern-day perspective on society. In keeping with the Bob Brozman approach, however, it is not simply a mimicking of the traditional blues style. He include the world flavours that have become part of who he is as a composer and songwriter.
AUDIOSaturday Night Blues host Holger Petersen spoke with Brozman at the 2008 Canmore Folk Festival. Bob explained the intricacies and complexities of music that many erroneously view as simple. The tap-tap-tapping you hear in the background is the rain on the roof of Petersen’s car, where they ducked in to keep dry during the interview.
Just a little taste of what Brozman can do with a guitar.
Related:
Blues in Strange Places: Mali Blues
Paul Pena’s throat singing brings blues to strange places
Northern take on a southern sound