Blues is like human DNA.
Evolving. But it's evolving very slowly
and it's going to be around for a very, very, very long time
because it is so transparently beautiful
and so communicative
it allows the artist to endlessly invent.
It's not simple, it's complex like we are complex.
It might be a single cell in its form, but out of that single cell comes all of the emotional
and psychological complexity of the human being.
The blues is supremely human.
The human brain, and therefore the human ear demands order
which is why we have symmetry,
why we build our houses and our schools and our jails and our institutions, even our churches
in some form of symmetrical component.
The idea of 12 bars is very satisfying because it's symmetrical.
But within that symmetry is asymmetry
because if it was purely symmetrical, it would be ABAB.
But because it's this AAB thing, there is a symmetry there, but it's also asymmetrical.
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," Charles Mingus.
You have a 12 bar blues, but its symmetry goes way beyond tradition.
He also has a chord progression that visits at least three different keys
so the chord progression is not 1, 4, 1, 5, 4, 1. The chord progression is so complex that it literally questions
what key are we in?
Within all of the complexity that Mingus puts in that composition, there is something that is traditional
and that the melody is a blues scale.
You see, if you want to reinvent something, you have to give me it in its purest form
and then what you do around it, I'm willing to go with, because you gave me something I already know.
Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.
Great artists like that always have a personal influence on you.
Their music is so rich that it will speak to you personally. And then it will take you to your next evolution.
So, when you hear their music, there is something that triggers in you,
something that will make sense to you musically,
and then take you to another level.