In the article you will find many links that will direct you to explanatory websites or concerts and blues works that you can open to demonstrate the ideas presented.

In 2023, six blues festivals are planned in Romania. It’s public. And it’s selected. Radu Lupask’s book “Blues made in Romania” in two volumes was also published this year. There were many blues events for Romania!

A bit of “archaeology”

The genre originated at the end of the 18th century in the United States as the music of freed African-American slaves. Simplicity, pain and suffering are the best characteristics of the blues. It is distinguished by a rhythmicity derived from the field work and is sung in 4 / 4 in 12 measures of the form A – A – B, through a specific range “blue”, where we have changed the intervals between the first and third notes, the first and the seventh, and the first and fifth. From the simple blues of work (with a prison subgenre), or church (gospel), or love, sung only by the voice, sometimes accompanied by the tempo of a broom, a hammer or two wooden sticks, the evolution was towards the adoption of European instruments, the guitar (cold or electric ), bass, drums, piano, music box or wind instruments, which were later (after 1930) amplified and electrified.

The first recordings were made after 1920 and are in the Library of Congress. These “race records” were initially consumed exclusively by African Americans, with great success. Gradually, blue notes entered jazz and even symphonic music.

The white population contacted bluesmen, borrowing style, instruments, and words. Great Britain had the greatest influence. Starting in 1962, some show business started organizing the “American Folk Blues Festival” across Western Europe, a traveling caravan that featured the genre’s biggest names on the most spectacular stages of the moment.

Why is this musical genre being revived in Europe after many years?

Like the Hollywood film industry, the blues was part of American soft power, creating an unstoppable wave in Europe that began with the “British Invasion”, meaning that a large number of British singers and a large number of American bluesmen moved to England. , embraced the electrified blues that spawned European rock, a mix of influences based on simplistic blues formulas.

So starting with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Animals or Jimi Hendrix (I also add Cream, John Mayall, Alexis Korner or Jeff Beck!) performing since the mid-60s. Then bands appeared all over Europe that developed the genre, including behind the “Iron Curtain”.

Thus, what was then called rock was honed and evolved into Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Atomic Rooster, Artur Brown, Jetro Tull, Genesis or Colloseum. All of them are associated with the blues, although some do not seem to be.

In communist countries there were various bands or soloists who promoted the blues, such as Locomotiv GT, Omega (from Hungary), Czeslaw Niemen, Silesian Blues Band (Poland), Prudy, Collegium Musicum, Bluesquare, Olympic (Czechoslovakia), Puhdys, Klaus Renft Combo and Karat (DPR). Even in the USSR there were groups that approached the blues: “Time Machine” or “Aquarium”.

The blues was also sung in Romania, from Mondial in the early 70s to Alexandru Andries during the fall of communism. (I don’t write much about Romanian artists who sang the blues, because you can find them in Radu Lupashka’s book!)

Revival of the blues

Today the blues is reborn! The United States has an extraordinary number of bars that have become famous because of the artists invited to perform. (I recommend you go to the Boca Raton, Florida YouTube channel with over 300 concerts) There is an incredible amount of recordings on Youtube that have millions of views (go to Joe Bonamassa’s channel out of curiosity). Spotify also has millions of streams. (Buddy Guy has over 1,000,000 monthly listeners) There are radio stations with dedicated blues channels. (try rockradio.com or bluesradio.gr)

There are festivals dedicated exclusively to this genre. More than 500,000 spectators gather annually at the Chicago Blues Festival, which has been held in Millennium Park for more than 40 years. Since 1998, Eric Clapton has initiated Crossroads, which features the best blues guitarists of today, and the 20,000 tickets at the Cryptocom Arena sell out in two days.

The most sophisticated festival is Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea, organized by Joe Bonamassa, once in March and once in August. The March edition is a Caribbean cruise departing from Miami, and the August edition is a Mediterranean cruise departing from Athens.

What is happening to the blues in Europe today is the result of the American cultural soft power of the 60s! Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, there was no stopping in the free world, those over there, in the communist bloc, yearned for every blues note from freedom.

Following the example of Newport and Woodstock in Western Europe, various grandiose concerts were organized with the participation of singers and bands. They all had blues in their repertoire! After 1990, rock music became even more diverse, but the audiences and organizers of festivals and concerts also segmented. If in the 70s Hendrix, Kreem and Zeppelin played hard rock, today we call their music blues rock. … What is true!

Today there are 1,000 varieties of rock with wildly different audiences from style to style. We have heavy metal festivals as well as blues festivals. In the latter we find from rural blues with Blind Boys of Alabama, through jazz and funk, to electrified and hard. Zepellin is gone, Clapton has moved to the United States, but bands have come out of nowhere that you’re surprised you haven’t heard of before, they’re that good! Swedish blues (Blues Pils), or Italian blues (Cinelli Brothers), leaving out the British (why didn’t I hear of Ben Poole until last year?)

The problem is solved for Eastern Europeans as well! They have recovered and they will get better a little more! What is sung in the West is also sung in the East, and a vivid example is Romania, where the best bluesmen have been coming for several years! There are two European blues associations, the European Blues Union and the European Blues Association, which help attract blues singers to festivals in the east.

Romania brings back Woodstock!

It is clear that we have an educated public in Romania! The people I talked to at the five blues festivals I went to in 2023 knew exactly where they were going and what they were going to hear, they knew the songs from the albums of the bands that were climbing the charts, some even knew the lyrics …

I can’t help but say: there are no drugs, no trash, no drunks, no scandal at blues festivals. Everyone has exemplary common sense! Things are confirmed by the organizers, the police, the local residents who, in the end, have to get something after several days of storming several hundred to several thousand spectators looking for accommodation, restaurants or, in the worst case. , camping sites

I am sure that the Romanians missed Woodstock and now they have created their own. It is clear that at least the 50+ generation (of which I am a part) missed such a festival, and now there are more in Romania.

There were no festivals in Sighisoara, Tušnad and Tulcea this year. Focșaniul has disappeared since 2019. Organizers hope to return in 2024.

I never made it to Sighisoara, Suceava and Tulcea, although there were two great American bluesmen in Tulcea last year (Albert Castilla and Mike Zito).

The festival year 2023 started in March in Bucharest, at The Pub. Urban Blues Fest is probably the only festival that takes place in spring and fall. So in the first two years it already has four editions. Because without sponsorship, the artists are not very famous. In any case, if you are from Bucharest, don’t miss the concerts at The Pub!

It was followed in early July by Jazz say Blues at the Potigraful, headlined by Big Daddy Wilson and Aynsley Lister. (records from Potigraful do not exist, but there are identical concerts in the links) This was the first edition, and I did not understand why it was not advertised, because the place is fabulous: a golf course, furnished with straw bales, folding chairs and blankets brought home and lay on freshly cut grass, which was not lacking in cold beer. The concerts were memorable, and the attendees, who were not only from Bucharest or Ploiesti, knew perfectly well the repertoire of the headliners.

Then there was the Suchav blues festival on July 7, 8 and 9.

Brezoi Open Air Blues Festival is already on the map of the world, probably entering the Top 10 in the “blues festival” section. Attila Weinberger called it the “Bridge of the World”. It is undoubtedly the most valuable festival in Central and South-Eastern Europe. It went well after the 2019 edition, which featured Beth Hart and Ana Popovich, to whom we add veteran Oscar Benton (RIP!). Beth Hart certainly felt great in Brezoi and in Romania, because during the pandemic she played five concerts with auditor restrictions, and in 2022 he filled the festival with the most famous names of today: Eric Gales, Popa Chubby, Larkin Poe, Samantha Fish , Dana Fuchs, King King, Blues Pilz and Kaz Hawkins. You know how it is! If in the circle of blues singers it is heard that the Brezoi festival is normal, then it is much easier for the organizer (Mihai Mugescu) to bring big stars to the stage.

From 2022, Brezoi will play five days, i.e. 30 concerts. And this year there was a “cluster” of stars, many of them in the world top 50. After the concerts – jam sessions in the tent, where they sing until the morning! Delicious food, quality drinks, impeccable toilets! A big problem is accommodation: where will several thousand spectators spend the night? Until the end of the previous festival, there is no more accommodation on specialized sites. Mihai Mugescu says that there were days when there were more than 10,000 payers, which is a record for such events.

This is without a doubt the biggest national success in terms of culture and promotion of Romania abroad in the last 33 years, and I am convinced that the 2024 edition will be even more valuable than what has happened so far. _ Read the entire article and comment on it on Contributors.ro