[brooklyn_ashey]

who is Mika? As to knowing Richter and Beethoven to play the blues...I think it would be difficult for someone who has the money for piano lessons and a conservatory style education with hours to practice on a Steinway in a climate controlled practice room at Juilliard ... i really think it's hard for those people to play rhe blues properly. Not to get all snobby about the blues (joking here) but I do think the player who understands how to do that might come from a different background. Also, they tend to be black, for obvious reasons. Not to say that people from other races don't experience hardships on that level, it is just that the blues is really a particular language and pathos from a group of tragically oppressed people in a particular time in the United States, who didn't get to attend Juilliard or the like, or eat most days. You know, it's part of the Afro-Cuban tradition that created jazz, which has its roots in the African-American community in the United States. Old European and Euro-descent men only wish they knew something about it, which is why they tried to imitate it (Ravel a conservatory drop-out btw, Stravinsky, Bernstein, Gershwin...)The only one who kinda succeeded in reaching back into that ethos from his Juillard practice room was Miles Davis-- and he dropped out too, btw) rich kidz at Juilliard, eastman, the New Scool, and other conservatory jazz programs spend their life trying to understand what it means to be that oppressed. I know, I've heard hours of blues, or should I say "blues" played by the white children of the rich. Beethoven and Richter don't get it. And schoenberg doesn't either. Frankly, very few educators at conservatory have any idea how to teach musicians. That is because they are supposed to get out of the way and help them teach themselves. This rarely happens, because artistry doesn't have a path. It finds its own- conservatory pretends there is a path, which brings us to where we are now with homogenized music. is there something that can be gained here with respect to programming artistic development? I think so, it just seems that the field is so insular and mono culture (just like classical music and jazz) that it can't learn from other pedagogical and culture mistakes the arts have already made. Namely, there is no "path". Thatmight help. but definitely check out Brushy One String. He is a modern blues guy who gets it-- again, hes from an impoverished island background not unlike the Mississippi Delta back in the day-- no Beethoven and Richter for him-- just poverty, drugs, crime, and oppression.