PORT TOWNSEND — If you want to play the blues, you shouldn’t think about it too much.
“The way to play the blues isn’t written down,” said Daryl Davis, artistic director of Centrum’s Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival & Workshop, which began Sunday and continues through Aug. 5.
“It depends on bringing your own interpretation to music, which is something that a lot of people have trouble getting their head around,” Davis said.
He gave as an example the performance of classical music.
“I can play Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise,’ and someone else can play it in Japan or across the world, and you can’t tell the difference,” he said.
“With the blues, you can take a song like ‘Got My Mojo Working’ and listen to Muddy Waters’ version and B.B. King’s version and Howlin’ Wolf’s version, and you can tell who it is by their different styles.”
This week, 230 musicians from all over the country are carrying their guitars, harmonicas and other instruments from one class to another at Fort Worden State Park, where they’re learning the techniques and theory with which they can better express themselves within — or outside of — the loosely defined blues format.
“A lot of people try to play the song exactly like it was on the record,” Davis said.
“I can guarantee you that as soon as the recording session was finished, the musician went off and played the song in a completely different way that depended on how he was feeling at the time.”
The students go to class by day and jam at night, adding to the improvisational format.
There also is a public component, beginning with a dance at 8 p.m. today in Building 204 at Fort Worden.
Admission to the dance is $10. Tickets are available at the door.
The big public portion of the festival begins Friday and continues Saturday with performances in Port Townsend clubs from 9 p.m. to midnight and a special concert at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at McCurdy Pavilion.
General admission to the clubs is $24 each night, with one ticket each night covering all venues. A processing fee applies.
Seating is reserved at the McCurdy Pavilion concert, which costs $36, $26 or $18, with those 18 and younger admitted free. A processing fee applies.
For information on venues and tickets, visit http://tinyurl.com/brlgj4f.
Instructor Elijah Wald, who also has written several books about music history, instructs his classes to simply play a song repeatedly until it becomes second nature.
“I want people to leave my class playing better than when they came in,” Wald said.
“The big myth about playing music is that it happens in your head,” he said.
“But it is mostly muscle memory, so it’s more like playing a sport than studying for a test.”
Wald calls himself an “atheist” — meaning he doesn’t subscribe to a single definition — when it comes to defining the blues.
“Whatever definition anyone else has is alright with me,” he said.
He recommends that people ignore definitions and follow their instincts.
“Bo Diddley, Howlin’ Wolf and Ravi Shankar played all of their important pieces using only one chord, and they don’t sound anything like each other,” he said.
“If you try to play within a structure, you are limiting yourself.”
The term “blues,” he said, is a marketing strategy that includes “any kind of African-American rural music.”
He said most people with music collections “have songs that don’t fall into one category or another. They listen to a mix.
“That’s the reality of popular music.”
This is the third time Wald has taught at the annual festival organized by the Centrum arts center, which provides workshops, performances and residencies at Fort Worden.
“The location is gorgeous, they get a variety of teachers, and it has by far the best accommodations of any festival of its type,” Wald said.
He hopes that the instruction will help the students deal with the modern musical world.
“It’s harder to get heard, and there are fewer paying jobs,” he said.
“We are living in a time where there is a lot of free stuff . . . Technology is taking the place of live performance.
“That is one of the reasons why this [festival] is such a good thing,” Wald said.
“It’s getting people to a point where people feel good about the blues.”
Wald said it is “exciting to be surrounded with people who love this music and want to learn.”
Davis said playing or singing the blues can’t be learned; it can be acquired only through experience.
“Barbra Streisand might sing ‘Stormy Monday Blues,’ but she isn’t a blues singer; she is a singing a blues song,” he said.
“She’s a great singer, but she doesn’t have that interpretive feel of what it takes to express herself in the blues.”
During this week, Davis wants to help students acquire the ability to perform the blues.
“I want students to come away from this with the ability to express themselves,” Davis said.
“Either you write your own song or take someone else’s song and interpret it your own way so you are both singing a blues song and singing the blues,” he said.
For more information, visit www.centrum.org/blues.
Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
