Get up, close with the master of Blues on big screen

Get a chance to watch the life and musical journey of legendary Blues artist Robert Johnson unfold in this documentary film festival

Get up, close with the master of Blues on big screen

Get a chance to watch the life and musical journey of legendary Blues artist Robert Johnson unfold in this documentary film festival

Like most geniuses, American Blues singer and musician Robert Johnson never got his due in his lifetime. Decades after his death, the world understood his talent when his style and music influenced the genre of Blues and various musicians associated with this form. And Namma Oru Bengaluru is no exception.
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Still from the film Soul of a Man

It is Johnson's centenary birth anniversary this year and the city-basedu00a0 arts and media collective Maraa in collaboration with the restaurant and performance space CounterCulture is paying a tribute through the film festival tilted Ode to the Blues.

Spread over a week, five films will bring to you the life and music of Johnson through a series of documentaries that will show how the genre and the musician impacted human lives, culture and thoughts for generations.

However, Ekta, a member of Maraa clarifies that these are not predictable documentaries.

She says, "These films are not conventional ones focusing on interviews and social issues. There is a lot of music and cinematically it is treated differently too."

The festival, according to Ekta aims to bring in music that has not been heard by many.

The films, as part of Reeling with the Blues au00a0 documentary series are chosen to explore the growth and development of Blues as a genre.

All of them trace the migration of Blues throughout the USA from its origin in slave communities on plantations in the Deep South to its growth in Africa.u00a0It is a series on how the music had its effect upon, common man and became songs that could be sung anywhere even on the streets.

"Blues has a certain politics and melancholy to it. It has lasted for the last 100 years and is still an active genre. The genre was triggered by Johnson but the festival is also about what blues meant to real people," says Ekta.

Robert Johnson
Born in Mississippi on May 8, 1911, Robert Leroy Johnson was known as the master of the Blues particularly the Deltas Blues, one of the earliest styles of the genre.

Mainly known as a street artist, Johnson also played in small set ups like juke joints and Saturday parties. Some say that they had seen him at the crossroads on all fours, howling at the moon on the night that he died.

Others say he was shot by a jealous husband and some say he was stabbed by a woman. Many believe he was poisoned, by the barkeeper at the saloon while flirting with someone's wife. He has a record of 29 tracks under the title Crossroad Blues, which he recorded around 1936 in Mississippi.

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