The last question is answered. Goodbyes are about to be exchanged across continents. But right before singer Mud Morganfield boards a flight in the US, pioneering blues legend Muddy Waters's eldest son — who'll make his India debut in Mumbai tomorrow — asks us over the phone, "Can I leave a quote for the up and coming new artistes?" Of course he can, we tell the 65-year-old musician. And he says, "This is what I got for them — don't believe the hype. Don't believe that you need a drink or a drug of any kind to play better, or sound better. It is a lie. It's a big hype. You don't need anything but what God gave you already."

The black-and-white era
That statement is testament to how different the genre of blues functioned back when Waters was in his heyday in the 1940s and '50s, and when Morganfield himself would bring home big round cans from the local supermarket and make himself a drum kit in the '60s. The blues, when Waters sang it, came straight from the suffering he faced while working on plantation fields in Mississippi. Its soul lay in the helpless anguish of the African-American community in cotton fields, tied up in chains. Forget about drugs. There wasn't even scope for a drink. The songs were instead a yearning for freedom. In lives engulfed in darkness, they were a way of shedding light.