We hope you've been enjoying our podcast interviews with Artistic Director Corey Harris. In these interviews, Corey has been talking about the artists and influences that will be present at the 2009 Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival. If you play blues music, or enjoy listening to it, we hope you can join us in late July.

In this installment, Corey talks about the three West African musicians coming to Port Townsend in August: Cheick Hamala Diabaté, Moussa Konate, and Moh Kouyate.

• Podcast Interview: Corey Harris Welcomes West African Musicians to Port Townsend

As Corey has described to us, there are interesting intersections linking African and American music. Here's a video of Cheick Hamala exploring "Cumberland Gap" with James Leva.

We're pretty excited to have Grammy-winner Alvin Youngblood Hart on faculty this year at the Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival.

Known as a "musician's musician", his praises have been sung by everyone from Bob Dylan to Brit guitar gods Eric Clapton & Mick Taylor.

In a recent interview, we asked Artistic Director Corey Harris to talk about Alvin:

• Podcast Interview: Corey Harris on Alvin Youngblood Hart (mp3)

We still have space in our July/August workshop where you can literally sit right next to Alvin and have him show you how to play the Blues. For audiences, he will also be opening up our Saturday, August 1 afternoon show at McCurdy Pavilion (purchase tickets online).

Hope you liked our previous chat with Artistic Director Corey Harris regarding Mali's gift of music to the world. In that segment, Corey mentioned what it was like - as a blues musician - to first play music from the African tradition.

Indeed, for many of us, figuring out how to link-up to or access that tradition can be a new experience. Here is what Corey had to say to those of you in the blues world looking to broaden your experience.

• Podcast Interview: Corey Harris on Accessing the African Musical Tradition
  

Recently we got on the phone to Artistic Director Corey Harris to talk about the upcoming Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival, and some of the artists who will be teaching and performing this year. (p.s. space is still available in the Festival workshop.)

It won't be a surprise to anyone familiar with Corey and his music that he has a fascinating view of the blues, it's influences, and it's future. As he selected faculty for our 2009 gatherings, Corey worked to invite artists who exemplified these various influences and directions.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be podcasting the recordings we made of our conversation on these issues. In addition to talking about how to access the African music tradition, Corey will share stories about Alvin Youngblood Hart, Washboard Chaz, and other faculty joining us here in Port Townsend. He will also describe a special school in Mali devoted to helping young musicians that we hope the blues community at Centrum will be able to support.

Corey has a special connection with the country of Mali. The west African nation is a rich wellspring of music that has interesting intersections with what we know as blues music. In the podcast below, Corey talks about this special place.

• Podcast Interview: Corey Harris on Mali

I'm sure many of you have seen the "Stand By Me" video produced in a virtual studio by the "Playing for Change" folks. About one minute and 15 seconds in, 2009 blues workshop faculty Washboard Chaz is a featured participant! Check it out:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/04/30/Stand-By-Me-Around-the-World.aspx 

Those of you who have been blues workshop participants the last few years will remember Lynn Volpe, John Cephas’ sweetheart, the woman who softened some of John’s edges in a quiet and understated way. Lynn is currently entrusted with carrying out John’s last wishes. If you knew John Cephas, you knew he understood his place and his responsibility in the unbroken chain of tradition bearers – he learned music from his cousin and his grandfather and his peers, and in his turn shared his gift unstintingly with anyone who showed an interest in his music. You would know of his unwavering commitment to teaching. And you would know of his belief that playing music was an organic process, that he “practiced on stage,” that you weren’t going to catch his music in the classroom alone – his house parties at the blues workshop are legendary.

As far as vehicles for passing on his music, the Port Townsend Blues Workshop was one of John’s favorites, and towards that end he wanted Lynn to fully scholarship a young and hungry and passionate guitar player to this year’s workshop. Just to be clear, this is above and beyond the Cephas and Wiggins Scholarship Fund created last year by Centrum, with the critical help of Barbara Hammerman and Raymond Lavine . This gift from John, through Lynn, will be bestowed upon one promising player selected by Phil Wiggins, John’s musical partner of 33 years.

If you feel inclined to honor John Cephas, consider a donation to the Cephas and Wiggins Scholarship fund. Your generosity will make a palpable difference. Contact Mary Hilts at Centrum – mary@centrum.org, or 360-385-3102, ext 116. 

2009 marks Hawkeye Herman's 31st year of crafting "Blues in the Schools" programs. He began this effort long before many blues support organizations and festivals even existed. In that time he has helped to initiate educational programs for many blues societies and festivals.

On Monday, March 9, from 1 to 1:30pm, we'll be interviewing Hawkeye Herman, and podcasting the interview afterwards. We're interested in talking to Hawkeye to learn about the successes and challenges of promoting blues to young students--a subject that is near and dear to our own heart.

Please join the conversation. You can learn more about the interview on our Blues Community site.

Centrum is mourning the passing of National Heritage Fellow John Cephas, who died of natural causes at his home in Woodford, Virginia, on March 4. He was 78. Cephas was a fixture at Centrum’s Port Townsend Country Blues Festivals since its inception in 1993.

“His passing marks the end of an era,” said Centrum Blues program manager Peter McCracken. “There are a few Piedmont guitar players of his generation left, but no one with his combination of artistry and sense of tradition, of where his music and culture fits into the larger fabric of American civilization.”

Cephas, along with Phil Wiggins (who served as the Artistic Director for Blues at Centrum from 2004 to 2008) was one of the country’s leading players of the Piedmont style of blues music. Cephas’s presence at the Port Townsend gatherings from 1993 to 2008 inspired and guided a generation of blues players, said McCracken.

• Visit Centrum's community site to share your memories of John.
• Visit Weenie Campbell's "best moments" discussion.

John Cephas was born in Washington, D.C. in 1930 into a deeply religious family. His first taste of music was gospel, but blues soon became his calling. His grandfather taught him the folklore of eastern Virginia, where his ancestors had toiled as slaves, and Cephas learned about blues from a guitar-playing aunt. But it was his cousin, David Taleofero, who taught him much of what he plays—the alternating thumb-and-finger picking style that characterizes Piedmont blues.

After learning to play the alternating thumb and fingerpicking style that defines Piedmont blues, John began emulating the records he heard. By the age of nine, Cephas was playing for weekend gatherings with family and friends. Music from the ragtime era and early Piedmont artists such as Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Blake, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Tampa Red were all influences on Cephas.

As a young man, Cephas joined the Capitol Harmonizers and toured on the gospel circuit. After a stint in the Army during the Korean War, he returned to the United States and went through a variety of jobs that included professional gospel singer, carpenter and Atlantic fisherman. By the 1960s, Cephas was starting to make a living from his music and, since forming a duo with Wiggins in 1977, performed all over the world, serving as an ambassador of this singular American art form.

Among his many endeavors, Cephas served on the Executive Committe of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. He was also a founder of the Washington, D.C. Blues Society.

“More than anything else,” he once said, “I would like to see a revival of country blues by more young people… more people going to concerts, learning to play the music. That’s why I stay in the field of traditional music.”

He received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989. These fellowships recognize those who preserve cultural legacies in music, dance and crafts.

John "Bowling Green" Cephas, the legendary Piedmont blues guitarist and baritone vocalist who was recently honored as a 2009 Library of Virginia African American Trailblazer, died Wednesday morning at home in Woodford in Caroline County.

The much-honored and widely traveled 78-year-old Washington native, who recently retired because of illness, had been unable to attend the library awards ceremony last week. He was breathing with the aid of oxygen in recorded remarks to the audience that said how touched he was by the honor.

Born into a deeply religious family, he took his nickname from the Virginia town of Bowling Green, where he was reared hearing gospel music. He grew up listening to his grandfather's stories of slave ancestors on the Eastern Shore and his mother's singing. He learned about the blues from a guitar-picking aunt. "Blues music is truth," Mr. Cephas once said.

By Ellen Robertson

Read the whole article on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website.