If you didn’t know better, you’d think Lady Gaga was in the house and the kids were piling in to catch a glance.
But these kids are different. Sure, they’ve got guitars strapped over their shoulders and anticipation in their eyes. They’re buzzing as they pour into the auditorium, but the star they’re seeking doesn’t exactly get recognized on the streets. Not even here at home, in Chicago.
He’s a tall and slender bluesman in a suit, no tie, a hat tipped back on his head. And the kids have traveled from New York and Los Angeles, Memphis and South Bend and points between for the privilege of spending a few days with him.
They fervently believe that he — and his colleagues — can teach them the one thing they hold most precious in their young musical lives: the blues. Not the music of Lady Gaga or Kanye West or Common but of B.B. King and Buddy Guy andDavid "Honeyboy" Edwards.
At 9 a.m. on a recent Monday, the bluesman who has drawn them here, Chicago singer-guitarist Fernando Jones, takes to the stage of the Music Center at Columbia College Chicago, and the room quickly pipes down.
Showtime.
"I'm Mr. Jones and welcome to Blues Camp," he says to 70 kids ages 7 to 18, plus parents, grandparents, teachers, teaching assistants, techies and hangers-on.
"This is not 'American Idol,' so at no point in time will any instructor hurt your feelings," continues Jones, 47. "We need new life and new blood in the blues. The blues will never die, because of you."
Or so Jones hopes. Having dedicated his life to the music, he fears it's quickly vanishing in a popular culture defined by rap, hip-hop, rock — everything but the blues. Rather than accept that demise, Jones designed a strategy to try to reverse it: Convene a free Blues Camp (underwritten by $70,000 in sponsorships) where kids can get a rare chance to study the music with the men and women who live it.
He tells the house that this morning — and each morning of Blues Camp — will begin with the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," "because nothing is more American than the blues," Jones says. After the room struggles through the national anthem, Jones starts reciting his self-styled "Blues Pledge," asking the kids to repeat each line after him.
Which they do — robustly.
I am somebody.
I am a musician.
A musician is a person that makes music.
A good musician listens.
And a musician that listens, learns.
And a musician that learns, earns.
With that, the kids scatter to a dozen classrooms throughout the building, to try to learn the blues — and rescue it.
Classroom uproar
The formidable Chicago singer-guitarist Fruteland Jackson, 58, grew up in Mississippi and has played Delta blues around the world, but he never faced quite the musical chaos that's erupting in Room 408 of Columbia College's Music Center. A group of kids — mostly beginners — has jammed into a space too small to accommodate them all comfortably, and everyone's riffing at once.
