Politics – Resonant light

We didn’t do our road trip to and from Memphis in any kind of logical order. Due to being blown off course by hurricane Irma, we went to Montgomery, Alabama, then Starkville, Mississippi and then Tupelo, Mississippi, before arriving in Memphis, Tennessee. Then we went down to the Mississippi Delta and on to New Orleans, skipping Nashville entirely. In terms of music history we were going backwards in time tracing the history of rock, blues and soul from the melting pot that was Memphis to it’s roots in the Delta and the jazz that originated in New Orleans. But then there are many possible orders to do it in – tracing the influence of ‘hillbilly’ music through the Appalachians and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, starting with Dixieland and ragtime jazz in New Orleans, listening to gospel music in the churches in Alabama, the state with the highest population of African Americans, or immersing yourself in the plaintive, raw blues of the Mississippi Delta. All musical roads in this part of the world eventually lead to Memphis and the music that changed the world (possibly detouring and spending some time in Chicago on the way).

All of it makes much more sense seen through the lens of economic history with the wealth of a small, white ‘ruling class’ profiting from slavery and then poor tenant farming (sharecropping) and, above all the importance of a single crop in the economic development and perpetuation of human misery in this part of the world: cotton. Great art did indeed emerge, but the human suffering that shaped it was immeasurably vast and horrifying.

During our trip this understanding of the historical and economic context and the different musical threads that came together to create the music that I love – blues and jazz and soul – deepened with every step. Every museum, every conversation, every musician that I heard has left me with a greater and more informed appreciation. Most of the museum tours start with a film of some kind. Time and again musicians (black and white) in these films would talk about listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio, singing gospel in church on a Sunday, and hanging out on a neighbour’s front porch listening to or learning the blues.

The Hank William’s Museum in Montgomery, Elvis’ early years in Tupelo, the many museum’s and tours in Memphis including the Civil Right’s Museum and the Ernest C Withers Photography Collection, the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas, the BB King Museum in Indianola, Mississippi, the conversations with people not much older than me who remembered growing up chopping cotton from ‘kin to cain’t’ (can see to can’t see, dawn to dusk basically), the reminiscing with Jimmy and Quicksand at Bubba’s Blues Corner in Helena, sitting on a bench in Clarkesdale, Mississippi and chatting to Red of Red’s Juke Joint and Lucius Spiller who plays there, and above all the music we have heard at every stop in venues large and small have all come together to create one of the great trips of my life, which I will savour and draw from for many, many years.

Very hard to capture all of that in photographs – and too many photos for one blog post, so our journey after Memphis will be posted later. The photos below don’t capture any of the emotion I felt. Also, many times the camera stayed in the bag or the hotel room so as not to get in the way of seeing and hearing. I can only encourage anyone who loves the music from this part of the world to come and experience it for themselves and not to miss the museums. Learning about the blues has also meant learning more about the history of slavery and Jim Crow and the struggle for civil rights here in the South and America in general. A struggle which also paved the way and created a language and a style of activism which went on to be used for women’s rights, and LGBTI rights and other movements. One of the saddest things for me was hearing about how the assassination of Martin Luther King impacted and eventually derailed the vibrant, racially diverse soul music scene in Memphis, causing tension and bitterness where for a while there had been none, only a mutual joy in the music.

I’ve unashamedly cried a few times during this bit of our trip – at the Civil Rights Museum in the room of the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King was shot, during the opening film at the Stax Record Museum watching Otis Redding perform, at the BB King museum reading some of the poetry on the walls and hearing about the life of that beautiful man. I’ve also danced until my feet were sore and felt my heart bursting with joy.

Montgomery, Alabama. We visited the Hank Williams museum here.

DSCF4228 — Oktibbeha County Jail in Starkville, Mississippi where Johnny Cash spent a night for being drunk and disorderly

DSCF4335 — Elvis Presley’s childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi. A tiny two bedroom shack lovingly restored

DSCF4337 — Elvis Presley’s childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi

DSCF4341 — Elvis Presley’s childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi

DSCF4334 — The church Elvis attended as a child in Tupelo, Mississippi. We saw these tiny churches all through rural Alabama and Mississippi

DSCF4342 — Our first sighting of the Mississippi river in Memphis, Tennessee

DSCF4343 — Our first sighting of the Mississippi river in Memphis, Tennessee

DSCF4345 - Copy — The Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. Now part of the Civil Rights Museum

DSCF4353 — The Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, now part of the Civil Rights Museum

DSCF4356 — Outside room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated

DSCF4364 — Part of the Gibson complex, Memphis

DSCF4366 — The edge of downtown Memphis. Memphis, like many towns in this region is recovering from a big and long economic downturn. Downtown areas are only just starting to be redeveloped in a way that encourages people to live there. One of the first things is getting artists to move in and redevelop old warehouse spaces. In this case an old automotive repair and parts sector is being turned into studios and artist workshops

DSCF4367 — The edge of downtown Memphis.

DSCF4344 — Notice on South Main St in Downtown Memphis

DSCF4373 — Ann taking a moment with the very microphone sung into by Elvis, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash and others

DSCF4381 — Wonder Bread factory downtown Memphis. It’s been vacant for 25 years

DSCF4390 — Wonder Bread factory downtown Memphis. It’s been vacant for 25 years

DSCF4392 — ‘Soulsville’ in South Memphis, near Stax Records. A very different part of town. We drove around here for a bit. Definitely predominantly African American though it used to have a white population too when Soul was emerging. Very poor. Was at one stage directly connected to Beale St and downtown until a freeway was built separating the two areas. One of the many factors that contributed to the end of the great Beale St era

DSCF4400 — Stax Records in South Memphis

DSCF4405 — A night time view of the pool at our Memphis hotel

So tonight I went to Christopher St and the Stonewall Inn, among other places. I had a few beers and bought the t-shirt and chatted to some people, including the 78 yr old barman, Tree, who was on the dance floor the night of the first riot in 1969. The area around Christopher Park and the Stonewall Inn was made into a national monument by Obama, as it should be. I felt very moved being there. And very conscious of how much has changed – in some parts of the world – and how much has still to change. But also how nothing really changes, initially, through being polite, by saying please, by promising not to rock the boat, by promising not to make the powers that be uncomfortable.

I chatted at the bar to Patricia, who comes to the Inn by subway from New Jersey a few times a week. She just started wearing women’s clothing on the outside a couple of years ago, after a lifetime of wearing lingerie under her suit. And Pete, who’s married and loves his wife, but likes to be touched by men – though not actual sex, you understand (which just about broke my fucking heart). He lies to his wife and his grandchildren about where he goes after work. And Fernando who is enjoying living in a different country to his family because he can finally relax and feel like himself.

Yes I want equal marriage but I agree with the fundamentalist Christians – it is the thin end of the wedge. At least I hope it is. Marriage will change. Society will change. This will pave the way – eventually – for group marriages, or no marriages, for time limited marriages, marriages between people who are neither man nor woman and don’t see the need to choose. Between people who don’t own each other and don’t need to be walked down the aisle or given away. And hooray for that. And yes, I hope it does mean a boy can go to school in a dress and kids can put on a play and act husband and husband or wife and wife and no one would bat an eye. The revolution has not gone far enough if it doesn’t go that far. I though about all of that on the walk back to my hotel room.

So I want to say thank you to the sissies and the fags and the stone butches and the drag queens and the rent boys and the dykes and the queers that said enough is enough and threw bricks and lit fires and took back the street. How beautiful and proud they were! Let’s keep it queer, to honour them. Yes it’s about getting married, but it’s also about Patricia being safe on the subway ride home and Pete being able to talk to his family about where he goes and why and Fernando not having to move countries to be comfortable being himself. It’s not about being just like the norm! It’s about problematising all of it – gender, sexuality, desire, love – queering it all up. Yes you fuckers marriage equality will mean that boys may be encouraged to go to school in a dress if that’s what the boy feels like doing!

It was a good walk home.