* — July 2, 2020
No Boundaries in Blues: An interview with Marcus Jade
Marcus Jade, Blues musician, poet, photographer, and visual artist from Indianapolis, Indiana. This conversation between Marcus Jade and No Tokens staff stretched out over email into American history, artistic forebears, what the world isn’t ready to hear, and the future of the Blues. We are so honored to share these words with you. Marcus Jade’s thoughts are a gift and an offering.


No Tokens: The Blues hold grief and rage and tenderness and vulnerability. What is it like to have that kind of emotional register in your hands? How does that music help communicate emotions to us?


Marcus Jade: My life and experiences growing up had a huge effect on my emotional stability. I felt also there were parts of my life that I didn’t feel so in control of. There were moments that filled my soul with a sadness I could not explain. I was already into different kinds of music, but when I went back to rediscover Blues, I found a way to express that emotional creativity. I find no boundaries in Blues because it was there before anything else. Blues was made to hold those feelings that I’ve had before. It can relate those feelings through time.

 

Music can help relate that emotion through history. Knowing what was going on in that time, and what it took to say that, and to honor that. A foundation to communicate what couldn’t be said in other ways.


NT: Tell us about Indiana, where you grew up:


MJ: Indiana is a state of small towns. Everyone grew up somewhere else in a little patch of land. Americana. Growing up in the city was indeed different. Indianapolis is more cultural than the rest of the state. I was raised on the west side. We moved around a lot, but our main area where we placed ourselves was a stretch between the Speedway and Eagledale neighborhoods. It’s a hood in its own way, surrounded by its own. I didn’t know we were poor. Truthfully friends were more stable than mine up till I became a teenager. We jumped from apartment buildings to my grandparents, to, eventually, a house on the west side. Indianapolis is a flat city, depending where you stand, you can see downtown Indianapolis from the west side. Sometimes it felt like the edge of nowhere. Other times, with the amount of gang activity going on, it felt like a warzone. I felt like I chased down creativity to escape that reality of Indianapolis. In that I found a very committed music scene with friends who all made some kind of impression on me. It helped soothe the fact I was from the other side of town.


NT: What would you want your child self to know:


MJ: Just relax, and never stay satisfied–I retained a sense of my childlike wonder, because I always got to sing.

 

Your passion is music, and you know this. You never let any take it from you. Good job. Always remind yourself of the quiet space. It’s ok to feel scared. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Just keep playing. Thank god you only actually stopped playing guitar when you broke your shoulder, and you didn’t have one. Hahaha, Relax.


NT: Who are the Blues artists we should honor and spend time with? Who are the heroes to light up our days?



A Spotify playlist:The Blues Come From Way Back


NT: Are there influences outside of the Blues that you incorporate in your work?


MJ: Yes, a lot. I studied photography in college. I take in images of things seen and unseen. I love work from folks like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Gordon Parks. I look at their works. I love Jazz Music. I certainly listen to John Coltrane a lot. Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Charles Mingus. I also love Poetry and that takes in my inspiration. From Ross Gay, Anis Mojgani, Audre Lorde. I study a great deal of African American history as well. So those things I take into my inspiration banks and allow me to find new things to talk about.


NT: You’re a poet too. How does the silent act of writing grow and open up once you give it a song?


MJ: I think the silent act is what always remains and it’s like a fire. Writing is like adding logs and kindling. A song is the same and blowing into the fire, letting it breathe. Not all poems become a song. And sometimes a song is really a poem. The Blues is poetic and I find that a joy. I hope to step out and make more music that is poetry.


Epistemologies Poetry Album:
https://marcusjade.bandcamp.com/album/epistemologies


NT: Do you notice changes or evolution in your own songwriting?


MJ: Yes, a lot. I think there was a time when I was a spare writer. And also, I haven’t really had the time to sit down and really look at my words. Even now, I have journals piled in a corner of songs folks haven’t heard or seen. Yet I keep making new things. I sometimes would write a whole song and leave it a lot to work on another song. Sometimes I would say to myself, “The world isn’t ready to hear this.” Knowing that’s me psyching myself to not show it. I notice that the biggest thing has been understanding melody, and actually writing a song. There is a formula, and for most musicians when they hit mainstream, it’s not so much a conspiracy but a formula. I’ve tried to learn different techniques to make the song mean something. And there’s always a lot to say. I notice at this point, I’m taking songs out of my journals, and writing them again over and over to see what would help make it sound like something folks would hear. I still am learning.




“I think the silent act is what always remains and it’s like a fire. Writing is like adding logs and kindling. A song is the same and blowing into the fire, letting it breathe. Not all poems become a song.” –Marcus Jade.




NT: Can you speak a bit to the Blues’ history in the context of its very real presence and power today?


MJ: The truth about the Blues was that it came directly from the work fields and places African Americans rested and gathered. It really came from a place not so much about misfortune, or joy. It came from a direct truth that couldn’t have been said any other way. I think the people today have many ways to voice their opinion, but we have few options to express our pain. I feel like Blues in essence is a living thing and tells the truth about ourselves and society. It’s changed over time, from the cotton fields and era of sharecropping, to the big city pre-war and post-Depression. That sound produced was relevant and necessary to respond to the immediate call of The Blues. I think what I do see in the streets and hear from people is a real acknowledgement of our sorrows and joy, and what’s becoming a unified sound. The Blues became that for a people, and it shall be again. Now, our voices can be heard globally, and we already have things in place to help us express how we deeply feel. The Blues then comes, able to give the people back their voice in a pure form, relevant to its time.


NT: I’ve been thinking about the danger of erasure. Erasure of Black Blues musicians by all sorts of appropriation (e.g. English rock bands.) The Blues’ history, Black history, however, is the living core, a thread picked up by artists working in different times and places. Curious about your feelings here.


MJ: In spite of the English Bands taking over the genre at a point in time, it still played a part in its development and appeal to white audiences. I can’t so much look down at folks like Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Bluesmen whom I respect who were the White Blues Garde. I think instead, we have to look at it as a way of looking at white society, and what it lacked that Black Culture has an abundance of, the capacity to feel into the groove of life. I say that in terms of the fact that when we look at the history of the taking away blues from Black folks, especially in places like England, there was a need for this kind of music after the war, into the fifties and sixties. We have to at least even in this case put ourselves in the shoes of Brits at that time.

 

I think White Americans were in denial of their fascination with Black Culture. After all it’s been stigmatized so much, anyone outside of the sense of despair or acknowledgement of such a feeling, wouldn’t understand us. To think it was the British who made choice acknowledgments, stands against racism in the beginning stages, and invited Black Blues Musicians over to play with them or play for their audience. That was often unheard of in the same time frame in the USA. I think, then, erasure comes when there is a deliberate denial and lack of acknowledgement of those who played before them.


NT: What do you think about the future of the Blues?


MJ: I think the future of the Blues is certainly there and is alive and well. I think the future lies with the people who made it. As it stands there are still many countless Blues Musicians who are black that are taking the lead into the future (Kingfish, Jackie Venson, Blind Boy Paxton, Hubby Jenkins, just to name a few). We only have scratched the surface in the first 100 years since we’ve known something about BLUES music.

 

The future of the blues lies into the fact that as much as there are maybe fewer Afro Blues Musicians that are in the spotlight, they still exist. It is because we ourselves don’t think they exist, and therefore our mind never explores. I think what is a tragedy is the truth of the music scene as its whole. The fact that a Black Blues Musician will not be as successful as a White Blues Musician in the US. On top of the fact, two highly innovative guitarists of our time, Jimi Hendrix, and Gary Clark Jr, both made more of a name for themselves overseas before they became headlining and selling out arenas in America.

 

I think this says a lot about White America, and for Black Blues Musicians to be ready to almost see the world before they see a new America. America will lose out on some of the most innovative musicians if it continues to take the spotlight away towards a great white hope.


NT: To you, as an artist and deep listener too, what qualifies something as the Blues? Are there core elements that exist that when you hear it (or perhaps in other mediums, see it?) you know?


Spirit, depth, patience with Audience, content and contemplation in the rhythm of the song. There is a formula, I IV V, but in spiritual terms, there is the call and the response. It is very African. It is the thing that makes it more than the I, IV or the V. I think the Blues, to be the Blues itself, must come from a place in the Black Community that can be translated to a wider understanding. I don’t think white folks or anything outside of the race can’t play blues. My question would be what would make it better than the original stylings of the culture of people? I think Blues, though, has to reckon with the now and transcend the past and bring it to the future. I think what makes it real Blues too is when you truly lived it and admit to that human thing. Imperfection, pain, sorrow, shame. I think these are what define our emotional experiences at times. Blues entails all of that. And more.




* * *




Marcus Jade is a blues musician, songwriter, and poet. He has performed and organized over a hundred shows in a variety of venues, basement shows, rooftop, and living rooms in New York City. Blending in my eclectic taste in music, fused with his love for blues music, Jade sings for the lonely and the lost, the furious and the eternal. His music is medicine for the wandering mind, redemption songs for our modern times, and his live shows are utterly transportive, almost mystical in their power and cleansing in their emotional reach.

 
Follow on Instagram and twitter
@marcusjademusic
 
Bandcamp:
www.marcusjade.bandcamp.com
 
Patreon:
www.patreon.com/marcusjade
 
Sofar Sound Indy Performance:
https://youtu.be/JKJfB-pjDB4


Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 9. View full issue & more.