September 2, 2004

Blues Fest more than just the music
Click here for the Blues Fest lineup

By Lauren Heaton

Many people think the annual AACW Blues Fest is all about music. This year’s festival, which runs Wednesday to Saturday, Sept. 8 to 11, includes workshops and performances by musicians ranging from gospel, blues and jazz to zydeco and rap.

But Blues Fest founder Faith Patterson knows that next week’s festival is also a celebration of people from all over the country coming together to recognize the power of diversity.

Blues musician Guy Davis has performed at the festival every year and has connected spontaneously with different people on stage, he said in a phone interview from his home in New York City.

“I don’t come just for music, just for the good food or just for any one thing. It’s the spirit of this festival, it’s made of the people who come to it,” Davis said. “It’s fun, and it feels almost like family.”

Patterson, the president of the African American Cross-Cultural Works, is a supporter of “everybody counts,” a motto for AACW. A decade ago she and the late Bill Chappelle dreamed of bringing a variety of people together to celebrate through music. Some doubted it would be possible to attract world-renowned artists to a small town in Ohio, Patterson said. But Faith believed that if the right people got involved, the festival could succeed.

Davis, whom she met in Dayton in the early ’90s, turned out to be the right people.

“I had no names, no money, but I knew he was big, so I said we’re gonna do this,” Patterson said. “Guy said to me, ‘I believe in what you believe in, diversity, everybody counts, and I will come.’ ”

Davis plays Delta and the Piedmont blues, each characterized by a rhythmic strumming with the thumb. The Piedmont, or the East Coast blues, Davis said, originated in America’s tobacco belt, the area of his roots. “The history of the blues is my history, it’s something that belongs to me, it’s my birthright,” he said. “It’s in my blood, that’s why I perform it.”

Davis grew up listening to Harry Bellafonte, and it wasn’t until his high school years that he heard Buddy Guy and Junior Wells and started to understand that “black folks invented the blues,” he said.

“When they sang the blues it made me sit up and pay attention, there was something powerful about it,” he said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to be up in front of people.”

In Patterson’s mind, the AACW Blues Fest is not as much a musical outlet as it is an educational effort to spread cultural awareness through music and tell the stories that Davis learned through searing high pitches on the treble sax and muddy rhythmic riffs on the bass guitar. It’s also about emotional connections through art, history, culture and people teaching others the things they know and the experiences they’ve had, she said.

Thursday evening, Sept. 9, is devoted to workshops that allow youth to experience how gospel, blues and jazz evolved into hip-hop and rap.

“Young people like something rhythmic, something that makes their bones jump around,” he said. “Bones don’t need hip-hop to jump around, but it’s even larger than jazz, blues, rock and roll, gospel or spiritual music. It’s that place you get to when the mind quiets down a little bit and the soul opens up to things that can just be felt.”

Saturday afternoon, Sept. 11, is reserved for “Paths Crossing Paths” on the Innovation Stage, in the Antioch Amphitheater, where novice musicians can perform with seasoned professionals. Patterson said one year a young unknown musician approached her from out of nowhere saying that he could play the blues. “Usually when a young person tells you I can do this, most times they can,” she said.

Without question she sent him on stage, and the next year Noah Wotherspoon was performing in the Blues Fest lineup. Wotherspoon plays this year on Saturday.

The performers vary every year, but the Blue Fest budget has grown to somewhere around $25,000. AACW hosts a series of fundraisers to raise some of the money. The group also receives funds from the Ohio Arts Council and other local grants. Much of the labor at the Blues Fest is done by local volunteers, Patterson said.

Donations of $8 Friday night and $10 for all day Saturday are suggested, but the Blues Fest does not charge admission because the AACW wants to make sure everyone who wants to attend can, Patterson said.

“Everybody takes a part of it. It’s like a big wheel, and everybody takes responsibility for a spoke, and it helps the whole wheel go,” she said. “It’s very grassroots, it’s everybody together.”