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April 14, 2014

V&B: Native American Music and the Blues

By: Rebecca McInroy

He also explained that musicologists observe that everywhere that people live close to the earth, their music is based on the universal pentatonic scale. Anishinaabe artist Keith Secola is fond of saying that “water will eventually seep into even the thickest rubber boots.” By this he’s going back to the Native principle that we are of the land, that the earth does not belong to us, we belong to the earth and the closer we are to her, her music will eventually seep into us. So in other words, much of what you hear in the blues (and its branches, jazz and rock) is the song of the land here in the U.S. — the Earthsong. And so it comes full-circle.