May 24, 2013
Jayne Cortez
continued
Like much performance poetry, Jayne Cortez's is angry, raging at oppression wherever she finds it — here, in the Caribbean, in Africa. She is more than willing to be didactic. In fact, I suspect she thinks it is the poet's duty to teach a lesson or two. In "Taking the Blues Back Home," reprinted in Jazz Fan Looks Back, Cortez combines the anger and the music:
| The blues that came to me from the slave dungeons the blues that came to me from the death trails the blues that came to me from my ancestors the blues that came to me in a spell that tells me through birth that I'm the owner of the blues from a long time ago |
That may not be the blues that fits comfortably in a public-TV documentary or in the easy use of blues by young white rock artists — but you certainly know and will remember Jayne Cortez's opinion on the subject.
Jayne Cortez performs with her band at EMU's McKenny Union Ballroom on Tuesday, November 18, and reads from her work at Shaman Drum Bookshop on Wednesday, November 19.
[Originally published in November, 2003.]
©1998-2013 Ann Arbor Observer - All Rights Reserved