Review: One Mississippi, Eric Bibb
We are under pressure to ‘stay informed’ about world events, and there is some good in understanding where justice is required in the world and acting on that. But things can seem overwhelming. Focussing on the good in life can seem like a cop-out, but there is some courage in prioritising family and local community, and deliberately thinking about the positives and celebrating kindness are the ways to quietly turn things around.
Between songs at one of his recent gigs in Australia, Eric Bibb said something like, ‘The other night I turned on the news. Then I turned it off again. Instead, I wrote this song.’ This might sum up his attitude to things. Singing about peace and love may seem naïve, but celebrating the good in the face of what he calls a ‘season of chaos’ can be a deliberate, wise decision.
His attitude comes, as an African American man, not from ignoring the negative, but from understanding the deep prejudices that can run through society, and then from what he calls the ‘blessing’ of having some perspective (from age and from living now outside the US), which allows him to meditate through his music on a better, more hopeful way, when this often seem futile or too hard. His phrase ‘season of chaos’ even points to this – for Bibb, chaos is a way of the world, but it can wane, prompted by people who appeal to the better sides of our nature.
Bibb grew up in the civil rights era in New York, where his parents hosted the likes of Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. In this milieu, Bibb says, he was taught that making music is ‘a mission’ to promote harmony, in the societal sense. Folk movement of the sixties had both awareness of injustices and hope, something that is at the heart of the Black church too.
The only cover on this new album is the title track, written by Bibb’s childhood classmate, a song that he says sums up a lot of what he sings about, the lower Mississippi being the cradle of the blues as well as a hotspot of racism, tainted by slavery and the history of Jim Crow. As the title of the album, ‘One Mississippi’ inescapably refers to the sentiments in many of the songs here – both the history of American hatred and violence and the ability of Black culture to transcend that.
The upbeat ‘This One Don’t’, up-front lyrically as well as musically about prioritising a simple groove, celebrates the good sides of that culture and history, while ‘Muddy Waters’, a tribute to a musical hero, does the same while still obliquely nodding to the more troubling sides. ‘Muddy Waters’ is appropriately languid. ‘This One Don’t’ perhaps borrows more from the intersection of blues and rock. ‘Didn’t I Keep Running’ is a little different while keeping up the tempo, in the style of more recent, progressive folk music that merges electronica beats with traditional folk instruments.
It’s fair to say, as many have, that his style is a combination of blues and folk (blues being a kind of folk music anyway). One might take from ‘This One Don’t’ a certain amount of irony, as elsewhere he infuses blues with jazz chords, Latin rhythms and embellishments that make it quite intricate. Steeped in the blues, Bibb’s guitar playing is nevertheless delicate and precise. (Of course, in writing this I am in danger of implying that the blues is a simple form, which is not necessarily the case.)
‘It’s a Good Life’, while celebrating as blessing the plenitude of life, is typical of his style – a melody shadowed by his acoustic guitar and underpinned by delicate brushwork on the drums. Similarly, ‘If You’re Free’ encourages thankfulness for the necessities of life. This gratefulness permeates the album as a whole and is evoked in the music by his way of delicately warming blues motifs.
On ‘New Window’ Bibb, typically, takes a negative situation and envisages how this might prompt us to strive for a better world. These are sentiments that can be found on songs, like ‘Along the Way’, on other albums, and might also be found in the sermons of Martin Luther King – calling out injustice but reacting with love instead of vengeance. ‘Crossroads Marilyn Monroe’ is brave, as he looks at the terrible story of the lynching of Emmett Till through a different, empathetic lens. He thinks about the complexities of the story and the fact that we all need forgiveness at times.
The closing ‘We Got to Find a Way’ is quiet – almost spoken word – the strong sentiments belied by the gentle, droning fingerpicking and Bibb’s understated vocal that draws the listener in. Through it, and persistently over recent albums, Bibb shows that persuasion works not through shouting but by gently coming alongside.
Nick Mattiske blogs on books at coburgreviewofbooks.wordpress.com and is the illustrator of Thoughts That Feel So Big.
