Richard Jernigan -> RE: Cultura (Mar. 21 2015 3:56:53)
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All this back and forth about language, culture and the like has finally reminded me of a story. My English friend David J. and his wife Carol visited Austin. David had won an award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers for a paper he wrote. Part of the prize was a trip to New York to present the paper at the annual meeting. David was on the British side of a contract we had with the U.K. government, so they paid for the trip to Austin. He and his wife, my wife and I, all in our thirties had become good friends. David wanted to see an American football game. The University of Texas puts on about as big a spectacle as there is in that line. But on the night of the game it was cold and raining hard. We sat around the house feeling sorry for ourselves and drinking whisky. More in jest than in ernest, I said, "Well, Muddy Waters is playing Antone's tonight. We could go hear him." To my surprise, Carol lit up and said, "Really! Muddy Waters is in town tonight? We could go see him?" "Um, yes....to tell the truth, I didn't have you pegged as a Muddy Waters fan." Carol, a beautiful blue eyed brunette in her early thirties, was a school teacher and the soul of proper English middle class decorum. "Yes! When I was fourteen, after bedtime I would get under the covers with my torch and my little phonograph, listen to my Muddy Waters records and dream of running away to America. I loved Muddy Waters! Though perhaps I didn't completely understand all the songs." "How about 'Louisiana Blues'?" I asked. She quoted, "Going to Louisiana, behind the Sun....what does that mean?" " 'Behind the Sun' means 'behind the sign of the Sun.' In New Orleans when the original city was laid out, most of the people were illiterate. Street signs and shop signs were symbols that were easy to recognize. In Merida, Yucatan the streets were all laid out on a grid and numbered rationally, but in the early sixties people still spoke of the calle del violín or la tienda de la oveja even though they could read the map perfectly. The shop behind the Sun in New Orleans sold voodoo articles and other magic paraphernalia." "I see. Like the taverns called "The King's Head" or "Stonham Pie" with the magpie on the sign. So what's a mojo hand?" "It's a little cloth bag containing magical objects. Spells are cast over it by a voodoo priest. It conveys occult powers to the owner." We went to Antone's. Carol was one of the most ardent fans. When Muddy got the people up to dance, she was absolutely magnificent. Now who was the greater aficionado? I, who understood the language and the cultural references, and who was surrounded by the blues from birth? Or Carol, who may not have understood all the words, and who came to the music only as a teenager, but to whom the music spoke as a cry for freedom and rage against the perceived oppression of a proper middle class English girl during the beginning of the swinging sixties? RNJ
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