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12/25/2004 Archived Entry: "Escaping the Delta"

Escaping the Delta
Reading:
Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Interesting for its take on "other histories"; Johnson is not the product of Delta clichés and tropes (poor Black underclass searching out vehicles of expression within a dominant, oppressive culture) but rather the product of an overall effort to create pop music in a specific time period. Robert Johnson wanted to be a crooner. Elijah Wald wants us to rethink the blues, and blues history, as just another effort to create pop music. Taste in place of romanticism.
Like anything, there are lessons to be learned. The obvious lesson is that of the "grand narrative," Lyotard's critique of those sweeping gestures we readily adopt and believe in. Wald challenges the grand narrative of blues. We might just as well challenge composition's grand narrative (my own efforts are in The Rhetoric of Cool). Or we might challenge those narratives we construct around the concept of writing as well, what Wald is trying to do for the composition of blues, we might think about regarding writing in general or even more narrowly, what we have come to accept as "student writing." This is my own trope. If you read this blog, you see it repeated ad nausea. Much apologies. But point not yet taken.
We also, those of us folk dedicated to composition, still have a romanticized vision of writing and writing instruction. Wald's larger lesson is how such romanticizing gestures unfortunately discredit other kinds of gestures in circulation. Por ejemplo: So what if Robert Johnson wasn't really representative of a "true" Delta sound? The question is not trying to minimize nor erase Johnson's influence and importance, but rather to de-romanticize a specific version of Delta music so that other understandings may emerge, even if those understandings generate uncomfortable histories (Wha wha wha…Skip James and Son House were not well known in their time???).
In turn, we might de-romanticize the visions of student authorship circulated and accepted so that other kinds of writings might emerge. Easily said. But the very fact that I situate this point within a book about a blues musician is what complicates the whole issue. Who is going to treat this analogy as serious? Not too many folks. The romantic hold we place on specific types of student writing (what Bartholomae has canonized as inventing the university and Sirc has done the best job to displace with a variety of alternative situations) is strong. Displacements, of course, are intellectual exercises. Robert Ray often imagines the “what if” as an exercise in filmic possibility. Breton created his own alternatives evoked by the random encounter. Marvel comics did the same in super hero match ups (“What if Spider Man was a Girl?”). Wald extends that move to the blues, and we and those we work with in the classroom should as well; the Web’s network of links and connections offers a viable media outlet.