27 May : Hot Tuna

Hot Tuna was a side project by Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane. In it’s original conception it was just the two of them performing, for the most part, music from the wider blues tradition. I’ve been familiar with them for a long time, since I first heard their Hesitation Blues on a Jefferson Airplane compilation and was impressed. I haven’t previously gone out of my way to listen to them, though.

This is yet another album about which I’m ambivalent. The plus side is that the musicianship is first class throughout and is a nice showcase for Casady’s bass playing outside of a rock band context. The album is very listenable, more listenable than most Jefferson Airplane albums, in fact. There was a time when I would have bought this album and told people about it.

Now, though, I am much more conscious that it was part of that trend of, put crudely, white boys playing black man’s music and not really capturing the essence of it. This is particularly so with the Gary Davis songs–I’d rather listen to Gary Davis. To be sure the trend was responsible, in many cases, for much needed royalties flowing to the original artists, and Gary Davis used to joke that, in his later years, he lived in ‘the house that Peter, Paul and Mary built’. Even so, I’m still conscious that what ended up happening was that the source material was interpreted and mediated by the white artists, and made more acceptable to a white audience.

In this case, all but two of the eleven tracks are from the playing of black musicians.

I don’t accuse Kaukonen and Casady of any cynical motives here–I believe they were enthusiasts and keen to present the music to audiences that might not otherwise have heard it, and that’s great. It’s just that, in my dotage, I am uneasy about this. It’s a big subject, and if you are interested in the complexities, I can do no better than to invite you to read Elijah Wald’s Messy Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation, (inspired by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau darkening his skin and donning a robe and turban to go to a costume party as Aladdin).

Anyway: a decent album, but I’d rather listen to the originals. Kaukonen’s Mann’s Fate, the final track on the original release, is strong enough as a composition in its own right to make me want to hear more in the same vein.  Your mileage may vary of course.

It’s on Spotify and also a YouTube playlist.