Jackson Free Press

Otis Taylor is one of the few blues artists today who has explicitly addressed lynching; his song "Saint Martha Blues" tells in painful detail the story of his great-grandfather's lynching in Lake Providence, La., who was taken from him home, hung and then torn apart limb by limb. The mob then went to his great-grandmother, Martha Jones, and told her where to find her husband.

"They tore, they tore his poor body, they tore his poor body apart. Oh, they tore, they tore his poor body, they tore his poor body," he sings.

The most famous song about lynching, "Strange Fruit," written by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol, was a staple of the repertoires of Josh White and Billie Holiday, whose primary audiences in the '40s and '50s were Northern liberals. Within the broader blues tradition, however, the topic, or for that matter any overt commentary on racial oppression, was rare, leading many blues fans to think the music is primarily about sex and good times.

Taylor is cautious when speculating why he is the sole musician participating in the conference, "Unsettling Memories: Culture and Trauma in the Deep South," which honors the lives of civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner on the 40th anniversary of their deaths in Neshoba County. But it likely because he is one of the only contemporary blues artists willing to perform political songs; when they do, they're often faced with criticism for stepping outside the perceived boundaries of the genre.

"Think about it—totally impossible," Taylor says in explaining the relative dearth of explicitly political songs in vintage recorded blues. "You would have been lynched within 24 hours. Those people were censored."

But difficult topics have an important place in music, Taylor says—both to remind and to help move forward struggles for freedom. "Americans are good with denial. That's how we keep on progressing—because we don't look back too far. It's part of our history not to look back too far."

That reticence can be particularly strong with songs that are brutally honest about oppression of blacks in this country, he says: "The Irish sing about the Irish Revolution. Whites sing protest music. So, what, the blacks had nothing to protest?"

Taylor says that he remembers what his parents talked about at the dinner table, and those topics now surface in his work. "There's a tradition of people not singing about these things, so when I came around and sang about it, people said, 'What's up with this?'"

Older blues, he explains, often contained covert commentary on the general topic of being mistreated, with the woman often serving as a surrogate target in the venting of frustration.

Taylor, who worked for many years as an antiques assessor, resists the label "political," pointing out that he just likes a wide variety of old stories, and it so happens that this includes tales of violence and injustice. His most recent CD, "Double V" (on the Telarc label), contains songs about Japanese internment during WWII ("Took Their Land"), homelessness ("Reindeer Meat"), elderly poor eating dog food ("Plastic Spoon"), drugs (the autobiographical "Mama's Selling Heroin"), and the '60s Civil Rights Movement ("Buy Myself Some Freedom," which is sung by his daughter Cassie). The title of the CD refers to African-American WWII soldiers' use of the "V" hand gesture to signify both "victory" and the more furtive message of "voting rights."

The topics are weighty, but Taylor's lyrics aren't heavy-handed, and are typically presented from a highly personalized perspective. The music often has a buoyant, hypnotic quality, drawing from a wide range of influences, including blues, folk, jazz and African music. Untypical for the blues genre is the presence of the cello on more than half of the 12 songs, and on several songs here—as well on his other CDs—Taylor plays the banjo, an instrument with African roots that he began playing as a teen in the '60s.

Born in Chicago in 1948, Taylor was raised in Denver, and grew up in a home where he heard modern blues and jazz. Taylor's parents shunned their rural Southern roots, but he found his musical calling via the '60s folk revival, and particularly through Denver's Folklore Center. There he saw performances by artists including Mississippi John Hurt, and gained an appreciation for a wide array of traditional music that underlies his eclectic approach.

Taylor formed his first electric blues band in the mid-'60s, and continued playing in various bands into the early '70s. He largely left professional music for 20 years, and his return to the scene in the mid-'90s was marked by the release of his CD "When Negroes Walked the Earth." Since then he has released the CDs "White African" (one of its cuts is "Saint Martha Blues"), "Respect the Dead" and "Truth Is Not Fiction" from 2003, which made the top 10 lists of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Taylor will take part in a panel discussion Friday from 3:45-5:15 p.m. during the "Unsettling Memories" conference at Jackson State. Later the singer/guitarist and his band will perform at the 930 Blues Café, which is also hosting an optional dinner for conference participants. Visit his Web site at http://www.otistaylor.com