Morgan Freeman's upcoming performance, 'Symphonic Blues Experience,' blends soulful blues with classical music, featuring songs from artists across nearly a century, including Blind Willie Johnson and Ray Charles. The show is set to take place at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Freeman's Ground Zero club in Clarksdale plays a significant role in the local revival, attracting international visitors. The goal is to use music to blend race and class and avoid reducing the essence of blues to generic background music.
About a third of the people visiting our club on any given night are from outside of the United States. Yeah, so it only makes sense to go to them, if so many of them are coming to us.
This effort to intertwine the blues with classical music also inherently means merging race as well as class. The goal is to utilize music as a form of diplomacy.
Included in Freeman's show are songs stretching as far back as 1927, with Blind Willie Johnson's landmark 1927 recording "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," and spanning nearly 100 years through Albert King and Ray Charles to the present day.
You don't want to turn this into Muzak.
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