A few years back, Guy Davis was heralded as a young “great black hope,” reclaiming acoustic blues as black music along with other young black artists like Corey Harris and Alvin “Youngblood” Hart. Davis admitted to his rather “unbluesy” privileged upbringing as the son of two successful actors, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, in an article he wrote for Blues Revue Magazine. He grew up in a large Harlem brownstone with access to the best education and far removed from the poor, rural, and southern roots often associated with “authentic” blues credentials. Yet in the article he firmly stated his belief that blues is “a treasure that belongs to my people.” For Davis, “The issue is racism. White folks can never really know what it means, what it feels like, to be a nigger.”
This article got under my skin like no other, largely due to the hypocrisy of Davis’ arguments. He accused his white peers as being imitators who learned from books and tried to imitate black vocal delivery. Yet Davis was unwilling to admit that he learned from the same books and is guiltier than most of a contrived whiskey and cigarette growl in his singing.
Davis grew up in a world of relative wealth, entitlement and culture. He is educated and talented, but his whining that he wants to see “more black faces” in his audiences rings hollow to me. Without any real effort, I’ve played for plenty of black audiences at schools and clubs. Davis could do the same. If he wants, as he stated in a Dirty Linen interview, black kids “to learn how to play blues…from black-skinned people” perhaps he could donate money from his trust fund to finance such an endeavor. Trying to disprove or discredit my abilities or merits (or those of any other white performer), to validate his own, will not get Davis far in my eyes. Being white doesn’t mean that I can’t understand the painful legacy of racism any more than being black gives him automatic insight into something outside of his direct personal experience.
