Free Yourself in the USA

Free Yourself in the USA

Every now and then, amid the glowing amplifier tubes and resonating floorboards of the stage, the world falls away, and the interlaced instruments pull you onto a higher plane of consciousness. Or unconsciousness… No longer are you selecting notes or willing your fingers across the frets. Chords, scales, and verses meld together and give way to a current of limitless energy. You are only vaguely aware of your surroundings, the faces in the crowd, the sweat pouring from your brow. Time is essential to music, and yet time is of no essence. The waves radiate outward, never to exist tangibly, yet never to cease. A sonic moment in amber, as inifinite as it is invisible. True independence is not discovering yourself, but discovering your lack of self.

It is early, oh so early on a Saturday morning on South Broadway in St. Louis. The lights have dimmed, the amplifiers tubes are cooling. The patio is emptying, along with the adrenaline in my veins. A slow-groaning freight train shuffles over the trestle. Clusters of conversations retreat along the sidewalks, across the street, fading like shadows before the dawn. Another long night of revelry at an end, I am coming back to myself.

“Thank you, you guys were great,” receding smiles echo on the way out the gate. Still reeling from losing myself completely in cascades of rhythym and melody, I mumble thanks in reply, guiltily. I, me, what I am- had only stolen away once again to sneak a glimpse of the infinite. Uncomprehending, renewed with childlike wonder, unable to articulate the thrill, incapable of analyzing or building upon the experience, only waking to the world around me once again.

Music has been rolling through St. Louis along the currents of the rivers for millennia, long before the mounds of Cahokia shook with the drums and rattles. It is a true, if somewhat unheralded, music city, where one can discover live music in dozens of forms and dozens of venues any night of the week. At its core, however, the blues reign supreme. A simple structure with unlimited variations, the soul of St. Louis blues is self-expression and sharing the burdens of every day life with those who can relate, and that’s just about everybody with a heart. Folk music, pure and simple, handed down from generation to generation, distilling sounds and styles that have come together at the confluence of great rivers to become distinct in its own right.

The real beauty of this music is its ability to transcend differences in language, color, class and creed and reach into the soul of the listener. The stages dotting the urban landscape of St. Louis are rallying points, drawing together souls of diverse origins together and literally creating an environment of pure harmony. Just south of Busch Stadium, blocks away from the droves emptying their pockets on millionaires playing baseball and peddling cheap beer, people of separate circumstances but like minds gather for an altogether different experience. It is often referred to as the Bluesiana Triangle (in reference to the three premier St. Louis music venues sharing the same block: BB’s Jazz, Blues & Soups, The Broadway Oyster Bar, and the Beale on Broadway) and it is easy to lose yourself within.

True freedom is casting aside chains that bind, desires that consume, thoughts that confine. Music has the power to make you forget who is watching, forget your worries, and slip outside of the world you have created. Should you stray away from the beaten path, seduced by the sirens’ songs drifting through the night on South Broadway, you may lose yourself as well, and learn the true meaning of independence.

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