KAREN PULFER FOCHT -Photojournalist

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The Harmonica Experience in Delta Magazine

Twice a year people come from around the world to learn blues harmonica from the masters, in the Mississippi Delta, where the blues began. I did a story for Delta Magazine about The Harmonica Experience.

Master harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite stops by The Harmonica Experience to share his stories.

The Harmonica Experience

The morning light streams into the Juke Joint Chapel as pilgrims take their

seats. Each one has traveled a good distance, hoping to gain some insight

and inspiration unique to the Mississippi Delta.

They’ve settled into rustic sharecroppers’ shacks and are surrounded by

cotton fields in full bloom.

Some are experts already, others just beginners. And for one week, they will

come together to learn how to play blues harmonica at The Harmonica

Experience in Clarksdale.

“Playing harmonica has brought me so much joy in my life and being able

to share that joy with others is priceless” says Cheryl Arena, a master

harmonica player and teacher from Boston. “But what better way to teach

folks how to play harp than down in the Delta… The Birthplace of the Blues,

where the musical vibe is as thick as the mud in the Mississippi River.”

Arena runs the workshop with a few other coaches, all professional

musicians from around the country. Each day, she expects participants to

attend group classes that offer a variety of harmonica techniques, song

writing, singing, and jam sessions, while preparing a song for performance

at the end of the camp.

The ‘Mississippi Saxophone” as some call it, is a challenging instrument to

play. It is easy to learn but hard to master.

“They say blues is a feeling and I certainly get that feeling when I visit the

Delta,” says Kate Wakeling, who travels annually from Australia to learn

how to coax and bend notes from her harmonica while keeping a bluesy 12-

bar-beat. “Staying at the Shack Up Inn I get a sense of the history of the

Delta and what life must have been like for those who labored under the hot

sun in the cotton fields. I can channel those feelings into my harmonica

playing.”

“The Harmonica Experience camp is the most wonderful week where you

get to learn from talented musicians and hang out and play music with

people from all over the world. It’s a very special week,” she says.

Twice a year on this former southern plantation, where blues legend

Pinetop Perkins once worked on the land, aspiring musicians sit on the

porches of their cabins calling music from their hearts and souls.

In the evening, the more skilled musicians often encourage others to join

along in a spontaneous jam. Some sing better than others, some play in a

group for the first time, but they all have fun making music together with

their new friends in this special place.

The workshops take place in a region where many great blues artists lived,

worked, played music and are buried. It is hallowed ground.

Harmonica legend Charlie Musselwhite stops by the camp on occasion. He

recently moved back to Mississippi, and now lives in Clarksdale. He shares

stories about playing with harmonica greats Muddy Waters, Little Walter,

Howlin’ Wolf, and many others.

“Ultimately you want to find your own blues in you and play that.”

Musselwhite tells the students, “Get out of your head and come down to

your heart.”

The harmonica has taken Musselwhite touring around the world and even

to the White House. But there is something about the humble Mississippi

Delta that he says he feels right down to his DNA, “you just walk out your

door and there are interesting people everywhere.”

The students, who come from all over the world, get to experience home

southern cooking from Ranchero catering. In the evenings Chris Green and

Carolyn Sykes serve up fried chicken, mac-n-cheese, corn bread, cobblers

and pie. And no meal would be complete without southern sweet tea.

For those that want something stronger, the bar is open. Campers can sip

some whiskey, wine or beer while jamming with the house band.

Two lines form on either side of the chapel. Students, some wearing

fedoras, Hawaiian shirts or sunglasses, all try and find their groove as they

jump in and play a sequence of riffs to a shuffle or slow blues being played

by the house band. They engage their imagination, their diaphragm, their

breath as they improvise, putting into practice the musical phrasing and

articulation they have been learning about all week.

Some frantically run their lips up and down the harmonica with excitement,

others pause and allow a cool and layback space between notes to

punctuate the sound they are going for.

Ralph Carter, an accomplished songwriter, composer and producer, teaches

students song writing during the camp. He also holds an independent

songwriting camp at the shacks.

Sitting in the Robert Clay shack, Carter asks students, many of whom never

really thought about writing a song, “what gives you the blues?” He

encourages them to make observations, think about rhymes, look for a

melody in what they are saying. He teaches song structure.

“The songwriter’s job is to help understand our life’s experience by

providing perspective, context and sometimes just the plain comfort of

sharing.” He encourages them, convincing them that each has a song inside

of them. “Music, songs, connect us to our humanity in a magically direct

way. They go directly to the heart.”

Not all players have to play or write blues, but for those who want to, he

says “The blues hangs heavy in the air in the Delta. There is something that

still feels raw here, exposed and vulnerable. The fact that the Blues and it’s

offspring are still going strong today, tells you something about the

enduring power of songs.”

By Karen Pulfer Focht © 2024

www.theharmonicaexperience.com

https://www.songsattheshacks.com/