Page 79 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2015

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Many blues artists are also dedicated to keeping the blues
alive. Tas Cru was a 2014 recipient of the Keeping the Blues Alive
award presented by The Blues Foundation in Memphis, for his
work in blues education. He said, “To me, there is nothing more
important that I do as a blues performer than blues education…
Children in schools throughout the globe learn about their culture’s
artistic heritage and creative achievements. American children
deserve to know about their culture’s rich musical heritage that is
the blues, and how the world has embraced it as a creative art
form…I am blessed to have had so many opportunities to work
with young and old across the country as we educate each other
about what it is that makes us love the blues.”
I am working with a former teacher and blues artist from the
United Kingdom, Harmonica Dave Hunt. I will be writing the
lyrics for his next few CDs, and we plan to involve my class in
the writing process, the technology involved, and have them join
on a YouTube recording or two. They are bubbling over with
anticipation.
If you love the blues as I have come to, keeping it alive for future
generations is important, maybe even an obsession. Keeping a
thing alive involves teaching children to love and appreciate it. I
have yet to encounter a child who does not absolutely love blues.
However, there are far too many who have never heard a note
of it played, even here in Mississippi.
“Education,” Malcolm X wrote, “is our passport to the future,
for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.”
I believe that America is ready for a music revolution. So, let
it begin with our children, and let it end with the blues reigning
supreme! Make a commitment today to educate at least one
child about the blues!

Anita Havens is a fourth-grade teacher and author in Oxford,
Mississippi, whose latest book, That’s Why We Sang the Blues, is
a collection of 1930s photographs of sharecroppers and tenant
farmers. Her grandfather was a sharecropper and Cherokee
Indian, and she grew up hearing stories about the hard life that
led to the birth of the blues.

Kiana Burt reads beside a blues marker at the Ole Miss campus in Oxford, MS
Photo by Anita Havens

Blues Festival Guide 2015 77