{"id":5111,"date":"2012-02-29T02:29:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5111"},"modified":"2012-02-29T02:29:42","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:29:42","slug":"otis-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/otis-taylor\/","title":{"rendered":"OTIS TAYLOR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"OTIS TAYLOR \u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A self-described musical \u201creporter\u201d takes a hard look at a broken world \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Otis Taylor watches through\u00a0the window as the snow falls outside. Most would find it serene\u2014a dusting on the mountains surrounding Boulder, Colo., the place he calls home. But not Taylor. \u201cIt\u2019s dark and overcast,\u201d he says with a shrug. The bluesman, 63, readily describes himself as a pessimist, one who warns that he has little patience for answering \u201cstupid questions.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m old and I\u2019m black and I don\u2019t\u00a0give a crap,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Taylor\u2019s music is just as blunt. On a dozen albums released over the last 16 years, he\u2019s conveyed a sometimes brutal account of the black American experience on works with titles like Blue-Eyed Monster<\/em>, When Negroes Walked the Earth<\/em> and White African<\/em>. The Chicago-born multi-instrumentalist\u2019s recording career began in earnest in the mid-1990s, following nearly two decades during which he simply didn\u2019t bother with the music industry. \u201cThat was no hiatus,\u201d he says. \u201cI quit! I was fed up with the music business. There\u2019s never been a musician who wasn\u2019t fed up with the music business.\u201d<\/p>\n

His latest, Contraband<\/em>\u2014named for runaway Civil War slaves who were still considered commodities even after reaching Union lines\u2014maintains that unabashedly direct narrative. While he\u2019s garnered several prestigious W.C. Handy nominations and a composition fellowship from the Sundance Institute, Taylor is wary of praise. \u201cI don\u2019t know about the blues,\u201d he maintains. \u201cBut I do know about being black. And if you\u2019re a black singer, then you must be making black music. It\u2019s typecasting, but I understand it. However, I still like to put my own twist on things.\u201d His unique spin on traditional sounds has spawned a subgenre that he calls \u201ctrance blues.\u201d Characterized by atonal rhythms, gritty emotional grooves and melodies devoid of chord changes, it inspired an entire Trance Blues Jam Festival last November in Boulder, the first of what he hopes\u00a0is an annual event.<\/p>\n

Despite his downcast disposition, Taylor claims the edgier songs from the new album\u2014\u201cThe Devil\u2019s Gonna Lie,\u201d \u201cRomans Had Their Way,\u201d \u201cI Can See You\u2019re Lying\u201d\u2014offer commentaries, not critiques. \u201cI\u2019m a reporter, a storyteller,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not about being self-righteous. I provide facts and leave it to listeners to come to their own conclusions. Some people write about broken hearts. I write about broken bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTIS TAYLOR \u00a0 A self-described musical \u201creporter\u201d takes a hard look at a broken world \u00a0 Otis Taylor watches through\u00a0the window as the snow falls outside. Most would find it serene\u2014a dusting on the mountains surrounding Boulder, Colo., the place he calls home. But not Taylor. \u201cIt\u2019s dark and overcast,\u201d he says with a shrug. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3032,3163,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5114,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5111\/revisions\/5114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}