Corey Harris
b. 21 February 1969, Denver, Colorado, USA. One of the new breed of young, acoustic country bluesmen currently reinventing the Delta Blues, Harris is a talented multi-instrumentalist who draws inspiration from a wide range of musical influences. After gaining a degree in anthropology, he visited Cameroon several times in the early 90s, studying the local patois Pidgin before returning to America to teach for a year in Louisiana. While he was teaching, Harris began performing on the streets of New Orleans (playing guitar, trumpet and kazoo), and he has stated in interviews how his experience as a street musician "helped [me] to project, and [know] what songs to play to get people's attention." Like fellow modern-day bluesmen Alvin Youngblood Hart and Eric Bibb, Harris only covers old blues songs that are still relevant, and the songs on his albums draw more lyrical inspiration from rap than from the blues. Musically he blends acoustic blues with Latin and African rhythms (including playing the jun-jun, a drum indigenous to West Africa), building upon the influence of country blues legend Taj Mahal.
Listen to Corey Harris
at Finetune.
Albums
- (1999) Greens From the Garden
Top Tracks
- Sweet Black Angel
- Basehead
- Diddy Wah Diddy
- Wild West
- Eh La Bas
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