Blues artist shares thoughts, music with students
By January 14, 2007
Last updated: Saturday, January 13, 2007 10:42 PM EST
Guy Davis was, by his own admission, an #8220unmotivated student who didn t care for reading.
The admission was made during a storytelling workshop for fourth-graders Friday at the Harrisburg Academy, where the New York musician/composer spent the day in residency.
As part of the residency funded by Jump Street/Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Greater Harrisburg Foundation, and Target Davis also gave a guitar class for older students and traced the early history of blues music at a full-school assembly.
At night, Davis performed a concert sponsored by the Susquehanna Folk Music Society, which has an ongoing collaboration with the academy. The performance was in cooperation with the Blues Society of Central Pennsylvania.
Encouraged by parents
Davis said his parents encouraged him to read with good reason: they were famous actors and writers, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
And although he was an unmotivated student, he has since come around.
Today, words mean a great deal to him as much as music does, he told the younger students.
A multifaceted artist who has done acting, directing and writing, Davis has focused in the last decade or so on reviving acoustic blues through the materials of blues masters, African-American stories and his own original songs and stories.
He has produced several albums. His latest, #8220Legacy, was chosen as one of the year s best CDs by National Public Radio, and its lead track, #8220Uncle Tom s Dead, was one of the best songs of the year. He has been nominated for nine W.
C. Handy Awards.
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