Manafonistas

Historicity is problematic. But as John Edgar Wideman once said, all stories are true. So listening to Gavin Bryars‘ „Jesus‘ Blood Never Failed Me Yet“ the story that your brain builds up around it is what it is. A fragment of found music, a handful of notes. A lost soul who duty will not track down, throwing spirit and poetry into an indifferent grey atmosphere. Arbitrarily swept onto magnetic tape, then augmented by orchestral backing some time later. Must be a hymn. Must have provenance. Must be artifice. Moondog still stands in the rain on the corner of 53rd Street and 6th Avenue. And Tom Waits was always good at found sounds and cover versions (he got to the heart of Daniel Johnston’s „King Kong“ for sure). And Waits‘ rendition of Jesus‘ Blood – fucking genius rendition – doesn’t subtract from what precedes it. It takes you back to the original, reframing it in a context outside of social realism.