I Got my Mojo Workin

No.  This article has nothing to do with Austin Powers. 

No.  Mike Myers is not the one who coined the phrase.

Yes. Mojo does exist.

For millions of the world’s privileged, mojo springs only from one well – MUSIC.

Music gets my mojo workin.  And mojo is what gets my soul workin. 

Everybody has their own way of getting into the groove.  R&B, hip-hop, classic, whatever ‘floats your boat’.  But for me, mojo spells one word:

B-L-U-E-S

For those of you that know me well, you’ll know that every Thursday, I love to find my groove at a cozy lil’ blues/jazz bar, Bunkers.  Just sit back and watch how the people start to roll in, tired and overworked and in all sorts of moods at around nine o’clock.  I LOVE to observe the miraculous turn-around as people start to leave the world we live in and begin to break off into the world of the blues.  Beer glasses begin to cling in cheer, buttons are unbuttoned, ties come off and so do your worries.

 They become loose, they become fluid and they become music in motion. 

 Musicians at this place will randomly get up and just start playin.   The beauty of it is that these guys don’t practice at all with each other. 

They don’t plan a single note

They don’t plan what song to play next.

They don’t know which musician will bust out into the next solo. 

Everybody just gets up and grooves together.  Beautiful.  Next thing you know, the whole place is in the clouds. 

If I could only put into words the liberating tingle and shiver I get when hear the blues. 

Every single beat and note replaces each motion and breath that travels through my body.  Oxygen doesn’t get to the rest of my body through a heartbeat, it gets delivered through the rhythm and pumping of a bass line.  The little nerve impulses shooting across my brain and up my spine from all the sensations filling the room now shoot out following the lead of the improvised and electrifying notes the guitar screams out. 

That’s right.  In my world, a guitar does not “play” a note, its cries it out like the wailing soul dying for escape.  Harmonicas and saxophones aren’t blown into – musicians breathe through them.  Classic vocalists like B.B. King, Muddy Watters, and Buddy Guy don’t just sing, their shrilling voices send a shiver up my spine that can leave me shuddering for days.

I need the blues.  I live the blues.  No matter what kinda mood I’m in, my mojo gets workin.  It has never failed me, even when I expect it to.  It’s like magic, really.

The most fascinating observation through all this though, is that it doesn’t have to be the blues that gets you goin. 

Everyone out there…everyone truly living out there breaks free when they hear music.  It’s the only language that all our souls can speak.  It’s a phenomenon that science will never be able to explain and a state in which the laws of physics become null and void. 

Music, my dear friends, is the language of the floating world.

Live it.

Breathe it in.

Flow with it into the night.

Find your mojo or cease to exist.

“You gotta roll roll roll, you gotta thrill my soul, alright.
You gotta roll roll roll, you gotta thrill my soul, alright.
cuz the future’s uncertain and the end is always near.
Let it roll, baby roll,
let it roll, baby roll,
let it roll,
all night long!” 

- The Doors, Roadhouse Blues

~ by Omar on January 12, 2008.