On Friday, February 17, trance blues artist Otis Taylor and his band performed at Georgetown Prep to celebrate Black History Month. The artist's fifteenth release, Fantasizing About Being Black, debuted that day, and Georgetown Prep was the first stop on the band's tour to promote the album. Taylor also visited a combined class of AP Language and AP Literature students to talk about the album, writing, and the creative process.
Guitar Player magazine called Otis Taylor "the most relevant blues artist of our time." A recipient of many awards and internationally recognized for his "trance blues," Taylor has made a career of experimenting with musical boundaries while at the same time utilizing and preserving African musical traditions. His subject matter concerns the human heart, often through the lens of African American experience. New Yorker called his sound the "velvet underground railroad," a tribute to the lyrics and the innovative, hypnotic rhythms that transport the listener into the lives of the subjects of his songs. An Otis Taylor song does not want its listener to simply hear about lost love or the Middle Passage; it wants him and her to inhabit the lives of its characters, to feel the shackles.
This is Taylor's third visit to Georgetown Prep; he played a concert in 2011 and took part in a senior seminar entitled The Life of the Mind in 2013.
Taylor's concert and classroom visit are a part of the recognition of the contributions of African Americans to American history and culture. Students are studying the Harlem Renaissance, African-American poetry, and Civil Rights history. On February 24, the Reading Club, with the Black Student Association, will host a discussion of Colton Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.
Photo: Gary Daum