"Blues music is becoming more and more popular than it ever was. I'm always meeting people on the road that are really young, and are guitar players. male and female"
About this Quote
There is a quiet vindication in Mick Taylor noticing the blues getting younger. Coming from a player forged in the late-60s crucible of British rock, Taylor is pointing to a cultural reversal: the music that once served as a private language between older Black innovators and a small circle of obsessive disciples is now showing up as a common tongue for kids with guitars, regardless of gender.
The intent is partly report, partly relief. Blues has long been eulogized in public even while it survives in practice; Taylor’s road-level evidence pushes back on the lazy “dying genre” narrative. The subtext is that authenticity isn’t a museum condition. It can be learned, coveted, reinterpreted, even misread, and still remain a living craft. When he says “always meeting people,” he’s not citing charts or streaming data. He’s invoking the oldest metric in music: who’s showing up night after night to play.
His quick add-on, “male and female,” matters. Blues guitar culture has been notoriously masculinized, with mythology built around lone geniuses and machismo. Taylor’s phrasing isn’t polished, but it’s telling: he’s registering a shift in who feels entitled to the instrument, and by extension, who gets to claim the lineage. In the background sits Taylor’s own complicated position - a white British musician shaped by Black American forms - which makes his observation feel less like ownership and more like stewardship. The blues, he suggests, keeps slipping its boundaries, surviving precisely because it refuses to stay put.
The intent is partly report, partly relief. Blues has long been eulogized in public even while it survives in practice; Taylor’s road-level evidence pushes back on the lazy “dying genre” narrative. The subtext is that authenticity isn’t a museum condition. It can be learned, coveted, reinterpreted, even misread, and still remain a living craft. When he says “always meeting people,” he’s not citing charts or streaming data. He’s invoking the oldest metric in music: who’s showing up night after night to play.
His quick add-on, “male and female,” matters. Blues guitar culture has been notoriously masculinized, with mythology built around lone geniuses and machismo. Taylor’s phrasing isn’t polished, but it’s telling: he’s registering a shift in who feels entitled to the instrument, and by extension, who gets to claim the lineage. In the background sits Taylor’s own complicated position - a white British musician shaped by Black American forms - which makes his observation feel less like ownership and more like stewardship. The blues, he suggests, keeps slipping its boundaries, surviving precisely because it refuses to stay put.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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