Why Dirty (Hokum) Blues?

WARNING EXPLICIT LANGUAGE

Why Hokum Blues?
Hokum…
Full Definition of hokum
1: a device used (as by showmen) to evoke a desired audience response
2: pretentious nonsense : bunkum

Because I love it. It is funny and dirty and rowdy and wild. It also comes from my grandmother’s generation and earlier! I find it fascinating the way I find burlesque and other types of entertainment from the 1910’s through the 1950’s and even up to the current day. People were not so willing to use words like sex, penis, vagina, intercourse and many other types of words we find almost clinical today. Of course they were also not going to go around saying things like: Pussy, tits, balls, cock and fucking either. OH sorry…pardon my French! They did use these words but never, well mostly never, in mixed company out in the streets or in any other public place. To use them was akin to doing them. Even Mae West who we now see as a comedienne that used double entendre to get a laugh was arrested and jailed for almost a year for producing a show whose name was simply, “Sex.”
We have come a long way into a sexual freedom and a way of expressing ourselves that is more free and easy. Sex itself is more openly discussed and is considered a normal function of the body one has every right to enjoy…to most anyway.
I love history and going into these songs was like a journey back in time to the mind, the mood the feeling of prohibition, the depression, WW! And WWII as well as the beginnings of Rock and even a little jaunt into the beginning of a more pornographic era beginning in the 1970’s.
I also love the Blues. I love the Blues Jazz and Rock like I love to breathe. I have studied and do sing many different genre of music but when I sing these, especially the blues either clean or dirty I feel plugged into something much bigger and more powerful than any other music I have sung. It is physical, this music, it is emotional and it is fun.
I also wanted to do it with older singers. I think having people of a certain age, especially women who are obviously knowledgeable about sex makes it all the more sexy, powerful and funny. I hope you love it all as much as we do.
I am so very happy to be presenting this piece and hope to get it out to many other venues. If you are interested in having us perform these songs and more (we have tons more) we would be very happy to talk to you. My e mail address is maryelizabethmicari@gmail.com