University of Virginia Library

Prism Features
Musical Variety

By Bob Crawford

The Prism Coffeehouse will
present a variety of activity this
Midwinter's Weekend, Feb. 22-24.
Friday night features Mark Surgies
from Baltimore playing banjo,
guitar, and autoharp in an evening
of old-timey and rag, traditional
and contemporary folk music. Mark
will perform songs by such artists as
Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and the
New Lost City Ramblers, and will
also include a variety of traditional
Irish folk songs throughout the
night.

Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. the
Prism will sponsor a benefit concert
for the Virginia Folklore Guild, for
the purpose of raising money to
have a Virginia Folk Festival here at
the University, possibly in the
spring. Performers such as Cooper
Norman, Bill Brown, Charley Jaunceon,
Mark Surgies, Gary Greenwood
and Rod Marymor of Chrysanthemum,
Dawn Thompson, Bob
Crawford, and Chet Blackistone
will be featured. In addition there
will be a poetry reading by Judy
Marymor and Tom Chapman will
explore the "Adventures of John
Jackson" in a series of folk tales.
There can obviously be no time
limit to a concert such as this, and
admission is fifty cents.

Saturday night features perhaps
the finest performer who has ever
played on the Prism stage — Bob
Akin — in an evening of some very
real blues. Bob drew a record crowd
at the Prism last year and it seems
impossible that last year's turnout
cannot at least be duplicated. Bob
will present a program of blues
from 1915 to the present, featuring
songs by Skip James, Robert
Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt,
John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf,
Paul Butterfield, and Jimmy Reed,
as well as some of Bob's original
compositions which will be performed
for the first time. Bob will
also be at the benefit concert
Sunday afternoon.

The blues which Bob sings is a
mixture of the blues of the
Mississippi Delta interlaced with
more modern influences; John Hirt,
John Faley, Muddy Waters, Michael
Gowen, and Mike Bloomfield have
had a great deal of influence on his
music. However, it remains Bob's
blues, no one else's. It is said by
many bluesmen that a performer
has to be able to "feel" a song to
do it any justice at all. But that
only scratches the surface of Bob
Akin and his music. When one sees
him perform, he can feel Akin
projecting his entire self into the
combination of guitar and voice,
immersing himself completely in
the authenticity of his emotions.
And this is the truly beautiful thing
about Bob Akin. A graduate of the
University in 1967 with honors in
philosophy, Akin is an extremely
intelligent, sensitive, and articulate
man. Yet he chooses to sing blues —
a music not so articulate, but very
real and undeniably human. That is
his gimmick, if one chooses to call
it a gimmick — he sells only
himself. Akin is not a blues singer —
he is a human being who happens
to sing the blues. His humanness is
revealed in his wide range of blues
material, releasing every painful and
joyous emotion that he possesses —
from the slow and agonizing "Waterfront" (John Lee Hooker),
to Robert Johnson's "Crossroad
Blues," to the light Howlin' Wolf
(possibly a contradiction in terms)
number "Three Hundred Pounds of
Love and Joy," which incidentally
when last performed drove six
prospective candidates of a Farmville
convent fleeing for the door,
to the raucous, beautifully bottle-necked
"Travelin' Riverside Blues,"
also by Robert Johnson. When
asked about his music, Bob replied
that his is not the type of music
which will make it on the commercial
scene. Akin's music is an
extremely emotional music which
requires as much from the audience
as from the performer. Akin's blues
is a union of white and black blues
into the all-inclusive category of
human blues — "there doesn't have
to be a difference, but unfortunately
there is. You see — it's men —
and men hurt." Men have to let
themselves hurt in order to be able
to feel joy, so that they can
experience a real existence. And
Bob Akin's is a real existence.