Cephas & Wiggins

Erie Art Museum Annex
Cocnert: February 12, 2008 at 8 p.m.
FREE, suggested donation $10

Legendary blues duo John Cephas and Phil Wiggins will be
artists-in-residence at the Museum in February. They will
conduct workshops with visiting students, present at the
Cabin-Fever Teacher Getaway, and give a free public
concert on February12 at 8 p.m.

Cephas & Wiggins are leading exponents of the Piedmont
blues style, including Piedmont-style guitar picking, featuring alternating thumb and finger, with the thumb creating a steady, loping bass as the melody is simultaneously picked out on the treble strings. The two met in 1977 at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., where Cephas was playing in the band of pianist Big Chief Ellis and Wiggins was accompanying gospel singer-guitarist Flora Molton.

Almost immediately after the two musicians joined forces, the blues community proclaimed them as the new champions of the East Coast Piedmont style of blues first popularized by artists like Blind Boy Fuller, Rev. Gary Davis, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake. Since teaming up, they have toured the world, including the former Soviet Union, where they were the first Americans to perform at the Russian National Folk Festival in Moscow. In 1987, they were honored at the W.C. Handy Blues Awards as “Entertainers of the Year” and also took the award for “Best Traditional Album of the Year.”

After hundreds of concerts at major festivals, concert halls and colleges (not to mention the many workshops the two conduct), Cephas & Wiggins continue to bring energetic good times to each performance, winning new fans everywhere they go. They have performed in living rooms for only a handful of people and in front of thousands at blues festivals all over the world. They even entertained at President Clinton’s inaugural party in 1997.

To Cephas & Wiggins, the blues lyric is the poetry of the African-American experience. Says Cephas, “The blues is a creation of black people in communities all across this country when times were hard. It was a way of expression, an outlet, and it’s had so much impact. Blues music is truth. The lyrics are true-to-life experiences that people everywhere can relate to.”

 “Bowling Green” John Cephas was born in Washington, D.C. in 1930 into a deeply religious family. He takes his nickname from Bowling Green, Virginia, where he was raised. His first taste of music was gospel, but blues soon became his calling. His grandfather taught him the folklore of eastern Virginia, where his ancestors had toiled as slaves, and Cephas learned about blues from a guitar-playing aunt.

John serves on the Executive Committee of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and is also a founder of the Washington, D.C. Blues Society. “More than anything else,” says John, “I would like to see a revival of country blues by more young people… more people going to concerts, learning to play the music. That’s why I stay in the field of traditional music. I don’t want it to die.” Cephas received the coveted National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989.

Phil Wiggins was born in Washington, D.C. in 1954 and spent his childhood summers at his grandmother’s home in Alabama, where he listened to old-time hymns sung in church in the traditional call-and-response style. Phil was attracted to the blues harp as a young man and began his musical career with some of Washington’s leading blues artists, including Archie Edwards and John Jackson, and attributes his style to his years spent accompanying locally noted slide guitarist and gospel singer Flora Molton.

For more on Cephas & Wiggins you can visit their website at www.cephasandwiggins.net

Sponsored by