Elli De Mon
Countin' The Blues

At one point, I found myself holding a sheet where, between the lines, it was written that the institutions now considered me a man and trusted that I had started to give back to the community what the community had given me; in short, dear me, we gave you the diploma, now get to work, make a life, find a job, and behave like a decent person.

At that time, it was a fact that if you were decent, you went to work and prepared to start a family, or with the money you earned, you paid for university; if you weren’t too eager to work, you continued studying and then discussed it again in 5 years or 10 or in an undefined later; if studying wasn't really your thing either, then you took arts or philosophy; the desperate cases went to DAMS instead.

Well, Elisa comes from DAMS, with a degree in classical double bass and in extra-European musical traditions. Now, what do you do in life with two degrees, in classical double bass and in extra-European musical traditions? She, for example, ends up playing punk in a speck of little bands that didn’t even survive the first rehearsal in the bassist’s home basement. At least until, fed up with everything and everyone, she leaves that dead-end road, finds a job, and with that finances her musical passion, becoming a one-woman band, basically someone who does everything alone: sings, plays the guitar, the drums and assorted percussions all at the same time.

How does a one-woman band sound and especially how does Elisa sound? Essentially blues with an attitude, and not just a punk attitude. From punk comes the do-it-yourself philosophy, and that's how, in 10 years, Elisa lines up three albums, some singles, mini albums and splits all strictly homemade with few means and tons of passion and at the end of every concert, before the last note fades and the spotlight dims, she thanks the sparse spectators and "If you want to support me, there's a table at the back with my records, free offer, thanks again really and see you next time."

Until in 2021, those from Area Pirata noticed her; for those not cult devotees, what Area Pirata is, is quickly explained, the best thing to happen to Italian record stores since the Electric Eye of Claudio Sorge. And if it's true as it is that everything begets something, from here comes "Countin' the Blues", the album.

But first, in 2020, there was also "Countin' the Blues", the book, and that’s where I start, from the fact that I've always heard about the fathers of blues, about Robert Johnson and Skip James, Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly and Son House, but the mothers, where are the mothers? And when Muddy Waters sings about the blues having a son, he means the blues is a woman, right? And if blues is the devil's music and the devil is a woman, then blues is a woman, right? So, where are the women of the blues, those who 100 and more years ago sang and played the blues even better than the fathers? Does anyone know Mamie Smith or has listened to her "Crazy Blues" or imagines that without both the blues would probably have survived less than a fern planted in the middle of the Gobi?

I exempt myself, admitting total ignorance of the subject.

So, Elisa starts from here and with a lively and informal tone, that goes hand in hand with the care and dedication she has put into the writing and her deep knowledge of the subject, introduces 11 women of the blues – Bertha Chippie Hill, Ma Rainey, Lucille Bogan, Alberta Hunter, Lottie Kimbrough, Bessie Smith, Sippie Wallace, Memphis Minnie, Elizabeth Cotten, Victoria Spivey, and Geeshie Wiley – and for each a song in its own significant way, ranging from sexuality to religion, from body to soul, from the danger of being a woman to the proud claim of being one, and involving in the work about twenty other artists, each with their own personal baggage of experience and reflection.

What is the purpose, if any, of such a book? For me, I’ll put it this way, it helps me clear away quite a bit of ignorance on the subject and in the end, I don’t know what to think when Elisa, sweating the proverbial seven shirts, struggles hugely to draft a specific half-page bibliography – in Italy no sign of life, the most interesting contribution I seem to infer is that of Angela Davis, "Blues Legacies and Black Feminism", from which Elisa takes various excerpts, translating them herself, the earlier do-it-yourself philosophy; it helps me realize that being a woman is often a more wearing job than being a miner and never has a schedule, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; it helps confirm for me that the “female question” is still open today as it was 100 years ago, in Italy and elsewhere, and that even if it's called a “female question” it is almost always a “male question”.

And did I have to spend 16 euros to read all this from Elisa? No, in many ways it wasn’t necessary, but in the end, the book left me with a positive feeling, that I read 200 pages to learn about the life, death, and miracles of the women of the blues and found myself in front of about twenty artists who shared with me spontaneously and immediately, sometimes with a smile and sometimes with regret, their experience, however small it was.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, I also spent 10 euros to hear them sung, always by Elisa, always the same things, since, after the book, in 2021 the album was released. Because Elisa did DAMS, had she done economics and business, with a clever marketing move she would have combined the two media and multiplied the profit thanks to the combined effect of economies of scale and financial leverage; but then I can hardly explain all this to someone who graduated from DAMS.

So the album, which like the book is a half surprise.

Side A in pure Elli De Mon style, guitar, slide, and bottleneck that take center stage and then distortion and fuzz tones break in and steal the scene, the drums kick in, and all the percussive crazy devices wrap around Elli's boots, generating a revelry that's as much blues as it is punk'n'roll: the only comparison that comes to mind is George Thorogood replacing Chuck Berry with Poison Ivy, ditching the solos and spitting out blues more vampiric than demonic and as hard as stones in 3-minutes-3. The initial sequence from “Prove It On Me Blues” to “Shave'em Dry” is one that anyone should listen to at least once, as the early work of the White Stripes or even better that of the Black Keys should be listened to, then pick up a guitar and keep the blues alive the same way over the centuries and so be it. Anyway, Thorogood has an entire band behind him, White Stripes and Black Keys are 2, while Elli does everything alone and hearing the wall of sound she manages to create when assaulting Alberta Hunter or Lucille Bogan songs seems unbelievable; and “Shave'em Dry” is in all respects one of the most devastating things that happened to me last year, worth for both Bogan’s original and for Elli's splendid rendition. Eventually, Elli dusts off her degree in extra-European musical traditions, puts away the guitar, picks up the sitar and dilruba, and closes as better couldn’t be with an acidic "Dope Head Blues" that seems to descend in a straight line from an interesting and beautiful work from 2017, “Blues Tapes: The Indian Sessions”, where Elli gives free rein to her passion for oriental music.

The B side, however, is what surprises: Elli puts down the electric guitar, no more amplification, no more drums, just voice and guitar and the frantic punk-blues gives way to strictly traditional and acoustic folk all finger-picking of absolute classics like “Freight Train”, “When The Levee Breaks” and “Trouble in Mind” or the unknown and delightful “Wayward Girl Blues”; no more Thorogood or White Stripes or Black Keys, to give the idea here you need Elizabeth Cotten and Memphis Minnie and their approach to guitar, as wacky as it is revolutionary, so revolutionary that it has now been raised to the status of tradition. And if this B side were an open door to the future and the arrival of a new way of understanding her being a one-woman band, it would truly be a great thing.

The album ends here, while on the CD another remake of a little-known track, “Last Kind Words”, closes it all the same way “Dope Head Blues” closes side A of the vinyl, except that “Last Kind Words” is truly a reprise from “Blues Tapes”.

In any case, the fact remains that I spent 36 euros and I don't know a whit more about all this matter, I know about ten more songs and just as many musicians, but what this blues really is, besides 12 bars imprinted in the memory or noted on a piece of paper, remains pitch black. Was it worth it? Absolutely worth it.

Also because, as Elli always repeats to those who praise her as a phenomenal woman of the blues, “What can I know about blues, I who was born and raised in a bourgeois family in Veneto?”

Elisa De Munari or Elli De Mon, however, a great one.