Blues From Above

Mighty Mo Rodgers is a performer with a lot on his mind. And he’s not shy about talking about it. Or singing about it.

Keyboardist-singer-songwriter Rodgers, who’s playing Sunday at Common Grounds in Northridge, calls his music “existential blues.”

“That’s what I call it, cause to me, blues is very magical,” says Rodgers. “It came from God; it’s the only music that was created in America.”

Rodgers draws a distinction between “the blues” and “blues.”

“ ‘The blues’ is a commercial commodity, but ‘blues’ is existential cause it’s part of your beingness,” he says. “Blues cannot be bought and sold, it’s the soul of African people.”

The former Cal State Northridge philosophy major says blues was the outgrowth of North American slave owners taking drums away from the newly arrived Africans.

“For Africans, drums are more that just an instrument; the drum is in essence what the African is,” says Rodgers. “And this is what they took from the slaves.”

Rodgers asserts that the drum was used for religious rituals as well as for aesthetic and communicative purposes by the Africans.

“In Latin America and South America, the slaves were permitted to keep their drums, so the music from those countries has polyrhythmic patterns,” Rodgers says.

But the slave that came to North America had to invent a new style, and that was blues, Rodgers says.

“As a people, we were totally eviscerated,” he says. “They [the Africans] lost their names, their identity, their culture and they had to reinvent themselves.

“Blues is metaphysical music. It’s a gift from God given to the African people to deny their nothingness.

“Blues was their moral armor and it freed them,” he says. “All from people who were an absolute commodity.”

Rodgers originally comes from East Chicago, Ind. After working around the country as an organist, he came to Los Angeles in the late 1960s.

Around that time, he recorded with Brenton Wood. That’s his Farfisa electronic organ solo on Wood’s 1967 Top 10 hit, “Gimme Little Sign.”

During the course of his career, he’s also worked with such blues men as T-Bone Walker, Bobby Bland and the blues duo Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. In fact, he produced an album by McGhee and Terry in the early 1970s.

Later, he left the music biz for a time and went back to college. But now he’s back and he’s playing blues.

Rodgers admits that while African Americans have drifted away from blues in the last 30 years and moved toward soul and rap, ironically it has been a white audience that has kept blues alive. But Rodgers says it’s critical that black people come back to blues.

“Like Spielberg had to make the movie ‘Schindler’s List,’ and Francis Ford Coppola had to produce ‘The Godfather,’ Africans have to play blues,” he says.

And Rodgers is doing his part.

His blues demo is getting some industry feelers.

It includes titles such as “Truth, Justice and the Blues,” “Heaven’s Got the Blues” and “Talkin’ Trash.” But the standout track is a bouncy little tune called “Gone Fishin’.”

Rodgers is wary of people attempting to change his music or take it in another direction.

“I’m a stickler, I have to do it my way,” he says. “I refuse to compromise the vision I see.”

Mighty Mo Rodgers plays his existential blues Sunday night at Common Grounds, 9250 Reseda Blvd., Northridge. No cover. (818) 882-3666. Also Sept. 10 at B.B. King’s, Universal CityWalk. (818) 622-5464.