‘The kids feel it’ — summer camp has kids singing the blues

What is the blues? The blues is pain set to music.

Take “I’d Rather Go Blind,” the 1967 classic written by blues queen Etta James. Beaten by her drunken foster father, James spent time in Cook County Jail for forging checks to support her longtime heroin habit. You can hear it in her voice.

But what about singers who are not Etta James, such as a high school student from the northwest suburbs?

“Something toooooold me, it was oh-oh-ver,” sings Nyrobi, 17, slowly, in a thin, wavering voice, on a small stage Wednesday on the first floor of Columbia College, 1014 S. Michigan. “When I saw youuuuu with her, talking. Something deep down in my sooooul….”

Jackie Scott interrupts.

“The woman is writing this song because she saw her man with another women,” says Scott, an imposing woman with a gold ring on her left hand that spells, “BLUES.” “Imagine you saw your boyfriend with another girl. You’re not going to be singing.”

And here she delivers a spot-on imitation of Nyrobi’s airy warble.

“You’re not going to do that, right?” Scott continues. “You’re going to push it out a little more.”

“SOMETHING TOLLLLLLD ME,” she belts, in a strong, loud voice. “IT WAS OHHHHHVER!”

Welcome to Day 3 of Blues Camp Chicago, where the world of summertime childhood fun meets the snap-brim hat and two-tone shoes discipline of blues musicianship. There are studio rehearsals, sound checks and sing-alongs, plus snacks, skating and a “sneaker ball.”

“We want them to be kids, of course. We want them to understand and appreciate blues as American roots music,” said Fernando Jones, the veteran Chicago blues man who founded Blues Camp Chicago 17 years ago.

About 80 campers, ages 5 through 17, from all over the country, take part in the five-day program. They perform several concerts — at Navy Pier, at Reggie’s blues club on South State — and are guided by 15 instructors and staff. Some kids arrive barely able to carry a tune; others are aspiring professionals — one brought along a pricey PRS guitar signed by Buddy Guy.

What is the blues? Not always sad. Muddy Waters “boasting and braying, preening like a peacock” in “Hoochie Coochie Man.” The question has been debated in Chicago for at least a century, since a 1917 copyright infringement trial where Judge George A. Carpenter famously quizzed Dominic LaRocca, “The Jazz Kid,” in federal court.

“May I ask,” the judge said, “what are the blues?”

“The blues is jazz,” LaRocca answered. “Jazz is the blues.”

Poet Langston Hughes dissected the blues again and again.

“When the shoe strings break/On both your shoes,” Hughes writes. “And you’re in a hurry—That’s the blues.”

I put the question to the blues kids.

“I personally think that the blues is just a mix of your emotions,” says Tristan, 10. “You put that into an instrument, a synthesizer or even a simple piano. Just your emotions flowing together to make beautiful music.”

The camp is free, funded by Jones’ Blues Kids Foundation, and Jones says that while applicants are required to create a video, there isn’t a culling process — Blues Camp Chicago accepts everyone who applies, across a range of age, talent and ability. Many have been coming for years.

Ricky, 10, who plays guitar, is here for his third year. What prompts an 8-year-old to go to blues camp?

“He heard about the camp and registered, and I can say he’s become a little blues head now,” says his mother, Nina Garcia-Carpintero, who has seen how the camp has affected him.

“An amazing camp where kids just create a bond with each other. Very sociable. He meets new friends all the time, keeps in touch with everyone. Beautiful friendships,” she said. “And musically, somehow, they all come together. He becomes very confident, feels very expressive as well. He genuinely feels the music. The kids feel it.”

How can a boy entering the fifth grade sing the blues?

“It’s funny, because one of the members from his band always says that, when he plays, it’s like he’s been through 10 marriages, five divorces and a bunch of kids,” says Garcia-Carpintero. “Mr. Jones has done such a great job with these kids. I can’t say enough.”

Jones stresses not just music, but manners, discipline and confidence.

“I was really shy,” says Nyrobi, in her eighth year. “It was really encouraging, opening you up.”

Did she mind being pushed to find her inner Etta James?

“It’s mentoring,” says Nyrobi, who plans to go to law school. “I’m still obviously learning. Seventeen years of life, so there’s not much heartbreak that can be drawn from it. It’s her life experience, to convey that to me, so I can do it in my voice.”