Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is getting a major dose of the blues, as some of the genre’s best known musicians gather at the White House for a concert tonight in honor of Black History Month.
Mick Jagger, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck are among the artists set to take the stage for the eighth installment of the “In Performance at the White House” concert series.
Obama met yesterday with the performers and their families, talking music, not politics, said two of the musicians, Keb Mo and Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews. They spoke with reporters during a break today from rehearsals at the White House.
Jagger told fans in a message yesterday on the social networking site Twitter that Obama “seemed really relaxed and happy.”
While Obama sang a line from Al Green’s 1971 hit “Let’s Stay Together” at a Jan. 19 fundraiser, the White House hasn’t announced plans for him to sing during tonight’s performance -- only to deliver remarks.
Keb Mo said, jokingly, that Obama would one day release a record to be called, “Now I Can Finally Get My Groove On.”
The performer said that, while blues music is important as a tradition for African Americans and Guy and King are “elder statesmen” who paved the way for others, white British musicians such as Jagger and Beck did as much as anyone to make the music popular with people of all races and nationalities.
First lady Michelle Obama, at a blues music clinic for students today at the White House ahead of the concert, said that the blues “are as deeply American -- and as deeply human - - as just about any form of music that we’ve got in this country” that “stirs our souls and it helps us rise above all our struggles.
‘Deeply Rooted’
‘‘And that’s why this music series is so deeply rooted in the American experience,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s why it has traveled from the Deep South into every part of the country and just about every form of music that we hear today.’’
The concert comes a day before Obama is to speak at the construction site for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, to open in 2015.
‘‘At the Crossroads: A History of the Blues in America’’ is to be streamed on the White House website beginning at 7:20 p.m. EST, and is to be broadcast on PBS stations on Feb. 27 at 9 p.m., according to a statement from the White House.
--Editors: Joe Sobczyk, Bob Drummond
To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net
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