PBS高端访谈:坚持不懈的蓝调音乐家（在线收听）

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: singing the coronavirus blues. Jeffrey Brown revisits a musician who has met many challenges with song in the past, and now confronts one that is quite personal. The story is part of our ongoing American Creators series on rural arts and Canvas.

JEFFREY BROWN: Outside the Citadel nursing home in Salisbury, North Carolina, an uplifting one-woman performance. The singer, 63-year-old blues musician Pat Mother Blues Cohen.

PAT MOTHER BLUES COHEN, Musician: There's been like a huge outbreak of the coronavirus. And everybody's in their rooms. And everybody is afraid. And I want to do something that's going to brighten up somebody's day. And in brightening somebody else's day, it brightens my day also.

WOMAN: The citadel in Salisbury now considered the site of an outbreak.

JEFFREY BROWN: The nursing home is the scene of one of North Carolina's worst outbreaks of COVID-19. Health officials say the 160-bed facility has had more than 150 confirmed cases among residents and staff, one of the residents, Pat Cohen's 59-year-old brother, George. He first went into the home two years ago after suffering a stroke. He's not been diagnosed with COVID, but is mostly confined to his bed, and watches his sister perform through the window.

PAT MOTHER BLUES COHEN: My brother used to help me with my equipment that he would carry it to my car for me. And he was – I could always depend on him. So I'm doing the same thing for him.

JEFFREY BROWN: We first met Pat Cohen in 2014 at a gathering in Durham of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization that's supported more than 400 blues musicians around the South, mostly African-American, often rural, people like Ironing Board Sam, who briefly reached the spotlight, but never made it big, and eked out a living playing small clubs and busking on the streets. Music Maker helps these musicians meet basic needs and, for some, has gotten them back to performing paying gigs. Now, founder Tim Duffy says, the shows have stopped. The fear is real.

TIM DUFFY, Founder, Music Maker Relief Foundation: They're scared. When you live -- like, an average check is like $600 to $800 a month, sometimes as low as $400 a month. All the artists that we are working with, a lot of them are between 75 and 85 and have diabetes. They're highly intelligent. And so, like, they will tell me, if I make a mistake, I might die, if I touch the wrong thing. So, they're being very, very careful. But that's a lot of pressure to live under.

JEFFREY BROWN: A lot of artists and arts organizations are now looking to new models, like streaming...

TIM DUFFY: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: ... as a way to stay connected, also to possibly raise funds. Is that sort of thing possible for you and these artists?

TIM DUFFY: It's possible, but there's a great digital divide. They're elderly. They don't know how to use the devices. A lot of places are in rural communities that don't have the best Internet, so we can't do that.

JEFFREY BROWN: Pat Cohen was once a regular on the New Orleans scene. She lost her home during Hurricane Katrina, along with her professional connections. Music Maker helped her relocate to North Carolina and pick up her career. She was scheduled to perform at Jazz Fest earlier this month, in fact, and in Portugal later on. But now all the gigs are gone, the money not coming in.

PAT MOTHER BLUES COHEN: If all you do is sing or play an instrument, or whatever it is, you don't know what you're going to do, because, after this is over, if it's ever over -- you wonder if it's ever going to be over. You don't know how things are going to change. And you know it's going to change. Will there ever be live concerts again?

JEFFREY BROWN: She used to be paid to perform inside the nursing home. Now there's just singing outside to lift up her brother and others. Music Maker's Tim Duffy says it's another example of why the musicians he's worked with for 25 years deserve our respect and help.

TIM DUFFY: She just keeps on going. And now she literally has very little money. And she gets up the gumption to go out and sing for them and do something to help others with what she has. She has joy in her heart. She has music. And I think, in times of crisis, we look for our folk musicians to guide us. That's their role. They're bards.

JEFFREY BROWN: Pat Mother Blues Cohen puts it this way:

PAT MOTHER BLUES COHEN: Everybody has a currency, and everybody's currency is different. My currency is my voice. You don't have to do what I do, but do something nice for somebody else. And that makes you feel good. And that's contagious by itself.

JEFFREY BROWN: Blues, both sad and joyful, now comforting others in a time of pandemic. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jeffrey Brown.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And singing to her brother, that is special.

朱迪·伍德拉夫：今晚，我们来聊聊新冠期间唱蓝调音乐的话题。杰弗里·布朗再次拜访了一位音乐家，这位音乐家在唱歌之路上曾遭遇过无数挑战。他这次面临的挑战是更偏个人的。本期节目是乡村艺术集锦之《美国的创造者们》与帆布系列的部分内容。

杰弗里·布朗：在南卡州索尔兹伯里市城堡疗养院外，一位女子正进行着热烈的表演。她是今年63岁的蓝调音乐家科恩。

科恩，音乐家：疫情爆发的波及范围很广。大家都闭门不出、担惊受怕。我想做点什么，为大家的生活点去一丝光亮，这样也能让我自己感到幸福。

女：索尔兹伯里城堡疗养院被认为是疫情爆发的地点。

杰弗里·布朗：这家疗养院是北卡州疫情爆发最严重的地方。卫生工作人员表示，这里有160张床铺，但有150多个确诊病例，有的是老人，有的是工作人员。其中一位患者是科恩59岁的哥哥乔治。他第一次踏进这家疗养院是2年前中风之后。虽然他并未确诊新冠，但大多数时候只能待在床上，通过窗户看自己的妹妹表演。

科恩：我哥哥之前会帮我弄器械的事儿，他会帮我把器械搬到我的车上。我总是能靠着他。所以现在我要让哥哥靠着我。

杰弗里·布朗：我们第一次见到科恩是2014年在达拉谟音乐创客救助基金会的一次活动上。这是一个组织，该组织已经支持过400多位蓝调音乐家，遍布南方，大多是非裔美籍人。这些音乐家通常都是农村人，比如烫衣板山姆（Ironing Board Sam），他上过小舞台，但没有达到家喻户晓的程度。他靠在小俱乐部和街边卖艺来勉强谋生。酷乐大师帮助这些音乐家满足了基本需求，甚至还帮助一些人获得了上台表演的机会。该组织创始人蒂姆表示，演出已经停止了，因为真的很担心安全问题。

创始人蒂姆：他们很害怕，因为每个月只有600-800美元的收入，有时候只有400美元。我们合作的艺术家里，很多人年龄都在75-85之间，都有糖尿病。但他们都天资聪颖。所以他们会告诉我，如果做了错事就可能会死。所以他们都非常谨小慎微，压力很大。

杰弗里·布朗：很多艺术家和机构都在寻求新的模式，比如流媒体……

蒂姆：没错。

杰弗里·布朗：作为保持联系的一种方式，而且或许还能募集到资金。这对你和这些艺术家来说是可能的吗？

蒂姆：是可能的，但会有很大的数字鸿沟。他们年龄毕竟都大了，不知道怎么用电子设备。农村的很多地方，网络都不好，所以无法实现。

杰弗里·布朗：科恩是新奥尔良这里的常客。他在卡特里娜飓风期间流离失所，也断了之前业务上有联系的人。酷乐大师帮助她搬到了北卡州，重操旧业。她定于本月初在爵士音乐节上表演，之后还有葡萄牙的演出。但现在这些都没了，谋生的来源断了。

科恩：所有音乐圈的人都不知道咋办了，也不知道疫情啥时候才能彻底结束。也不知道会发生怎样的变故。但你知道变故是一定会来的。以后还会再有现场音乐会吗？

杰弗里·布朗：他之前在养老院演出是有报酬的。但现在她只能在外面唱歌来激励兄弟姐们。蒂姆说，这是音乐家需要尊重和帮助的又一个例子，25年来，他见过很多这样的例子。

蒂姆：她一直没有放弃。但现在她身无长物。现在她却有干劲儿走出去为其他人做些力所能及的事儿。她心里快乐无比。她有音乐相伴。在危难期间，我们通过民间的许多音乐人引领着我们。这是他们扮演的角色，他们如同吟游诗人一般。

杰弗里·布朗：科恩是这样说的：

科恩：每个人都有自己不同的饭碗，我的饭碗就是我的嗓音。大家不必做跟我一样的事情，但只要为其他人做些什么都好。这样会自我感觉良好，这样的善举本身也有感染性。

杰弗里·布朗：蓝调让人悲伤又快乐，可以在疫情期间抚慰人心。感谢收听杰弗里·布朗发回的报道。

朱迪·伍德拉夫：为自己的哥哥而唱，也好特别。