Here's hoping you've just had a holly, jolly! But after the joyous celebrations, lurking on the other side of cider and good cheer, each of us senses the dark side of this season. There is want in the midst of plenty, depression in the land of advantage, death as companion to every birth, and paradoxical pain for every gain. No, we don't need Elvis and his Blue, Blue Christmas to remind us of life's jangled chords. But his song does provide an opening anthem for a protracted, personalized, biopsy of the blues in folk music.

Just call it early winter funk. This examination is, of course, a prelude to the Harry Manx concert on January 18.

Historically, there is a local obsession with blues music. Fondness for it was an impetus for Blues at the Bow. So what's the fatal attraction in this gloomy music? Why is it mainstream in Southern Alberta? And why is blues considered folk music? Let's begin at the end.

Blues is folk music because it originated with common people. It began without instrumentation as the field holler of slaves, chain gangs and labourers. It is original music by and for the worker. You can hear its equivalent in the jog-trot rant of soldiers on a ten-mile hike. Or you can hear a holler in its original form by listening to the song, Po Lazarus on the popular CD, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

The field holler gave blues its distinctive verse form and meter. Most blues lyrics are written in an irregular iambic pentameter, the rhythm of ordinary speech. The verse form is a simple. There is a first verse hook, that verse is repeated, then a third verse attaches with end rhyme and a variation in theme and tone. That's, technically, the blues.

But it is blues' lyrics that solder our souls to the songs. They are personal and, yes, even sensual. There are themes of betrayal, lost love, loneliness, heartache, and emotional hunger. The words tell stories of unemployment, imprisonment, exile, and homelessness. And in the midst of our plenty, comfort and peace, blues songs peel off the calluses and help us feel human pain.