Knee-level shotgun blast doesn't make it authentic

BB King's music captured a life of hardship.

The world is a whirr with notions of authenticity ... we seek this elusive quality in music, fashion literature and movies.

Like that mysterious element known as "cool", authenticity appears to just exist without need for explanation. Either something has it or does not - unless the marketing team have decided to create it.

Music has been trading in this quality for a long time and now a performer without a traumatic back story will struggle to appear authentic. The stint in rehab, the succession of failed relationships, failed failures, lost weekends and tales of addiction and despair are now essential to having a media profile and getting noticed.

There seems to be a strange sort of race to have the most tragic story in the chase for authenticity. That is not to diminish the trials many artists go through in order to create their music but what is now almost a compulsory requirement to have had a really tough time in the face of general indifference has become an essential accessory.

The question: "Can white men sing the blues" still rattles the cage of authenticity. The lives and music of people such as BB King, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson have captured the hardship of being a black man in a white man's world, where danger and prejudice dictate life.

Can an Englishman from the Thames Delta (Surrey and Sussex) really understand the reality of being born out of slavery and create authentic blues? Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton have all made their fortunes out of taking the old tunes and reframing them for modern audiences.

The recent claim that Led Zeppelin nicked riffs and lyrics from poor black musicians and did not share the resulting royalties has again raised the question of who can claim a musical style and when does authenticity become pastiche.

Authenticity has become a quest for something of substance in a world in which so much is a contrivance, simply a veneer created by marketing hype that covers up the lack of real experience and undermines the ground that authenticity used to stand on.

We have "authentic" expensive recreations of old guitars that have been purposefully knocked about to make them look as if they have had years on the road before they even leave the factory. This created fictional history can be purchased as a shortcut on all the time and hard playing that makes a 50s Stratocaster sound like it does without the buyer putting in the effort.

The fashion for the distressed finish on furniture is another example of an attempt to sell an authentic look that is completely artificial. The prices for these pieces of furniture are often equally distressing.

Torn jeans have come back around in fashion. I assume the rips and holes are meant to give the denim a lived-in look without having to go through the hassle of actually wearing them out. These serially battered pants command high prices despite or perhaps because they have holes at the knees.

Last time this fashion trend came round some bright sparks took to buying new denim jeans and jackets then shooting them with a shotgun to give them "authenticity" and charged a fortune for the tattered products.

Authentic authenticity is becoming harder and harder to find amid the fiction and fabrication of marketing. But if imitation is indeed the most sincere form of flattery then authenticity will be found somewhere lurking in the wings, waiting to take a bow.

Terry Sarten is a Whanganui-based writer and musician - feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz or www.telsarten.com