Life, Death and the Blues: In search of authentic blues

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Can a man who is beige really get the blues?

Raoul Bhaneja, a self-described "beige" Canadian actor musician whose ethnic background is half Indian and half Irish, sets out to answer this question in Life, Death and the Blues – and plays some mean harmonica solos along the way.

But does he really dig deeply into the trending topic of cultural appropriation in music – or does he only dig himself a deeper hole while trying to showcase his sensitivity?

No one questions Bhaneja's blues bona fides. Since 1998, the charismatic Toronto stage actor (Hamlet Solo) has led a band called Raoul and the Big Time, which has released five albums and won a number of awards from Canada's blues community.

If Life, Death and the Blues has an authenticity problem, it's not about a man of Bhaneja's extraction playing a musical style that emerged from African-American communities in the southern United States and was fuelled by oppression.

What does feel phoney about this concert hybrid, directed by Eda Holmes, is that Bhaneja attempts to make it seem as if he were figuring out this problem in real time, over the course of the concert, rather than that being truthful with the audience that he is presenting the results of an investigation.

Divine Brown, the Juno-winning R&B singer, plays an Ebony-reading backup singer who acts as interlocutor, poking Bhaneja about his assertion he's a "natural-born bluesman" given he comes from a middle-class background, once held a diplomatic passport, is fluent in German and only had his heart broken once (at 13).

Bhaneja, meanwhile, plays the naif – cracking politically incorrect jokes in a self-conscious manner or making Brown read a John Keats ballad about a femme fatale, La Belle Dame sans Merci, to show that even Romanic poets got the blues.

It's a pity Bhaneja has to fake being insensitive for sake of structure, because once he starts talking about his family's roots as Sindhi Hindus who found themselves on the wrong side in the partition of India in 1947, and how his father arrived in Montreal on a cargo ship that floated down the St. Lawrence River, we start to explore fruitful territory. This sequence culminates with him singing a lullaby that his father sang to him in his mother tongue, which Brown overlays with a bluesy rendition of the English translation. The Ganges and the Mississippi briefly flow together – and it is musically transporting.

Equally compelling is the subsequent complication of the audience's desire to see harmony prevail – and people neatly compartmentalized into their family histories. "It's a nice song, but it's not me," Bhaneja shrugs, in a moment of honest loneliness most Canadians who have ever dug into their roots will be able to relate to.

Through projections, beautifully designed by Cameron Davis, Bhaneja attempts a few more earnest explorations in the form of a PowerPoint travelogue – taking us along on a visit to L.A. to visit Paul Oscher, a harmonica player who became the first white member of Muddy Waters' band in 1967; or to original blues landmarks in Chicago's South Side (though he is too afraid to get out of his cab).

Full points to Bhaneja for trying to unravel the complex roots of the blues and examine his own racism, but the play doesn't always connect the dots. A section about Bad News Brown, a harmonica-playing hip-hop MC who was murdered in Montreal in 2011, is heartfelt, but oddly disconnected from the overall discussion – and feels completely out of place when Bhaneja starts jokingly adding sexual asides into the gospel number that Brown sings in tribute.

Life, Death and the Blues is billed as a theatre/concert hybrid – and while the theatre still has problems to riddle out as it embarks on a two-year, cross-country tour (it will be in Winnipeg at Prairie Theatre Exchange in January, and the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton in February), you won't find anyone complaining about the concert part.

Bhaneja and his backing band, comprised of Jake Chisholm, Tom Bona and Chris Banks, are committed and talented bluesmen, while the charming Brown brings down the house, especially with her big gospel number. I'd like to name the song and tell you its origins, but because the program doesn't list any of the songs titles or composers, I can't. For a show largely concerned with issues of appropriation, this is a significant lacuna.