One of the recurrent topics for debate among blues aficionados is the degree of African retentions. The discussion reflects the broader theme of the social-cultural position of African Americans in the American society, and relates to questions of assimilation, acculturation […]
Do I sound provocative? What if I contend moreover that strictly speaking the blues were denatured the very minute their first notes were put on paper sometime around the turn of the first decade of the 19th century? If I […]
I have always had a soft spot for persons and events which for whatever reason have fallen out of grace in history books. Often, their story discloses much more of their environment than the historic relics which have been promoted […]
Introduction & acknowledgement In his book “The Bluesman: The Musical Heritage of Black Men and Women in the Americas” (1992), Julio Finn, himself a blues musician wrote: “[White blues performers] can never be bluespeople […] because the blues is not […]
“Black Voices, White Visions.” Such was the subtitle Marybeth Hamilton (2007) reserved for her book “In Search of the Blues”, in which she argues that the concept of the Delta Blues emerged in the late twentieth century mainly as the […]
President Theodore Roosevelt once called the Chautauqua “the most American thing in America.” At the latter part of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth century, the Chautauqua was one of the most popular shows in rural America. Though […]
The circus brings to mind feelings of joy, laughter and amazement sprinkled with glitter, and spiced with the smell of sawdust. We see lions, elephants and clowns, and we hear the cries of relief when one trapeze artist catches his […]
Acknowledgements: I sincerely thank Kevin Nutt of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, and the Alabama Folklife Association for putting at my disposal the writings of Doug Seroff and Lynn Abbott, published in: “Tributaries, Journal of the Alabama Folklife […]
Acknowledgments:I thank Robert Sacré and Alan Balfour for putting at my disposal earlier publications. Ray Templeton, Paul Petraitis and John Clarke kindly pointed me to interesting song recordings.—————————————————————-When I told my 12 year young daughter, Blijke, after having watched the […]
I admit straight away that, while the blues touch my deepest emotions, rap music does not strike a chord in me. Having reached the age where retirement is no longer an abstract notion, I can hide behind the (cheap, and […]
