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 or retention of the original culture. In this context, it is common to quote the two opposite positions, represented by the theories of E. Franklin Frazier, on the one hand, and of Melville…

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 19^th century?  If I claim furthermore that the epithet “the blues” has become less and less appropriate to denominate what has been recorded and played in the decades after the first commercial recording, I understand that at this point you are shocked and you start throwing…

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 on a pedestal, for the historic aura of the latter testifies more of current than of past values.  Likewise, in the history of the pre and early blues the less known is not a fortiori less relevant, on the contrary. There too the fine-tooth combing of extant…

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 something they live but something they do  – which makes all the difference in the world. What…