| Popis: |
This chapter sketches the outlines of Whose Blues?, framing it as a contemporary conversation between Black bluesism (blues as Black music, Black history, and Black cultural property) and blues universalism (blues as globalized culture and a scene of enlivening interracial cooperation). The author grounds his study in a moment of personal awakening prompted by a 2012 blues conference at which harmonica players Sugar Blue, Billy Branch, and other Chicago-area blues musicians voiced a litany of complaints about racial inequities and slights they had suffered over the years. The postmodern flux of contemporary blues registers in the wide range of discourses, both academic and vernacular, through which scholars, fans, musicians, teachers, and other cultural custodians seek to make sense of the music and its legacy. Finally, this chapter offers an overview of the book’s content in a series of brief synopses. (The chapters are called “bars” and there are twelve of them, so that the book’s structure replicates the 12-bar format of the blues’ most familiar musical structure.) |
