"Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music," by Adam Gussow (preview)

[@wayne00k]

Very happy to see your book published in paperback too! Love the blues. Love the harmonica. Love perspectives of history that are anchored in both the past and the present. Looking forward to reading this! P.S. Adam, Love the lessons you share as well - Thank You!

[@JayMoonah]

I received the book a few days ago and I'm about halfway through. So far I have learned a lot that challenged my assumptions and what I thought I knew about the origins of the blues. I really appreciate the balanced way you present the various perspectives. You clearly have a point of view but you are not dismissive of those who you might have a different one -- this is a skill we should all try to develop, particularly in this day and age! I am hoping to attend your online conversation on Nov. 14 with Sugar Brown hosted by the Toronto Blues Society (facebook.com/events/825671161532792/ for anyone else interested). In the meantime I wish you good health and great success with the book!

[@damfs2]

Wonderful frame work for dialog. I look forward to reading it. I've been listening to the blues since I was teen. I've often been amazed at the diverse audiences. Growing up in the delta, I saw lots of poverty. Music and sports were the only things in my town that brought people together for a few hours. After the shows, everyone would part ways and go back to their particular neighborhoods. Strangely, I see the same dynamics evoling in some forms of rap music.

[@m.s.bellowsjr.5296]

Mr. Gussow -- I just learned that Mr. Satan passed on from COVID. Damn, man, I'm sorry! Sincere condolences.

[@lise-annedore8935]

Hi Adam! Thanks for the info on your book! Way to go! Sounds interesting.

[@sargfowler9603]

We're subscribed cos you play the harmonica like no one else!

[@ajnestler2304]

Thank you Adam for having the courage to take on this conversation!! It is like the analogy that if I wear yellow tinted glasses 🤓 every thing appears yellow. A white man from Tennessee being open to the possibility that we are all connected by this Grace.

[@heiko6983]

Thanxx Adam for your new book. I‘ll read it like I read your story about You and Mr. Satan. You are a rare type Adam, being able to translate musical perception into mental language. I like your playing but you moreover are the one for me who can tell the blues. By the way, I am a white german guy in my fifties and I love it to say hello to the little black thing in me when I am sitting with my piano playing the Blues

[@thesavagekiwi3492]

Sounds like an interesting read. I believe that after over a century no one should feel they own the blues today, but everyone should understand the path it has walked and respect the people that feel it is part of them.

[@JamieTheMagicBoy]

This looks really interesting, Adam!

[@CiroMarcilio]

Very good, from Brazil 🇧🇷

[@liamakesongs]

Sounds very interesting. I'll definitely check it out on Oct. 19th!

[@thespanisharmy7991]

It's been 7 month you never upload

[@rongiesecke5168]

Hoping to read it.

[@claudedumont8674]

Awesome

[@305western6]

Review his own book, there is the first alarm bell right , there, a common trait with this guy .The problem here is that ordinary folk don't see through him as we do. Just take stock and check him out , you need to understand what is and has been going on here.

[@blues3824]

Most people today playing "blues" just plain haven't got it right. However, there are a few bands out of Russia, Eastern Europe, France, Germany, the Face Blues Band with Harpin' Joe in Japan and others that have it right. Even some in the USA.

[@bossanovaboy]

Never heard of a Russian blues band in my life and I am very skeptical about it. Almost all of the American great players are already dead but they still play a decent blues although very academic.

[@J.M.Stigner]

@@bossanovaboy can you expand on what you mean by academic? A foundation in music surely requires some 'academic' listening or studying, pure intuitive expression on an instrument without it isn't going to amount to much. Kirk fletcher is academic and plays a more than decent blues, but those he has studied also studied and stole.

[@bossanovaboy]

@@J.M.Stigner I mean academic in the good sense of the word but most of them really are lacking harmonic, melodic and rhythmic innovation. Of course I do not pretend to know all the American players that are worth listening too.

[@noahbearfoot2248]

we need to take the color out of the Blues - Stevie Ray Vaughan

[@bossanovaboy]

Yeah, man ALL blues matter!

[@Voltanaut]

1st baby boy

[@buntafujiwara3586]

To me it seems that blues music has nothing at all to do with race, and everything at all to do with culture.

[@Modernbluesharmonica]

That's a fair point. An excellent point, in fact. Sometimes, of course, we casually link the two concepts in one sentence--as when some talk about "African American blues culture" or even "white blues culture." What your comment might help us do is understand white blues culture, such as it is, as a continuum rather than a reified thing. At one extreme, white blues culture might be--for example--a "blues jam" at a cafe in Avignon that consists of a coterie of non-black, Euro and UK players who have never seen a live performance by, or met, much less jammed or worked with, an African American blues performer, and whose tastes run towards British-style blues rock. (I've attended such a jam.) At the other extreme would be the touring band of somebody like Rick Estrin or Kim Wilson, or the cultural proficiencies manifested by players like Martin Lang and Bob Corritore: white blues players who have worked and traveled with a range of serious African American blues players, and who might thus be considered thoroughly encultured in the sounds, styles, and attitudes of African American blues. They've been culturally blackened, in a sense, and profoundly so.

[@buntafujiwara3586]

@@Modernbluesharmonica Thanks for your reply. 'Culturally "blackened"'? I know what you are saying, but I wouldn't put it like that. The mixing of cultural ideas is the point, not the colour of their skin. I live in a country where the indigenous people have 'black' skin and none of them were ever a part of the culture that the African-American folk who were the roots of this great art from. Their 'blackness' (in the sense that you imply above) could never 'blacken' an 'unblackened' person in the same manner, because they come from a completely different culture, despite having the same skin. I hope this type of terminology sounds just as irrelevant to you when I employ it as does to me when you do. I am not certain that you completley got my point, but if may - I'd like to suggest that people consciously refrain from casually linking the two concepts of culture and race. I believe this simple distinction is essential for our thinking and our discourse about the many different human cultures that ever have been and ever will be.

[@bossanovaboy]

All due respect for your book, but whether you like it or not the blues ceased to be "black" music longtime ago. Here in Atlanta GA 98% of the blues fans are white. The blues is the big American contribution to the world culture and musically spoken this is African pentatonic scale plus European harmony, so I could say it is at least 50/50.

[@Modernbluesharmonica]

Did you watch the video? I talk about the way that the blues audience changed from almost entirely black to mostly white between 1960 and 1970. Not sure if you actually watched the video before commenting. You should do that.

[@bossanovaboy]

@@Modernbluesharmonica Yes I did.This is my opinion on the subject and not necessarily an answer to you.