Blues People

Blues People: The Negro Experience In White America And The Music That Developed From It by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), 1963.

Read in May 1977.

I recently came across this classic study of jazz and blues on one of our book shelves and took it down to look at it. I remember reading it very well. It was a time in my life when I was very interested in black music including blues, jazz and reggae. I had been buying lots of albums at that time in those areas. This book helped me understand what I was listening to at that time. Becky read this book back in 1971 and was also influenced by it.

I was in school at that time and really looked forward to the end of the semester so I could read what I wanted to and not what the professor was assigning although I did read a lot of great books in many of those classes. Nothing really prepared me for LeRoi Jones.

I have this book sitting on the table in front of me and I'm ready to read it again but this time in the context of the current Black Lives Matter campaign for racial justice in America. Much of the book is devoted to the social experience of African-American people that led to the development of jazz and the blues and their influences on American culture and history. It also clearly demonstrates the horrors of slavery and it's bigoted aftermath that led to the desperation of the blues.

I'm looking forward to experiencing this book again.

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