THE BLUES MAP

LIVING THE BLUES
PERFORMING THE BLUES


Born of love and love betrayed, of holiness and sin, the pleasures and the pains of the flesh, the experience of tragedy, comedy, drunkenness, despair, desolation, and pure joy: it is the Blues.

Jaime Lutzo and Heimo Lattner started to draw a family tree tracing the African American origins of the music, from its early development as secular entertainment and spiritual fortification, to the many stylistic dimensions that emerged from regional differentiations. Traveling archivists were the first to take an interest in recording it, but as the home record player became the standard, the Blues became a top-seller.

The 90-minute lecture is built around a number of examples from Youtube, highlighting the stylistic progress of the music mirrored in socio-political developments, as well as the changing public image of the performer brought about by an increasingly lucrative relationship with the recording industry.

The journey begins in the Mississippi Delta during the mid-nineteenth century with the "Father of the Blues" Mr. W.C. Handy and the “Mother of the Blues” Mrs. Ma Rainey.

> > see also BLUES RADIO PROGRAM