Looking up at Down : The Emergence of Blues Culture

Barlow, William

ISBN 10: 0877225834 / ISBN 13: 9780877225836

Published by Temple University Press, 1989

About this Item

Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # GRP97761017

Bibliographic Details

Title: Looking up at Down : The Emergence of Blues ...

Publisher: Temple University Press

Publication Date: 1989

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis:

Takes a cultural and historic look at the evolution of the blues from post-Reconstruction to the 1920s

Reviews:

In this encyclopedic work of interest to specialists rather than general readers, Barlow, who teaches radio, television and film at Howard University, traces the blues as music and culture from its origins on cotton plantations in the 1890s through migration to urban ghettos in the 1920s, to its commercialization in today's recording studios. Basing much of his study on interviews with blues musicians and scholars, Barlow analyzes the music and examines in depth the lives of the men and women who wrote and performed it. He devotes sections to the major blues personalities and includes numerous examples of lyrics, demonstrating that the blues, a powerful emotional outlet for an oppressed people, also tells the story of African-American resistance to white domination.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Many books have been written about the blues, but few with the depth and comprehensiveness of this one. Barlow (radio, television, and film, Howard Univ.) divides his subject into rural and urban blues. Whether exploring the Chicago Blues, the Memphis Blues, or the St. Louis Blues, he makes good use of rare recordings, oral histories, and interviews to trace the genre's powerful emergence. The book offers a fresh view of the way the blues helped Afro-Americans survive in a hostile social environment. This cultural and musical history is an important balance to the more biographical approach of books like Barry Lee Pearson's Sounds So Good to Me: The Bluesman's Story (Univ. of Pennsylvania Pr., 1984).
- Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Lib., Inc., Amherst, Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.