The bluesman : the musical heritage of black men and women in the Americas / Julio Finn ; illustrations by Willa Woolston.
| Author/creator | Finn, Julio |
| Format | Book |
| Publication Info | London : Quartet Books, 1986. |
| Description | 256 pages, 8 pages of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction -- Origins: what is the blues? Africana Americana -- Haiti: the invisible religion. Voodoo defined as a religion ; God's basement ; Praised be the Lord ; Black power in the Black house -- Jamaica: my name is Obeah. Rastafarian sunrise -- Cuba: the house of images. The rolling stones ; Black religion: white faces ; The secret society of Naniguismo ; The devil is a smart fellow -- Brazil: Obatala in the backlands. 'We had palmares!' ; Candomble -- The drum -- The dance -- Hoodoo on the bayous. The man without a name ; What the man without a name brought with him ; The voodoo queen of New Orleans ; The voodoo ceremony ; High John the conqueroo ; Wangas and mojos ; Hoodoo in Black American folklore ; The white hoodoos ; Hoodoo man blues -- The saints and the hoodoos. Hoodooing the hoodoo man ; The white shepherd and the black sheep ; The rise of the Black church ; Spirituals: the sacred metaphor ; Dealin' with the devil -- The initiations. Blue hoodoo man blues ; Can't you hear me when I call? ; The bluesman as artist ; My black name ; The road ; The load ; Jookin' the blues ; How the bluesman casts his spell ; Robert Johnson at the crossroads ; Legba: master of the crossroads ; Magic, music and possession ; Transculturation: Black and White blues ; The blue princess ; The bluesman's greatest song -- Glossary. |
| Abstract | This book is a meticulously researched study of the roots, spiritual, social and anthropological, of the Afro-American musical form known as the blues. Despite its being arguably the twentieth century's most influential popular art form, the blues' significance and a lot of its vocabulary remain obscure for the majority of its millions of listeners. The author remedied the situation with a learned and wide-ranging survey of the subject, embracing African animist religion, the slave trade, voodoo, hoodoo, the early country blues and its modern urban electric equivalent. The major figures in the music and, most importantly, in the African-American tradition generally, such as Macandal, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Marie Laveau, are all given their rightful place in the history of the blues' development and the book culminates in a moving study of the music's greatest exponent, Robert Johnson, the very personification of the book's title. |
| General note | Includes index. |
| LCCN | gb 85037554 |
| ISBN | 0704325233 : |