Off-spring, extended family. The further you get away from the roots of the family, yes, the blood line continues, but the further you get away from the roots of the family the further you get away from the roots of the Blues. Today in Austin, Texas or Clarksdale, Mississippi, in this new millennium, it's a long, long way away from Bessie Smith's down home of 1923. You are a cultural liar, charlatan, thief. I think about this stuff a lot.
Many folks do.
A couple of weeks ago the Sunday New York Times ran a front page story about the scarcity of real Blues People still alive and practicing the art in the Delta. In the birthplace of Delta Blues, the New York Times had a hard time finding blues. A few are still there, but they are old and dying. They are the relics. They play the festivals in the summer, they sale a few CDs in Japan, they return home to work on the truck farms.