Blue Chicago
Subtitle: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; University of Chicago Press
Published: May 28, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780226305684
Subjects: Blues; Sociology, Social Studies; Music/Songbooks; Music; Illinois; Popular Culture - General; United States - Midwest - Chicago; Social Science / Popular Culture; General; Blues (Music); Chicago; Nightclubs; Social aspects
First sentence: The Setting. Welcome to B.L.U.E.S., where every night of the week, taxicabs and chartered buses bring thrill-seekers to its unassuming yet strangely alluring North Halsted Street entrance.
Description: "In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest."--Jacket.