Description
Book SynopsisThe philosophy of the blues From B.B. King to Billie Holiday, Blues music not only sounds good, but has an almost universal appeal in its reflection of the trials and tribulations of everyday life.
Trade Review“Blues – Philosophy for Everyone provides illuminating essays from this philosophy of the blues. It brings together intriguing insights into the connection between the blues and philosophy that will appeal to music lovers and philosophers alike.” (SirReadaLot.org, 1 February 2012)
“Blues? Philosophy? Ludwig Wittgenstein as the Hoochie Koochie man? Why not? There's a crossover: blues and philosophy both exist to make sense of it all, to find meaning in the vicissitudes of living. Leading the fly out of the fly bottle doesn't have to end up as a treatise, it can also end up as a song. As this book forms one the Philosophy for Everyone series, with titles such as Cannabis -- What Were We Just Talking About? or Dating -- Flirting With Big Ideas, we know that it is not going to be too po-faced in its approach to putting this popular art form under the philosophical lens. And if the other books in this series are as good as this one, then I'll be searching them out, too ... The writing here is of a high order and the essays yield insights galore about the blues in its social, historical and cultural contexts and its personal and universal appeal.” (Metapsychology Online Reviews, 27 April 2012)
Table of ContentsForeword x
Bruce Iglauer It Goes a Little Something Like This…: An Introduction to Blues – Philosophy for Everyone xvi
Jesse R. Steinberg and Abrol Fairweather
Acknowledgments xxviii
PART 1 HOW BLUE IS BLUE? THE METAPHYSICS OF THE BLUES 1
1 Talkin' To Myself Again: A Dialogue on the Evolution of the Blues 3
Joel Rudinow
2 Reclaiming the Aura: B. B. King in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 16
Ken Ueno
3 Twelve-Bar Zombies: Wittgensteinian Reflections on the Blues 25
Wade Fox and Richard Greene
4 The Blues as Cultural Expression 38
Philip Jenkins
PART 2 THE SKY IS CRYING: EMOTION, UPHEAVAL, AND THE BLUES 49
5 The Artistic Transformation of Trauma, Loss, and Adversity in the Blues 51
Alan M. Steinberg, Robert S. Pynoos, and Robert Abramovitz
6 Sadness as Beauty: Why it Feels So Good to Feel So Blue 66
David C. Drake
7 Anguished Art: Coming Through the Dark to the Light the Hard Way 75
Ben Flanagan and Owen Flanagan
8 Blues and Catharsis 84
Roopen Majithia
PART 3 IF IT WEREN’T FOR BAD LUCK, I WOULDN'T HAVE NO LUCK AT ALL: BLUES AND THE HUMAN CONDITION 95
9 Why Can't We be Satisfied?: Blues is Knowin’ How to Cope 97
Brian Domino
10 Doubt and the Human Condition: Nobody Loves Me but my Momma… and She Might be Jivin' Too 111
Jesse R. Steinberg
11 Blues and Emotional Trauma: Blues as Musical Therapy 121
Robert D. Stolorow and Benjamin A. Stolorow
12 Suffering, Spirituality, and Sensuality: Religion and the Blues 131
Joseph J. Lynch
13 Worrying the Line: Blues as Story, Song, and Prayer 142
Kimberly R. Connor
PART 4 THE BLUE LIGHT WAS MY BABY AND THE RED LIGHT WAS MY MIND: RELIGION AND GENDER IN THE BLUES 153
14 Lady Sings the Blues: A Woman’s Perspective on Authenticity 155
Meghan Winsby
15 Even White Folks Get the Blues 167
Douglas Langston and Nathaniel Langston
16 Distributive History: Did Whites Rip-Off the Blues? 176
Michael Neumann
17 Whose Blues?: Class, Race, and Gender in American Vernacular Music 191
Ron Bombardi
Philosophical Blues Songs 203
Notes on Contributors 205
