The Blues: black, white... and red? (II)

Second part of the excerpt from the chapter entitled "Hey, Hey", taken from Joe Gioia's The Guitar and the New World. In the previous part the author pointed out the two early 20th century seminal accounts from which all blues historiography emanates, Charles Peabody's and W. C. Handy's, and how from there its origins have been linked to slavery or even to Africa without any solid evidence to prove it.

Thanks to Joe Gioia and his publisher for granting permission for me to translate this text and publish it here. The complete excerpt is readily available on line at the UTNE Reader website.