cover image ""Looking Up at Down"": The Emergence of Blues Culture

""Looking Up at Down"": The Emergence of Blues Culture

William Barlow. Temple University Press, $29.95 (404pp) ISBN 978-0-87722-583-6

In this encyclopedic work of interest to specialists rather than general readers, Barlow, who teaches radio, television and film at Howard University, traces the blues as music and culture from its origins on cotton plantations in the 1890s through migration to urban ghettos in the 1920s, to its commercialization in today's recording studios. Basing much of his study on interviews with blues musicians and scholars, Barlow analyzes the music and examines in depth the lives of the men and women who wrote and performed it. He devotes sections to the major blues personalities and includes numerous examples of lyrics, demonstrating that the blues, a powerful emotional outlet for an oppressed people, also tells the story of African-American resistance to white domination. (Dec.)