Jokes

I think that if we wish to avoid ethnocentrism, as we would wish to avoid racism, what we should say is that the authenticity of a blues performance turns not on the ethnicity of the performer but on the degree of mastery of the idiom and the integrity of the performer’s use of the idiom in performance. This last is delicate and can be difficult to discern. But what one is looking for is evidence in and around the performance of the performer’s recognition and acknowledgement of indebtedness to sources of inspiration and technique (which as a matter of historical fact do have an identifiable ethnicity). . . . Paul Oliver estimates the blues’ chances of survival through these times of ethnic mingling as “unlikely.” This kind of “blues purism” is no way to keep the blues alive either. The blues, like any oral tradition, remains alive to the extent that it continues to evolve and things continue to “grow out of it.” The way to keep the blues alive is to celebrate such evolutionary developments.