ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the blues as vital part of contemporary commodity culture, especially with regard to recent tourist marketing strategies presenting the city of Chicago as 'Home of the Blues'. The marketing of Chicago as a city of ethnic diversity and authenticity is a propelling force behind the process of turning blues heritage and music into a vital part of Chicago commodity culture. As the example of blues in Chicago illustrates, a new focus on agency within the process of constructing, negotiating, and selling ethnicity is necessary if one want to comprehend the distribution and shifts of cultural politics within a transnationally embedded contemporary United States society. And while blues may no longer be explicitly 'black', it prospers as developing and changing musical form that gives new creative expression to contemporary urban experiences among white and/or multiethnic communities.
