**Course registration sold-out. A limited number of single course tickets will be available at the box office the same day as the lecture.**
Rooted in the African-American experience, blues music is emotional, stirring, visceral and outspoken. In this new series from one of our most popular Curious Minds lecturers, Dr. Mike Daley will use historic recordings, archival film clips and musical demonstrations to trace the history of the genre to the present day. We’ll examine its origins in African antecedents and slave work songs and how the music came into its own on phonograph records, on street corners and in juke joints throughout the southeast United States. We’ll hear the unforgettable stories and music of stars like B.B. King and Muddy Waters, and look at how a new generation of musicians in the 1960s adopted and repackaged the blues for an even wider audience. We’ll pay tribute to one of the most moving and important genres of American popular music.
This course is led by Dr. Mike Daley (Leonard Cohen: Words and Music; The Music of Yonge St. and Yorkville; The Beatles and their World), a music historian and professional musician who has taught at Guelph, McMaster, Waterloo and York Universities.
January 9: Roots
The blues emerged in Mississippi in the late 19th century, an outgrowth of African-American traditions, new social conditions and technological change. We’ll explore its early commercialization through sheet music, the "race" records trend kicked off by Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues" and how "vaudeville blues" artists like 'Ma' Rainey and Bessie Smith defined the early blues sound.
January 16: The Blues Boom
The 1920s saw a new audience for down-home folk music by African-Americans in a variety of styles, including the blues. We’ll examine the work of major artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Leroy Carr and how the Great Depression curtailed the recording of this vibrant genre in the early 1930s.
January 23: The Blues in Transition
The exodus of millions of black people out of the American south from around 1910 to 1970 transformed the country—and changed the blues as a genre. Starting in the 1930s, blues musicians began to cater to an increasingly urban audience with jazz-infused arrangements and 'hokum' lyrics until the arrival of the electric guitar and other new technologies transformed the sound of the music in the postwar years.
January 30: Urban Blues
Chicago was a prime destination for expatriate southern African-Americans, and the Windy City became a hotspot for the new, electrified blues sound of the 1950s. Recording for independent record companies like Chess Records, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf would become major stars just as rock and roll was transforming the music business.
February 6: The Blues Revival
Though blues in its traditional form declined in popularity among African-Americans in the 1960s, a new generation of British, American and Canadian blues aficionados were adapting the style. Eric Clapton and Paul Butterfield exemplified this trend, while the Canadian blues scene was starting to blossom with acts like Downchild and Whiskey Howl.
February 13: The Blues Today
Blues music has proven remarkably resilient in the last fifty years, with a small but faithful fan base, a club and concert circuit, and popular blues festivals in North America and Europe. Exciting new artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray brought about another blues revival in the 1980s, while established blues musicians like Buddy Guy found a mass audience. We'll conclude by celebrating Canadian artists from Sue Foley to Monkeyjunk who are keeping the flame alive.