Transatlantic Roots Music: Folk, Blues, and National Identities

University Press of Mississippi

Publishers description:

Transatlantic Roots Music presents a collection of essays on the debates about origins, authenticity, and identity in folk and blues music. These essays originated in an international conference on the transatlantic paths of American roots music, out of which emerged common themes and questions of origins and authenticity in folk music, be it black or white, American or British. While the central theme of the collection is musical influences, issues of national, local, and racial identity are also recurring subjects. Were these identities invented, imagined, constructed by the performers, or by those who recorded the music for posterity?