{"id":200,"date":"2016-03-31T11:08:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T11:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/?p=200"},"modified":"2016-03-31T11:08:55","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T11:08:55","slug":"a-journey-into-civil-rights-and-blues-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/2016\/03\/31\/a-journey-into-civil-rights-and-blues-music\/","title":{"rendered":"A Journey into Civil Rights and Blues Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Author Derek Bright\u00a0is giving a\u00a0guest seminar\u00a0on <strong>Wednesday 6th April<\/strong> in which he will\u00a0discuss\u00a0the themes of his book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Highway-61-Crossroads-Blues\/dp\/0752489240\"><em>Highway 61 \u2013 Crossroads on the Blues Highway<\/em><\/a>. Taking place at <strong>2.00pm<\/strong> in <strong>Rutherford College<\/strong>, <strong>Seminar Room 4<\/strong>, all students and staff are warmly welcome to attend.<\/p>\n<p><em>Highway 61<\/em> explores the development of the predominant blues narrative as seen from a white European perspective and deconstructs this on the journey south from Chicago to New Orleans. Building upon the work of David Grazian, Paul Garon, Nelson George, Elijah Wald, Marybeth Hamilton and Francoise N Hamlin, William G Roy, the book also references the work of African American novelists such as Richard Wright, whose work encompassed the great migration from the rural south and African American struggle.\u00a0 <em>Highway 61<\/em> challenges the blues pilgrim to explore the dichotomy inherent in the modern blues narrative, which on the one-hand owes much to the\u00a0 American left prior to McCarthyism (e.g Robert Johnson&#8217;s first review was in New Masses and the first blues concert specifically aimed at a mixed race audience, &#8216;From Spirituals to Swing&#8217; was organised by Columbia&#8217;s John Hammond,\u00a0 and, was funded by the Communist Party of America), while\u00a0 later undergoing a gradual sanitisation during the 1960&#8217;s blues revival, which continues to the present day.\u00a0 The latter process divorcing the history of blues music from the civil rights struggles that emerged from the same African American communities in the fifties and sixties.<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the speaker<\/strong><br \/>\nFollowing his degree in Industrial Relations and Politics at the University of Kent, Derek Bright pursued a career in research with the Communications Workers Union.\u00a0 After many years working in industrial relations, Derek set up a Kent-based walking holiday company, and is \u201cpassionate about letting visitors know the stories and history behind the landscape\u201d. His first book, \u2018The Pilgrims Way\u2019 explored medieval pilgrimage to Canterbury and social class. His second title, \u2018Highway 61 &#8211; Crossroads on the Blues Highway\u2019 is aimed at contemporary blues pilgrims journeying to the United States and offers a historical narrative of the blues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Author Derek Bright\u00a0is giving a\u00a0guest seminar\u00a0on Wednesday 6th April in which he will\u00a0discuss\u00a0the themes of his book, Highway 61 \u2013 Crossroads on the Blues Highway. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/2016\/03\/31\/a-journey-into-civil-rights-and-blues-music\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34306,"featured_media":201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/amst-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}