The politics of authenticity in popular music: The case of the blues

The Relationship Between Creativity, Identity, Place, and Community Resilience: The Renaissance of Clarksdale, Mississippi, United States

“…Steeped in plantation history, Clarksdale sits in the Northern area of the Mississippi Delta, and incorporates Eastern portions of Louisiana and Arkansas. Commercialized as the epicenter of Delta blues, the town was born from a 19th century culture of racial subjugation where music afforded African American and impoverished white communities emotional catharsis (Pratt, 1986; also see documentary film ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads (director Brian Oaks, 2019)). Despite the rich historical sites and art forms/artists -famously Clarksdale playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), and Nobel laureate, author William Faulkner (1897-1962 of Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi -the growth of tourism in the Delta City dominantly focuses on music festival culture and the Mississippi Blues Trail (MBT) to capitalize on the area's cultivated identity as the homeland of American blues music (Meikle, 2016;King, 2004).…”

Baudrillard's Blues

“…Another common example is the way that blues serves as the ultimate signifier of musical authenticity and lived culture and experience, since it was composed by and for people who endured great hardship, and reflected a sense of community that culture rarely exhibits in postmodernity. Blues was seen by the 1960s counterculture as true and wholesome, and was popular with whites who were ‘seeking authenticity in a society that was organized to frustrate and deny it’ (Pratt 1986, p. 55). In recent decades, however, society has become organised to absorb and simulate authenticity, and thus requires simulation models that are vibrant and easy to augment and renew.…”

“…Evans (1982, p. 165), however, characterises improvisation and soloing as a way for performers to feel distinct and original. Ben Sidran believes that blues improvisation represents the individualism that remains in a destroyed personality (quoted in Pratt 1986, p. 64). How did the solo become a signifier of American individuality and freedom?…”