Living Blues
Hosts First Blues Symposium

     One such subject is the definition of blues, particularly as it influences the perspective of the audience and the repertoire of the performer. Bobby Rush recalled that he was "booed in Amsterdam. They were told I was a black guy who sang blues, so they expect me to sound like Muddy Waters," he said. Little Milton concurred: "To play blues doesn’t mean you have to be illiterate, or drunk, or heartbroken all of the time," he said.
     Malcolm Anthony added that misconceptions about blues result from the fact that "blues has always been the music of the black community. Today’s black audience listens to soul blues but is accused of not supporting blues, because some people don’t think that soul blues is authentic or traditional. Some people want to think blues is just some old guy strumming on a porch, but it’s evolved from that, and soul blues is that evolution of blues in the black community," he said.
     The significant role of blues in American literature was explored in the panel "Blues Aesthetics in American Culture," moderated by Adam Gussow, professor of English and Southern Studies at Ole Miss and the harmonica playing half of the duo Satan and Adam. University of Alabama professor Anthony Bolden, Ursinus College professor Patricia Schroeder, University of Wisconsin professor Craig  Hansen Werner, and Syracuse University professor Arthur Flowers explored the depth of blues’ influence in the work of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway and the presence of the blues ethos of individuality in present-day hip-hop culture.
     Longtime Living Blues contributor David Whiteis moderated a discussion of "Documenting the Blues: Journalism, Biography, and Autobiography," featuring Elvis Presley biographer Peter Guralnick, Muddy Waters biographer Robert Gordon, Billie Holiday biographer Farah Jasmine Griffin, and Mississippi-born blues poet Sterling Plumpp.
     To close the symposium, Peter Guralnick hosted a conversation with Dick Waterman, who shared his photographs and stories of Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Skip James, and others, from his long career as a blues photographer, promoter, and ombudsman.
     The symposium was organized by the Center and was sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, the Mississippi Development Authority, and Isaac K. Byrd Jr. Living Blues plans for the symposium to become a yearly event and will announce next year’s schedule and list of participants in a future issue.

Willie King	Peter Guralnick and Dick Waterman recall the      1964 Newport Folk Festival     Bobby Rush