BOOK REVIEW: Marrying music to politics in America’s Deep South
Dutch/South African writer Fred de Vries was shaken up when a cranky Abdullah Ibrahim ejected him after an all-too-brief interview. He hints that the incident inspired him to write his book Blues for the White Man which explores parallels between SA and the US Deep South: colonialism, slavery, civil wars, the quest for suffrage ... and music.
The Deep South gave birth to almost all the music De Vries loves, and he sees the blues as the music of black pain, a concept he elaborates throughout his book, which turns into an examination of myriad forms of racial politics in our era: Black Lives Matter (BLM), decolonisation, feesmustfall, woke culture, cancel culture .....
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