Delta Blues

I’m delving into Ted Gioia’s exciting new book on the Delta Blues. A passage:

Put a pin in the map for every early citing of blues music in the United States before 1915, and you find a strange, almost unprecedented pattern. The blues came to life in the poorest parts of the country, in communities almost completely cut off from the hustle and bustle of city life, in groups largely untouched by outside influences. Tracing the early history of the blues takes us to places seldom visited by music historians… to plantations and prisons, and townships so small that even the mapmakers sometimes forgot they existed. (15)