History’s great blues cities: New Orleans.

History’s great blues cities: New Orleans.

UPDATED 19 JULY 2017 Once described as a Mediterranean port transplanted into the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans has always been, and felt, different to the rest of America’s South. As far back as the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Louisiana was under French and Spanish rule, slaves were allowed to congregate freely in Congo Square, in New Orleans’…

When guitars were the instruments of the devil

When guitars were the instruments of the devil

“Enjoying your writing, thanks!” Wes@wes_oneill, 28 January 2014, Bristol, England. The Banjo Player, 1856. William Sidney Mount. UPDATED AND REFORMATTED March 23, 2020. BLUES MUSE 51. When most people think of the earliest days of the blues, they often imagine rural African Americans playing rudimentary delta blues on acoustic guitars. But, in reality, it wasn’t…