Part 2, Sound and the Mainstream, Section 4 Summary and Analysis

"Blues People" (published 1964). This essay is a review of the book Blues People by LeRoi Jones, a book described by the author, quoting from other reviews, as one of the few books by a Negro to consider the subject of the blues. The author comments favorably on Jones' attempt to examine the blues in its sociological and anthropological contexts, but suggests that Jones has paid too little attention to that aspect of the blues which is a poetic, emotional expression of Negro experience and Negro life. After commenting that Jones is perhaps following the general pattern of American sociological studies -ignoring history and the process by which the culture came to be what it is - he goes on to suggest that Jones is mistaken when he divides Negro Americans into...