It started with a question about the blues: what makes the music of the downtrodden black man so alluring to white middle-class ears? And that’s where it gets interesting. Because blues is more than a musical genre: it’s a cultural phenomenon that spans several centuries on both sides of the Atlantic, from slavery to Black Lives Matter, from Jan van Riebeeck to Fees Must Fall, from Robert Johnson to Abdullah Ibrahim.

In Blues for the White Man, Fred de Vries looks for answers in America’s Deep South, drawing historical parallels with South Africa’s experience of colonialism, slavery, racism, civil war, segregation and protest. Travelling to Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, De Vries speaks to musicians, Black Lives Matter activists and Trump supporters. He continues the conversation in South Africa, interviewing student protesters, white farmers and political thought-leaders to develop an understanding of white supremacy and black anger, white fear and black pain.

A fascinating, insightful journey through time and space, Blues for the White Man  is a celebration of multiculturalism and a plea for white people to do some ‘second line dancing’ for a change.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fred de Vries is a Dutch writer/journalist. He published Club Risiko (Nijgh & Van Ditmar, Amsterdam, 2006), a close and personal look into the dark but lively underground culture of the eighties in seven cities (Jo’burg, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Ljubljana, New York), focusing on the relationship between the city and the post-punk music scene. He was a writing fellow with WISER at Wits University to do research for a biography of South African beat-poet Sinclair Beiles. And he has a regular interview column for The Weekender. He previously worked as a correspondent and foreign editor for de Volkskrant daily newspaper in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He has lived in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Eritrea, where he made a living by freelancing. Together with his colleague Toine Heijmans he wrote Respect! (1998), a book on hiphop in Europe. He recently published a collection with the highlights from his interviews for The Weekender and Empire Magazine, called The Fred de Vries Interviews; From Abdullah to Zille (Wits University Press, 2008).

Blues for the White Man: Hearing Black Voices in South Africa and the Deep South is published by Penguin Random House South Africa