Blues clubs

Blues clubs have a long and tortuous history in capitalist urban America. Few sites for expressing the arts and the complexities of human experiences in America have been more punished and marginalised by racism and neo-colonialism. Clustering in segregated, marginalised communities, clubs quickly became homes for a music-based knowledge system that served up “truths” about working class African American life. This chapter discusses the state of current urban blues clubs in America as a political-economic phenomenon, focusing on what many see as America’s blues capital, Chicago. Radical geographers, ever-sensitive to the elusive and changing mechanisms of race-class oppression in capitalism, need to understand the present plight of these clubs. The chapter considers two issues about these clubs: the current multi-pronged assault on their current existence and how they today spawn a sly, deft politics that resists club transformation.