Blues - Philosophy for Everyone (eBook)

Jesse R. Steinberg is an assistant professor of philosophy and the director of the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. He has been a visiting professor at Victoria University in New Zealand, at the University of California at Riverside, and at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has published a number of articles on topics including philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and ethics. Abrol Fairweather is an instructor at San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco. He has published in the area of Virtue Epistemology and sustains interests in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. He has contributed to popular culture volumes on Facebook and Dexter. The guitar, vocals, and lyrics of Lightnin' Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt are major influences. Series editor: Fritz Allhoff is an associate professor in the philosophy department at Western Michigan University, as well as a senior research fellow at the Australian National University's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition to editing the Philosophy for Everyone series, he is also the volume editor or co-editor for several titles, including Wine & Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Whiskey & Philosophy (with Marcus P. Adams, Wiley, 2009), and Food & Philosophy (with Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). His academic research interests engage various facets of applied ethics, ethical theory, and the history and philosophy of science.

Foreword x

Bruce Iglauer

It Goes a Little Something Like This...: An Introduction
to Blues - Philosophy for Everyone xvi

Jesse R. Steinberg and Abrol Fairweather

Acknowledgments xxviii

PART 1 HOW BLUE IS BLUE? THE METAPHYSICS OF THE BLUES
1

1 Talkin' To Myself Again: A Dialogue on the Evolution of the
Blues 3

Joel Rudinow

2 Reclaiming the Aura: B. B. King in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction 16

Ken Ueno

3 Twelve-Bar Zombies: Wittgensteinian Reflections on the
Blues 25

Wade Fox and Richard Greene

4 The Blues as Cultural Expression 38

Philip Jenkins

PART 2 THE SKY IS CRYING: EMOTION, UPHEAVAL, AND THE BLUES
49

5 The Artistic Transformation of Trauma, Loss, and Adversity in
the Blues 51

Alan M. Steinberg, Robert S. Pynoos, and Robert
Abramovitz

6 Sadness as Beauty: Why it Feels So Good to Feel So Blue
66

David C. Drake

7 Anguished Art: Coming Through the Dark to the Light the
Hard Way 75

Ben Flanagan and Owen Flanagan

8 Blues and Catharsis 84

Roopen Majithia

PART 3 IF IT WEREN'T FOR BAD LUCK, I WOULDN'T HAVE NO
LUCK AT ALL: BLUES AND THE HUMAN CONDITION 95

9 Why Can't We be Satisfied?: Blues is Knowin' How to
Cope 97

Brian Domino

10 Doubt and the Human Condition: Nobody Loves Me but my
Momma... and She Might be Jivin' Too 111

Jesse R. Steinberg

11 Blues and Emotional Trauma: Blues as Musical Therapy
121

Robert D. Stolorow and Benjamin A. Stolorow

12 Suffering, Spirituality, and Sensuality: Religion and the
Blues 131

Joseph J. Lynch

13 Worrying the Line: Blues as Story, Song, and Prayer
142

Kimberly R. Connor

PART 4 THE BLUE LIGHT WAS MY BABY AND THE RED LIGHT WAS MY
MIND: RELIGION AND GENDER IN THE BLUES 153

14 Lady Sings the Blues: A Woman's Perspective on
Authenticity 155

Meghan Winsby

15 Even White Folks Get the Blues 167

Douglas Langston and Nathaniel Langston

16 Distributive History: Did Whites Rip-Off the Blues?
176

Michael Neumann

17 Whose Blues?: Class, Race, and Gender in American
Vernacular Music 191

Ron Bombardi

Philosophical Blues Songs 203

Notes on Contributors 205

"Blues - Philosophy for Everyone provides
illuminating essays from this philosophy of the blues. It
brings together intriguing insights into the connection between the
blues and philosophy that will appeal to music lovers and
philosophers alike." (SirReadaLot.org, 1
February 2012)

"Blues? Philosophy? Ludwig Wittgenstein as the Hoochie
Koochie man? Why not? There's a crossover: blues and
philosophy both exist to make sense of it all, to find meaning in
the vicissitudes of living. Leading the fly out of the fly bottle
doesn't have to end up as a treatise, it can also end up as a song.
As this book forms one the Philosophy for Everyone series,
with titles such as Cannabis -- What Were We Just Talking
About? or Dating -- Flirting With Big Ideas, we know
that it is not going to be too po-faced in its approach to putting
this popular art form under the philosophical lens. And if the
other books in this series are as good as this one, then I'll be
searching them out, too ... The writing here is of a high order and
the essays yield insights galore about the blues in its social,
historical and cultural contexts and its personal and universal
appeal." (Metapsychology Online Reviews, 27
April 2012)