016-Booker T. at the Crossroads: Country Blues

This episode discusses the image of the crossroads as a central metaphor not only for the blues but for the Black condition at the turn of the 20th century. I then discuss the musical roots of the blues, the relationship of the blues to the ideals of Booker T. Washington, and the manner in which the blues navigates the liminal space between the religious and the secular, the communal and the individual, the inside and the outside.