The African American blues was often imitated and appropriated by white musicians and fans. It didn’t hurt him.
The reactions to his essay were different. “Can white people play the blues?”, Corey Harris asked himself on his blog in 2015 – only to immediately formulate a negative answer. The African-American blues and reggae musician from Denver, Colorado, based himself on seemingly simple considerations: “Music is the voice of a culture,” he said. “Separate the two and the music can never be the same.” Just as klezmer is the music of Jews, the blues belongs to the culture of African-Americans.
