Sociologist David Grazian became interested in urban blues clubs soon after arriving here to pursue his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1995. New in town and needing a break from academia, Grazian was drawn out of Hyde Park to the north side by the “nighttime distractions” of clubs like B.L.U.E.S. and Kingston Mines. But even there he couldn’t entirely escape his studies.
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“I realized that a lot of the things I was interested in–music, the production of music, race relations, social interaction–were going on in these clubs,” Grazian says. “I thought this was a place where I could learn something about the human animal.”
According to Grazian, people seek out things that appear uncommercial in response to the “hypercommercialized logocentric branding of everyday life.” In blues clubs, patrons look for the same freedom from the marketplace as that commonly associated with punk rock and independent cinema. The irony, of course, is that authenticity sells–a dynamic understood both by local officials, who heavily promote the city as a mecca for the authentic blues experience, and by clubs such as B.L.U.E.S., which Grazian describes as looking like a “dingy, down-home tavern colonized by an airport gift shop.”
Grazian, who now teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, will be in town promoting his book for the next two weeks. At some point during the blues fest, he says, he plans to take a break and head to B.L.U.E.S., 2519 N. Halsted, with his sax in hand.
