Prologue

Abstract

Blues clubs today in Chicago’s largely African-American, poor South Side feel the winds of transformation. As part of a stepped-up areal remaking, more clubs experience a surge of new faces, upgraded physical features, altered drink offerings, and a revised social aesthetic that changes working-class-dominated blues joints. The new faces, often white and more affluent, trek in from other parts of Chicago, Europe, Australia, and other international locations. Swanky ales and wines once banned from South Side blues venues (associated with downtown and North Side clubs) suddenly appear on the drink docket. Newer patrons, often swelling in numbers, step up their exoticizing and admiring of purported black authenticity (often imagined as transported from Africa to the Delta to Chicago) that these clubs supposedly embed. These changes, at first glance simple physical alterations, are also deep symbolic elements that communicate to many (particularly long-term regular patrons and musicians) something disconcerting: the possibility of an “outsider” class-race takeover of a coveted social space.