Wichita Blues
Wichita Blues
Music in the African American Community
In conversations on regional blues, the traditions of the Mississippi Delta, the Carolina Piedmont, Chicago, Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are frequently lauded. But until now, little attention has been paid to the Midwest, despite the presence and popularity of blues in these heartland communities. Wichita Blues: Music in the African American Community seeks to address this gap in music history by exploring the lively Wichita blues tradition. In interviews with nineteen African American Wichita blues performers, author Patrick Joseph O’Connor reveals the evolution of the blues from the 1930s to the 1960s and beyond.
Utilizing twenty-five years of fieldwork, Wichita Blues details the history of performance and camaraderie among the musicians of this often-neglected regional sound. The personal interviews offer unique insight into topics that shape Wichita’s sound, including how migration from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas brought varied artists to the area and the ways musical traditions cross racial divides and generations. The artists articulate the poetics of the blues and the diverse regional influences that can be detected in their music. In exploring the Wichita blues tradition, O’Connor traces African American history in Kansas, ranging from the Exoduster movement in the late nineteenth century and minstrel shows across the state to Black cowboys and growing urban African American communities in Topeka and Wichita.
Including a foreword by renowned music scholar David Evans, Wichita Blues allows seasoned blues musicians to tell their own stories and paints a picture of the vibrant Black music scene in the city.
Of the regional centers for African American blues music, Wichita (in south central Kansas) is not as familiar as Memphis, Houston, or even Kansas City to the northeast, although it was home to a vibrant community of blues performers. That raises the question of the creative, historical, and social context of the city. O’Connor, who is a performer as well as a researcher, fills out the story of the city’s blues legacy. His contribution to American musical studies is in recording the experiences of musicians active in the city from the 1920s to the 1960s. O’Connor introduces the transcripts of interviews with the historical an musical contexts of 19th-century migration from Oklahoma to Kansas of African Americans in the quest for freedom and opportunity. The narratives of the musicians take center stage, but O’Connor provides a summative concluding chapter in which he analyzes the patters of life as well as lore apparent in this community of blues performers and their audiences. It opens the door to further analysis of the effects of regional migration and folk-popular influences on African American music nationally.
…O’Connor’s study of our city’s blues history offers precious insights into our regional identity.
Patrick Joseph O’Connor has been an active blues musician and researcher since the late 1960s. He is a former lecturer in the blues for Wichita State University’s Department of Anthropology, and his research has been published in several academic journals.
