Creative Industries Festival: The Conversation with the Blues Podcast (live)
Blues performer and educator Michael Roach and blues scholar Christian O'Connell lead the conversation on Paul Oliver's famous trip to the US in 1960 and the legacy of his book, interviews and archive
Paul Oliver was widely regarded as the most important blues scholar of the 20th and 21st centuries, pioneering research into the origins and development of the music, and uncovering hidden lives of African Americans during Jim Crow segregation. He was also a former lecturer at, and honorary graduate of, Oxford Brookes (formerly Oxford Polytechnic). The Paul Oliver Archive of African American Music (POAAAM) is a mixed media collection that includes books and magazines, music recordings, music scores, audio reel recordings, and research papers. In this session, American blues performer and educator Michael Roach and Dr Christian O'Connell, an executive committee member of the European Blues Association and author of Blues, How Do You Do? Paul Oliver and the Transatlantic Story of the Blues, will talk about Oliver and his famous trip to the US in 1960, and focus on the importance and legacy of his book by the same name. They will play excerpts from his interviews and discuss their significance for the study of the blues.