Mississippi Blues Today and Its Future

This concluding chapter addresses the Mississippi blues today and its future. Most of the great Mississippi blues artists have been replaced largely by blues artists in a new category, namely revivalists . The blues revival, characterized by an interest in and support for the music by people outside the traditional black community, was certainly a factor in Mississippi blues already in the mid-1980s in respect to research, recording, and the sponsorship of festivals and other performance venues, but at that time the revival more or less took artists as they had been performing in Mississippi black communities and presented them in new settings for new audiences. Now, thirty years later, there are many blues artists, both black and white, who have begun their performing careers with an orientation toward the blues revival audience. Another new factor is the appearance of blues families, that is, blues artists whose parents or grandparents were also blues artists.