Bman's Blues Report

By: Erwin Bosman, © 2012, www.myblues.eu _________________________________________________ In 2010, Peter Muir published his book “Long Lost Blues”, which David Evans qualified as “ One of the most important and original books on blues to be published in the past decade ” ( The Journal of Southern History ). Muir is, next to a scholar, also an internationally acclaimed pianist, composer, conductor, and, moreover, the cofounder and co director of the Institute for Music and Health in Verbank, New York, a nationally recognized center pioneering the use of music for well-being. He strongly beliefs in the fundamental beneficial power of music for health and wellbeing. It is thus no surprise that one of the chapters of his book elaborates the theory that the blues can cure the blues. Observing furthermore that the words ‘blue’ and ‘black’ derive ultimately from the same etymological source, namely, the Indo-European root ‘ bhel ‘, his argumentation leads him even to the mind...