![]() Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. ![]() Oliver shared some of his insights into this rich, uniquely American music earlier this month, when he delivered the Alain LeRoy Locke Lectures, an annual series sponsored by the W.E.B. In addition to being an expert on the blues and other African-American musical forms, he is also one of the world’s foremost authorities on vernacular architecture and is the editor of the four-volume “Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World.” His books on the blues include “Blues Fell This Morning,” “Conversations with the Blues,” “Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records,” and “The Story of the Blues.” His fascination led him on a 60-year quest that has included numerous field trips through the American South interviewing, recording, and photographing blues musicians.īorn in 1927, Oliver is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the University of Exeter, and Oxford Brookes University. Oliver was enthralled by the rhythm and drive of the music and the spontaneous interweaving of harmonies, and wanted to hear more. Paul Oliver, probably the world’s foremost scholar of the blues, first heard African-American vernacular music during World War II when a friend brought him to listen to black servicemen stationed in England singing work songs they had brought with them from the fields and lumber camps of the Deep South. ![]()
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