Experiencing Blues at the Crossroads: A Place-Based Method for Teaching the Geography of Blues Culture

This article offers a pedagogical module that explores the geography of blues culture across the Mississippi Delta. By focusing on blues culture, rather than simply blues music itself, this project provides a forum for understanding the broader geographical conditions from which this musical form emerged. This module utilizes place-based methodologies and musical expressions as lenses to understand the influences that migration and cultural diffusion have had on the evolution of Delta blues. The impacts these processes had on diffusing African cultural legacies and setting the stage for the evolution of the civil rights movement are considered.