Popular Music and Culture in Austin, Texas. Talking with the Blues (Josep Pedro, 2025)

BLUESVIBE

The Spanish music writer and scholar Josep Pedro has completed a new book focused on the Austin blues scene: Popular Music and Culture in Austin, Texas. Talking with the Blues, published by Palgrave Macmillan (Springer) and included in the Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music book series.

Josep Pedro is an associate professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M, Spain), Department of Communication. He is a member of the research group Audiovisual Diversity (UC3M), and has been Visiting Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), at Birmingham City University (UK), and at the University of Porto (Portugal). He has conducted extensive research about blues, jazz and popular music, as well as about film and video-on-demand. His work has been published in journals such as Jazz Research Journal, Atlantic Studies, IASPM Journal, Signa and the International Journal of Communication, as well as in edited volumes such as The Routledge Companion to Diasporic Jazz Studies (2025), Music, Subcultures and Migration (2024), Talking Back to Globalization (2016), Jazz and Totalitarianism (2017) and The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (2016). His first monograph is El Blues en España (The Blues in Spain, 2021).

The origins of this book go back to 2010, when Josep traveled to Austin for a five-month period from August to December. From his hometown, Valencia (Spain), he traveled as an undergraduate international student to complete a semester at the University of Texas at Austin (UT). His stay in Austin—the live music capital of the world—presented him with a unique opportunity to investigate the music he was passionate about, blues and jazz, in its own context. At UT, he was able to enroll in four courses that left their mark on him: Ethnography of Austin Live Music, Black Perspectives in Jazz, Black Power Movement, and Intermediate Editing. Most importantly, he immersed himself in the music scene as an observer, researcher and occasional musician at jam sessions. He became particularly interested in the musical and cultural history of blues in East Austin, the historically-black community, and he conducted interviews with veteran musicians. While doing his PhD thesis on the blues scenes in Austin and Madrid, Josep returned to Austin in 2016 as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. He continued his field work with more conversations, interviews, archival research and participant observation in many venues, both in East Austin and across town. Upon his return to Spain, Josep stayed in touch with Austin blues musicians, and was fortunate to meet some of them in Madrid and in surrounding cities as they travelled for gigs and European tours.

Popular Music and Culture in Austin, Texas explores the blues tradition through a collective dialogue with significant musicians and producers of the Austin blues scene. Based on an ethnography in the singular capital of Texas, the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world, it explores the local blues scene through in-depth interviews that reveal intimate bonds between popular music, culture, identity, race, politics, the city and the music industry.

Through the voices and experiences of 15 protagonists, readers are introduced to multiple aspects of blues lives, including music-making, style, identity, and the changing landscape of the Austin scene. While this oral history informs about particular biographies, it also delves into larger processes around popular music, culture and race, such as Jim Crow segregation, the Civil Rights era, international touring and gentrification.

The book’s subtitle assumes an important metaphor in regards to blues artists and the blues: that talking with blues artists is like talking with the blues; that meeting them is a way of meeting the blues. The implication is that blues artists not only form part of the tradition but they also embody the blues tradition with their lives and works, with their music, style, bodies, language, stories, and fashion. Thus, in this scene and book, the interviewees are the blues. Representatives of a contemporary music scene, these musicians and producers generally reveal an eclectic understanding of blues music, with connections to gospel, jazz, rhythm & blues, rock, soul-funk, and hip-hop.

The conversations took place between 2010 and 2023, mostly face-to-face in Austin but also online and face-to-face in Madrid (Spain), where some of the musicians have performed. All of the protagonists were followed and observed closely within the everyday reality of the Austin music scene, yet the book also shows how the scene connects with many other places, including Mississippi, Houston, Memphis, New York or Madrid, through the biographies, tours and migrations of the protagonists.

The book includes interviews with the following musicians and producers:

• W. C. Clark
• Blues Boy Hubbard
• Dr. James Polk
• Matthew Robinson
• Mel Davis
• Miss Lavelle White
• Harold McMillan
• Eddie Stout
• Nick Connolly
• Michael Milligan
• Birdlegg
• Soul Man sam
• Greg Izor
• Oscar Ornelas
• Paul Oscher

The book includes 18 illustrations: a selection of photographs taken by Kim Yarbrough (KTYarbrough Photography), Paul Safford (Your Pace Photography), Niko Chicote, Jeff Bader, and Josep Pedro. Below you may find a photo gallery with images by them and by the author, as well as a a playlist with songs by musicians from the Austin blues scene.

The book can be purchased in the website of Springer Nature:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-88657-7

Reviews

Review of the book Popular Music and Culture in Austin Texas – Talking with the Blues, written by Gilbert Guyonnet in the specialized publication ABS Magazine, published in France, 7/9/2025, https://www.absmag.fr/chroniques-91/.

Review of the book in the french publication ABS Magazine, dedicated to African-American music.

Translated fragments:

“The Carlos III University of Madrid is fortunate to have a professor in its Communication Department who is a great blues fan. His name is Josep Pedro.”

“The core of the book consists of transcripts of interviews with fifteen personalities from the Austin blues scene. Musicians and producers recount their lives, their joys and sorrows, the civil rights struggles, the difficult situation of the recording industry, the various blues clubs in the city, Antone’s of course, the Skylark Lounge, the Victory Grill… You will be moved by the words of the late W.C. Clark, Blues Boy Hubbard and Paul Oscher. Those of the now elderly singer Miss Lavell White, born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1929. The testimonies of the ever-active Matthew Robinson (vocals and guitar), pianist Nick Connelly and the eccentric singer and harmonica player Birdlegg are fascinating.”

This hardcover book, also available in electronic format, is very easy and enjoyable to read, making it a must-read for all blues lovers.”