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ISBN: 9781897071236-03

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“Sittin’ on Top of the World”

The Challenges of Blues and Hip Hop Geography

From: Black Geographies

$3.60

In 1930, the Mississippi Delta was already in the devastating grip of the Great Depression. Hunger, evictions, and terror would haunt the region for another four decades. We must ask how could a blues musician trapped in this web of social destruction record a song where he claims to be “sittin’ on top of the world”? Was the author gripped by madness, or was he rooted in an intellectual tradition that inherently enabled destitute African Americans to traverse multiple scales of consciousness and space? Many present-day social theorists continue to bemoan the lack of humility among impoverished African Americans; but these scholars have yet to understand the global epistemological stance of “self-made and Blues rich.”

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Clyde Woods

Clyde Woods lives in Santa Barbara, California, and teaches in the Department of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines the relationship between regional political economy and African American social and cultural movements. He also works on the blues as a central black aesthetic, social research epistemology, and development tradition. Woods is the author of Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta (1998). His projects include manuscripts and development projects on Los Angeles, New Orleans, and blues/hip hop.