The songs of blind folk: African American musicians and the cultures of blindness

This book tells how America has constructed the figure of the visually impaired black performer over the last 150 years. It features Ray Charles, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Stevie Wonder. What explains the apparent link between blindness and musical talent in black performers? Artists like Blind Arthur Blake, Sonny Terry, Arizona Dranes, and Art Tatum have appeared throughout the history of popular music in America - the list of visually impaired black musicians is long. In The Songs of Blind Folk, Terry Rowden examines the ways that blindness, like blackness, shaped both the music these artists produced and the way the nation received it. Beginning with an investigation of the controversial 19th-century prodigy Blind Tom Bethune and concluding with an analysis of Stevie Wonder's contemporary success, Rowden shows how the lives and careers of visually impaired black musicians have mirrored America's changing conception of race.