Charles Keil

This is the 50th anniversary of my first book, Urban Blues (once upon a time an Anthropology MA thesis at the University of Chicago) and it is usually still in the top ten of the Amazon "Rhythm and Blues" list of 80 to 90 books. Still useful in a variety of college courses I'm told. It has sold about 70 thousand copies since 1966. In the 1992 Edition Afterword called "Postscripts" I confess to having a light or pale complexion. Some reviewers in the 60's assumed I was black or brown, notably Philip Larkin, the poet, probably because I dedicated the book to the memory of Malcolm Xl who I had invited to speak at Yale in 1960-61, and at U. of Chicago the next academic year.

Most of my other books after Tiv Song: The Sociology of Art in a Classless Society (PhD thesis at Chicago) have been collaborative or collective in the spirit of Karl Marx and the Marx Brothers, "singing the unsung," hearing from people not ordinarily found in books: Tiv song creators, Polish-American and Slovenian-American polka musicians, 41 children to elders in My Music, Romani instrument players in Greek Macedonia (Bright Balkan Morning 2002). So, many, many thanks to my wife Angeliki V. Keil (see her Markos Vamvakaris: Autobiography recently translated into English by Noonie Minogue), colleagues Dick Blau and Steve Feld (co-author of Music Grooves), grad students Sue Crafts and Dan Cavicchi, Patricia Campbell who co-authored Born to Groove (2005 on the web, and available 2017 in all formats), and most recently Bill Benzon who compiled, edited and co-authored We Need a Department of Peace: Everybody's Business, Nobody's Job (2016).

For very gracious overviews of my and our academic works, please read Robert Christgau's synthesis in the Village Voice some years ago, "Up From Darien." and Shin Nakagawa's "About Charles Keil" at Koizumi Fumio Prize website.