Whistle, that was elegant and beuatiful piece of analysis. The thrust of these multicolored threads, it seems to me, is that the Blues is the music of a uniwue moment of historical convergence -- where the big rivers of Africa, Dixie, and the industrial revolution collide with the Cotton Belt and bounce back up into the cities from natchez to Greenwich Village... and that is the confluence in which the Blues is defined. Not the emotion alone, not Africa alone, not slavery alone, and not just the cotton gin and the disruptive economic shifts that began then. But it's a frozen, arbitrary snapshot about where it was born, because they're still being played today. When M. Ted says it is pretty clear what is and isn't It, he's (I imagine) talking about the threads and resonances of that time, being brought forward, regardless of other spinoffs such as rockabilly and rock-and-roll and Gershwin and camp-meeting numbers. The blues _is_ a clear voice when it carries that convergence forward, including the emotional and musical components.