Of Bloodlines and Blue Notes: Lyrics, Album Notes and Critical Essays
Terry Blade | Blade Arthouse Media
165p, e-book, $6.99, ISBN 979-8-218-88544-1
Chicago musician Blade’s Of Bloodlines and Blue Notes serves as accompaniment and explication to his recordings, which dig deeply into blues, ancestry, cultural history, and urgent issues of racial and sexual identity, creating “a call-and-response between generations.” As that phrasing suggests, his precise, evocative prose, sharp political commentary, and deep sense of how past and present inform each other prove amply rewarding. The book, Blade writes, “can be read without hearing a single note” of his music, though readers caught up in this engaging text will likewise relish the albums, available on Bandcamp.
Blade takes readers through his three albums in chronological order, discussing his aims, explaining the themes, and showing how individual tracks contribute to the whole. On his 2021 LP, American Descendant of Slavery, Blade demonstrates how he used archival material from the Library of Congress to explore the ways that the “legacy of slavery reverberates in modern Black American life.” Chicago
Kinfolk: The Juke Joint Blues, from 2025, takes a more contemporary approach, evoking a communal space with “history in the floorboards,” where “stories hang in the air.” While Blade includes typical liner note fare such as lyrics and trackby-track musical descriptions, the book’s real power comes from his vigorous assertion of self in relation to the systems he’s celebrating and critiquing. “I refuse the lie that Black American queer life floats outside of Black American history,” he writes, his sexuality and identity acting not as defining characteristics but as parts of a larger truth that must be plainly acknowledged.
Bloodlines is a direct and unflinching work of reckoning, both personal and societal. By the end, Blade makes a strong case that “heritage is a set of pressures and gifts,” and shows how his albums are a part of “learning how to carry the gifts without inheriting the harm.” The book, like the music, is charged, blunt, revealing, and alive with truthtelling. Cover: A | Design & typography: A | Illustrations: A Editing: A | Marketing copy: A