Building Stories in the Songs - Conversations With Blues Musicians in the Low Countries

This qualitative and ethnographically-informed research investigates the presence, perception, and use of music in the lives of blues musicians in the Netherlands. Unstructured interviews were held with blues musicians from different levels and stages of musical careers and data were interpreted through a combination narrative and thematic analysis. Findings reveal a composite "backbone" narrative with three main phases, each with specific, dominant thematic content. The identification of these phases, or narrative building blocks, makes an empirical contribution to the narrative research tradition by offering a model that connects narratives in this way without categorizing them. Additionally, the study focuses on a niche music community that is often overlooked in academia but forms a high potential group for the study of music, narrative, and identity work in combination; a focus on this type of population addresses a suggested empirical gap in popular music studies. Theoretically, this research combines music sociology and narrative theories, adding depth to the currently limited academic landscape of similar scholarship which investigates intersection points between them.