Guido van Rijn (11 April 1950) is a Dutch

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

and gospel historian.

Biography

Van Rijn received his Ph.D. from

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

in 1995 for ''Roosevelt's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR''. Two years later the commercial edition of this dissertation was published by the University Press of Mississippi with the same title. In 2004 ''The Truman and Eisenhower Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs, 1945-1960'' was published by Continuum. The third volume of Guido van Rijn's research into blues and gospel singers' reactions to American politics appeared as ''Kennedy's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on JFK'' (University Press of Mississippi, 2007). The final three volumes were published by Agram Blues Books: ''President Johnson's Blues'' (2009), ''The Nixon and Ford Blues'' (2011) and ''The Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr. & Obama Blues'' (2012). These six volumes are all accompanied by Agram CDs presenting examples of the songs analyzed in the books. In 1970, Van Rijn was co-founder of the Nederlandse Blues en Boogie Organisatie (NBBO). In the seventies he organized a great many concerts by African-American blues artists in the Netherlands, at first in Amstelveen, and subsequently in Amsterdam and

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

; these culminated in the renowned Blues Estafette, the sequel to the 1979 NBBO Festival in Utrecht. With Alex van der Tuuk van Rijn wrote an illustrated, five-volume discography of the

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...

blues label for Agram Blues Books: ''New York Recording Laboratories L Matrix Series'' (2011), ''New York Recording Laboratories 20000 & Gennett Matrix Series'' (2012), ''New York Recording Laboratories Rodeheaver, Marsh & 2000 Series'' (2013) and ''NYRL 1100-1999 Matrix Series'' (2014). The final volume, ''NYRL 1-1099 Matrix Series'', was published in 2015. Van Rijn regularly writes for specialist blues magazines. After his retirement in 2015 as a teacher of English at Kennemer Lyceum in Overveen, the Netherlands, he remains curator of the school archive. In 2020, his school existed one hundred years. On this occasion Van Rijn published the book, ''100 Years Kennemer Lyceum: The history of a special school'' (Haarlem: Loutje, 2020). In 2021 Van Rijn started a series of biographies of blues artists: ''The Texas Blues of Smokey Hogg'' appeared in 2021 and ''The St. Louis Piano Blues of Walter Davis'' in 2022. ''The Naptown Blues of Leroy Carr'' appeared in 2022 and ''The Chicago Blues of Washboard Sam'' in 2023. ''The Chicago Blues of Jazz Gillum'' will also appear in 2023, followed by ''The Chicago Blues of Joe and Charlie McCoy''. Van Rijn received ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections) awards for ''Roosevelt's Blues'' (1997) and ''The Texas Blues of Smokey Hogg'' (2021). In 2015 he was awarded a "lifetime achievement" KBA (Keeping the Blues Alive) award in Memphis, Tennessee in the category "historical preservation". In 2013 he was "Bloemendaler of the year" (Overveen is part of the village of Bloemendaal). Guido van Rijn is a Knight in the Order of Oranje-Nassau.

References

External links

Agram Blues
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rijn, Guido van 1950 births Living people Dutch music historians Blues historians 20th-century Dutch historians Leiden University alumni People from Amstelveen 21st-century Dutch historians