BLUES FOR THE WHITE MAN, hearing black voices in South Africa and the Deep South

238pp., colour illus., paperback, Cape Town, 2021

"Although this is not really a book about music, the author's passion for it becomes the heart and soul of a thoroughly engrossing and thought-provoking hunt, linking the American South to the African South, for the answer, constantly just out of reach, to whether country music is in fact the white man's blues, and whether white men have the right to have the blues in the first place." Richard Haslop, radio personality and music reviewer

"Fred de Vries is a rare trifecta: he can report, think and write. One of the problems with the US debate on race is that it is almost always conducted nationally, without reference to the rest of the world. Fred brings to it his deep knowledge of a closely related racial universe: South Africa." Simon Kuper, author of Football Against the Enemy

Dutch writer Fred de Vries moved to South Africa in 2003. His books include The Fred de Vries Interviews: from Abdullah to Zille and Afrikaners: volk op drift, translated into Afrikaans as Rigtingbedonnerd: op die spoor van die Afrikaner post '94, and Club Risiko.