Whitehead woman’s book explores ‘How Belfast Got the Blues’

A Whitehead woman has co-authored a new book exploring Belfast’s contribution to the popular music and cultural politics of the 1960s.
Joanna Braniff.Joanna Braniff.
Joanna Braniff.

Joanna Braniff collaborated with lifelong friend, Dr Noel McLaughlin in writing How Belfast Got the Blues.

A freelance journalist, author and media consultant, Joanna was formerly features editor of The Irish News from 2002 to 2008, and later director of communications for the Green Party in the Northern Ireland Assembly from 2010 to 2015.

Originally from Bushmills, Noel is senior lecturer in Film and Television Studies in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

'How Belfast Got the Blues' authors, Noel and Joanna.'How Belfast Got the Blues' authors, Noel and Joanna.
'How Belfast Got the Blues' authors, Noel and Joanna.

With the popular history of Northern Ireland often overshadowed by the violence of the Troubles, How Belfast Got the Blues offers a corrective, reconsidering the period before 1969 and arguing that popular music in Northern Ireland was central to the politics of the time.

The book unearths the city’s largely overlooked and significant role in the broader relationship between popular music and politics in this ‘most mythologized of decades’.

In an expansive socio-cultural history, the authors explore how popular music engaged with and influenced the global cultural and political currents of the decade.

By intertwining politics, culture, and unexplored key personalities, the book reexamines the radical decade and the complex but essential relationship between music and identity in a place where it could mean the difference between life and death.

The book explores Belfast’s contribution to the popular music and cultural politics of the 1960s.The book explores Belfast’s contribution to the popular music and cultural politics of the 1960s.
The book explores Belfast’s contribution to the popular music and cultural politics of the 1960s.

It explores the early career of Van Morrison and Them, the neglected Belfast blues singer Ottilie Patterson, the provocative film director Peter Whitehead, and The Rolling Stones.  

The book also includes new material, obtained in interviews and through meticulous archival research, to challenge the mainstream narrative of the mid-1960s music scene in Belfast.

The book has been published in the UK by Intellect Books and by Chicago University Press in America.

For more information visit www.howbelfastgottheblues.com