Led Zeppelin
A reworking of a 1929 Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy blues about the Mississippi flood of 1927, turned by Led Zeppelin into…
natural disaster and displacement migration and homelessness resignation and fatalism
Mississippi John Hurt
A homesick blues built around the tiny Mississippi hamlet of Avalon, where the singer measures the alienation of the big city…
homesickness rural vs urban life romantic longing
Bonobo
Kerala is an instrumental track built around a looping vocal sample, layered percussion, and a steadily accumulating arrangement…
movement and migration cultural hybridity cyclical time
Richard Thompson
This is Richard Thompson's arrangement of the traditional American folk/sea shanty "Shenandoah," recorded for his "1000 Years of…
longing and distance migration and westward movement love across separation
Howlin’ Wolf
This is one of the foundational texts of Chicago blues: a hypnotic, one-chord vamp built around the image of a train's…
migration and trains as symbol unrequited or faithless love isolation and being unheard
Fairport Convention
A meditation on mortality and constancy, written by Sandy Denny and here performed by Fairport Convention (who backed her on the…
mortality and impermanence the passage of time constancy in love