{"id":277888,"date":"2025-10-04T19:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T19:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277888\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T19:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T19:54:10","slug":"first-philadelphia-blues-society-blues-festival-kicks-off-oct-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/277888\/","title":{"rendered":"First Philadelphia Blues Society Blues Festival kicks off Oct. 11"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Blues Society is hosting its first-ever annual blues festival at Temple University\u2019s Ambler Campus on Oct. 11.\n<\/p>\n

The daylong event will feature performances by local, national and internationally renowned blues musicians and bands<\/a>, with food trucks, craft vendors and a beer garden onsite.\n<\/p>\n

Attendees can expect to hear a range of acoustic and electric blues styles, said Greg Gaughan, a Philadelphia Blues Society board member and one of the festival\u2019s organizers.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cOur mission is to promote and preserve the blues, and by having the festival, we hope to bring blues lovers together to get an idea of the blues that\u2019s out there currently, and just let people enjoy a day of great music,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery style of music was basically born out of the blues, which dates back to originally African roots.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Promoting and preserving \u2018America\u2019s original musical art form\u2019<\/p>\n

Jamey Reilly, owner of Jamey\u2019s House of Music in Lansdowne<\/a>, said the festival is one piece of the Philadelphia Blues Society\u2019s mission to promote the blues in the Greater Philadelphia region.
\n\"JameyJamey Reilly, owner of Jamey\u2019s House of Music in Lansdowne, is one of the founders of the Philadelphia Blues Society. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

Reilly, Gaughan and others founded the nonprofit in 2023 because Philadelphia was one of the only major metropolitan areas in the United States lacking a local blues society.\n<\/p>\n

The goal is to celebrate the blues, \u201cAmerica\u2019s original musical art form,\u201d which is rooted in the artistic and cultural traditions of enslaved people in the South, Reilly said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came over from Africa with the slaves in the South, and they used the music and the rhythms of their homeland to keep their spirits up, as well as to communicate with each other, working in the fields \u2026 and eventually, that music was exported,\u201d Reilly said. \u201cIt moved north, went up to Kansas City, went to Memphis. Eventually, it worked its way up to Chicago, after the emancipation, and became electrified.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

He said the blues scene \u201cexploded\u201d after the electric guitar was introduced, and people around the world continue to celebrate, appreciate and participate in the blues tradition.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt went everywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cWent to New York, went to Texas, got West Coast blues, Piedmont blues, all different styles, but they all come back to that one tap root. And it\u2019s that root that still feeds the living plant of the blues.\u201d
\n\"Jamey'sJamey\u2019s House of Music in Lansdowne is the official home of the Philadelphia Blues Society. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Blues Society and this year\u2019s festival are meant to keep that cycle going, Reilly said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re working on a blues in the schools program also, which would be really cool in the whole Greater Philadelphia region,\u201d Reilly said. \u201cSo we can go in and we can bring artists in and do live blues for the kids, teach them the rudiments.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":277889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,77014,1448,2830,1311,7247,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-277888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-blues","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-temple-university","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115317654750721464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}