A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of South to a Very Old Place, Six Bridges Book Festival, Central Arkansas Public Library System, November 9, 2021. This video contains the digitized premier of Murray’s appearance on the radio program The World Today (1972), in which he discusses South to a Very Old Place.

Featuring Renata Adler, Paul Devlin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Ayana Mathis, and Wynton Marsalis
Albert Murray discusses The Blue Devils of Nada: A Contemporary American Approach to Aesthetic Statement, published by Pantheon. It is a collection of essays on the creative process through which various forms of art are created. He also described the milieu which gives American culture its distinctively open and inventive flavor. He highlighted jazz as the paramount example of American artistic endeavor. The title comes from the emptiness, in Spanish, “nada,” of having the blues.



