{"podcast":{"title":"Groundwater: The Blues Beneath American Music","slug":"groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197","podcast_index_feed_id":7851197,"rss_url":"https://feeds.transistor.fm/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything","website_url":"http://groundwater.fm","image_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/eO2moOimY-Ty6SdnGifeKnx9fb8w63_TaEqswwmGwqw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:1400/h:1400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82NTJh/MzU4ZDljNmI5ZmE4/MzUxMThkZjE3ZGE2/MDhlYi5wbmc.jpg","author":"Thomas Stubbs","episode_count":12,"summary":"In 1927, the record industry split American music in two and sold it to separate audiences. We've believed the split ever since. Groundwater is a music history podcast that follows the current underneath — the blues, running from Congo Square to the South Bronx, from Robert Johnson to Aretha Franklin to hip-hop. Each episode traces a moment the industry tried to keep apart: the soul sessions at Stax and Muscle Shoals that crossed every line; Louis Armstrong working race and commerce from New Orleans to Chicago; the Great Migration carrying Muddy Waters and the Delta sound up the Illinois Central to Memphis, Chicago, and Detroit; and the state's long campaign against the singers who got political, from Billie Holiday to the Dixie Chicks. If you want to understand why American music sounds the way it does, start here and follow the water.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-08T20:18:19.773007+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197"},"episode":{"title":"Below Sea Level: How New Orleans Built American Music","slug":"below-sea-level-how-new-orleans-built-american-music","published_at":"2026-05-07T03:14:25+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/below-sea-level-how-new-orleans-built-american-music","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197","url":"https://groundwater.fm/s1/1","audio_url":"https://op3.dev/e/media.transistor.fm/4e0b286c/23e5246c.mp3","summary":"New Orleans should not exist — a city in a swamp, below sea level, at the mouth of a continent. It became the place that built American music: jazz, blues, R&B, funk, rock and roll. New Orleans was founded in 1718 in a swamp, below sea level, by people who needed someone standing at the mouth of the continent. Within a year, the first ship carrying enslaved people arrived. A century later, a French slave code with a Sunday loophole would create the only space in slave-holding North America where West African drumming survived openly. This episode traces how geography, French colonial law, the Haitian Revolution, and an accident of empire produced the foundation of every musical tradition the United States would invent — jazz, blues, country, rock and roll, R&B, funk, hip-hop. The city is still sinking. The music is still rising. Groundwater is a music history podcast about American popular music — the blues, country, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and the artificial boundaries the recording industry built between them in 1927. The show argues three things. First, that the blues-country split we inherited was manufactured by record labels at the Bristol Sessions — Ralph Peer building two shelves out of the same music. Second, that the blues is not a genre at all but the groundwater beneath all of American popular music, surfacing in country, rock, jazz, and hip-hop. Third, that when the music got political, the state did not ban the songs. It went after the singers — through drug charges, tax investigations, and loyalty tests, from Billie Holiday through the Dixie Chicks. The show is hosted by Thomas Stubbs and adapted from his forthcoming book Race Records: The Lie That Split American Music — and the Blues That Ran Underneath . The first three episodes work through Chapt…","meta_description":"New Orleans should not exist — a city in a swamp, below sea level, at the mouth of a continent. It became the place that built American music: jazz, blues…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":985,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/episodes/below-sea-level-how-new-orleans-built-american-music/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/groundwater-the-blues-beneath-everything-7851197/below-sea-level-how-new-orleans-built-american-music.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}