In the 1970s, students at Notre Dame organized multiple blues festivals that brought students, locals, rich, poor, African American and white folks together, to share their common love of the blues. 

In 1971, Perry Aberli, a grad student at the time, approached the administration of the University of Notre Dame and pitched an idea that had never been done on campus.  He proposed a 3 day blues festival to be held in the Stepan Center, which at the time was a popular venue for all types of events on campus.  Little did he know that the blues festival would be the first of many more throughout the 1970s and would bring popular blues artists by the likes of Muddy Waters, Albert King, Johnny Lee Hooker, Howlin Wolf, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells, to name a few, to South Bend. 

In this episode, I meet with Perry Aberli and he shares why the Midwest Blues Festival was MORE than just a few concerts. The story behind the festival series is so multi-layered that I felt I must try to share the story: College students organizing & leading a three day blues festival, with all African American performers, at a conservative mostly white Catholic university, set in a diverse city, in the turbulent times of the early 1970s.... and EVERYONE enjoyed their time together surrounding a common love of the blues.

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