Authors

Authors

Leo Platvoet

Around 1970, Leo Platvoet discovered the blues as a teenager. Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Muddy Waters and Freddie King played in Amsterdam and London and Leo was often there. The iconic American Folk Blues festival, that visited The Netherlands, was an annual highlight. He has been blues addicted for over 50 years. To write this book, he visited Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee three times to discover the sources and the vitality of the blues and the history of the civil rights movement. He travelled to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and many other places to experience the influence of the Mississippi blues in other parts of the US.

Leo Platvoet studied sociology in Amsterdam and was active in Dutch politics for 35 years as a party leader, local councilor, Senator and as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Between 1986 and 2002 he wrote sixteen volumes in the Dutch Odyssee Travel Guidebook series about European destinations. In the 2010s, he worked for five years in Liberia, West Africa, for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.