This project explores the role of Chicago in the Folk Music Revival of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, particularly through the contributions of two key figures: “documentarian,” Raeburn Flerlage, who left a vast visual legacy of performers and venues, and “visionary” Win Stracke, who co-founded the Old Town School of Folk Music, an institution devoted to teaching and learning folk music.

Using the photographic archive of Raeburn Flerlage at the Chicago History Museum, "Mapping the Blues" by Brian McCammack combines images of blues performances and Chicago's built environment to reveal a new dimension of black Chicagoans' cultural geography in the midst of a massive wave of migration and the emerging urban crisis.