In the 1930s, John Lee Hooker's blues rambled north from the Mississippi Delta and a decade later came crackling out of an amplifier in Detroit. Over the next half of the century, it spread eastward, westward, across genres, even generations. And on a Saturday night this February, a torch singer named Zakiya, wearing a big yellow Afro wig, electric-blue eye shadow, hoop earrings, a silver sequined dress, and a pair of knee-high boots, purred into a microphone in the basement of a Union... More >>>