The contrast between the US mega-cities and its smallvilles is as stark as the differences between Bharat and India. Writers like Mark Twain, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Harper Lee and others specialised in small-town America. The Civil Rights Movement also started in unheard-of places.
In 2008, Sen backpacked for six months, visiting some of those footnotes in US pop culture and history. He rode Greyhounds and Amtrak literally across the length and breadth of 48 states: New Orleans, Louisiana; Malta, Montana; Seattle, Washington; Salinas, California; Sarasota, Florida; Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Obama’s campaign was gathering steam and the economy sliding into an awful recession. Those two themes connect some of these meanderings without an agenda. Sen was in Chicago on the night of Obama’s victory speech. He also visited the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. He picked through the detritus of Michigan where every fortune was tied to the collapsing auto industry.
As the title suggests, music is another theme. Sen went to Saginaw, Michigan (he didn’t hitch-hike). He also checked out Salinas, where Bobby McGee slipped away (and Steinbeck lived). Another stop was Gary, Indiana, home to the Jackson Five, and Fargo, North Dakota, was where Buddy Holly was headed when the music died. Of course, there was Motown (Detroit) and the jazz capital of New Orleans. In addition, he made random trips to cities in Utah, to Dinosaur, Colorado and a half-dozen other places.
The structure is all about casual conversations with co-passengers, small town officials, schoolmarms, ex-cons, preachers, beggars, musicians, Gujarati motel-owners (about the only desi presence), and of course, cab drivers. This is a personal journey, written up in edgy, entertaining style. If the reader isn’t looking for great insights, it’s a good way to spend a couple of hours.
