There's been a lot of discussion lately about Blues Music being appropriated and and how come Blues Societies are just a bunch of old white men. I even saw a post from a female black blues singer (in the States) who was complaining that white blues singers were taking away work from her. One blues singer in town, who is neither white or black, was feeling pangs of conscience about this and really feeling like maybe she didn't have the right to sing the blues.
Well here's a quote I just pulled off an old video recording of Jodie Drake, who was a "grande dame" of the Blues in Toronto in the early 90s when she was honoured with a tribute concert at the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival: "The Blues have to be really felt. And if you don't feel 'em inside, then you don't have it. If you have to acquire it and put it back in, then that's not really...if you have to learn it from the book or the record and then apply it...but if it's really there inside you don't have to do all this..." She's not saying anything about black or white. She's saying you either feel it from inside or you don't. And that would explain why there is a dearth of young black blues musicians. They're not feeling it inside. They're feeling another another beat inside, a "different drummer" as it were.
And yet a lot of old (and young) white men (and women) who do feel it inside, follow that "call" and pursue a life singing the blues or just enjoying the blues wherever they can. And, in the case of the few academically-inclined, studying the blues. It's not a large percentage of the music lovers and players, but they are devoted to this music and even organize "blues societies" to gather with like-minded folks. Every city and town (in most of the world, I reckon) has their resident blues band and a small group of fans who are probably not young and not black. And some of these fans have formed "blues societies" to ensure that they get their fix of live blues.
As for the players, blues is probably the easiest style to learn when you're starting out and it's ideal for "jamming" because the changes are predictable and you could put together a bunch of blues players from various countries around the world and they could just start playing and everybody would know where to change chords even if they never heard the song before. Then you've got songwriters like myself who use the blues form but try to create interesting variations on the chord structure and usually adding lyrics that are more appropriate to these times (we can't be singing about working in the cottonfields with a straight face). And it must be said, there are players (and fans) who are locked in to the "generic" blues sound and never really break out of that bag - much to the consternation of other blues players/fans who go "Oh no, I cannot listen to "Sweet Home Chicago" one more time!"
Lastly, the blues has been the entry point for countless musicians who went on to explore far more complex music like jazz and pop but hopefully those early blues grooves remained in their DNA and enrich the music they're playing now.