Biographie de 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 there. The iconic American Folk Blues Bluesfestival, that also visited The Netherlands, was an annual highlight. For 50 years now he is blues addicted. For writing 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 in Europe as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Between 1986 and 2002 he wrote sixteen volumes in the Dutch Odyssey Travel Guidebook series about European destinations.
In the 2010s he worked five years in Liberia, West-Africa, for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.