We say goodbye to the most joyous and fulfilling footballing career of the 21st century. With Ronaldinho, you remember how you felt more than how he played.
In the seventeenth century, enslaved workers of African American descent living in the southern states of America, their lives dripping in sweat and despondency, began playing around with tools of dialogue amongst themselves. They came up with a call-and-response pattern where the leader of the pack would shout out a line, and the others would respond to them in perfect rhythm.
It soon took the shape of free-form poetry. Leaders had the license to improvise the melody as long as they stayed in rhythm. The fields of Louisiana and Texas, where the seeds of modern American xenophobia were sown, saw the birth of blues music. Improvisation and emotion were its pillars.
In February 2002, two of the finest exponents of blues music came together for an album. One was an African-American born in the cotton-fields of Mississippi, the other an Englishman from Surrey.