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Some of Sawyer’s students — there were about 120 this past semester — have already been fired by the music. Others are intrigued and looking to be led deeper into its lore. "There no consistent demographic. I’ve had high-school students and a guy in his 70s in class. About three-quarters of the people who sign up have a real affinity for the blues. About a quarter of them have a vague interest. What they have in common is a desire for an intellectual adventure.

"I asked for a show of hands of those who play a musical instrument. About half the hands went up. Then I asked how many played in public and about a quarter of the hands went up, so many people in the course are already involved in making music.

"Many people are drawn to the blues through a particular artist — a lot of them through Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan — who gave them an appetite for the music, but they don’t know the foundation. They may love Clapton, but they haven’t heard Freddie King, Albert King, or Albert Collins. Or other people have delved into one historic figure, like Charley Patton, and want to move beyond that."

Sawyer says it was surprisingly easy to sell the course to Harvard. He’d already been teaching software classes — his "Java for Distributed Computing" is a smash for local enrollment and the University’s on-line studies arm — at the Extension School for 13 years when he made his pitch.

"B.B. and I became friends when I wrote his authorized biography, and I learned a lesson from him. When he first came to Memphis to play, he got himself two reinforcing things lined up. He found a place where he could play, and the lady who owned it said that if he got a radio show, he could have a regular gig. So he went to the radio station and said he had a regular gig and got himself a radio program. I talked with B. and said, ‘I’m going to teach a course on blues at Harvard. Would you come?’ And he said, ‘I’d be honored.’ Then I went to Harvard and said, ‘I’d like to teach a history of the blues, and B.B. King said he’ll come.’ That plus the fact that I was very well known at the Extension School did the trick."

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MAYBE IT AIN’T exactly how Spike Jonze got started, but last summer, students in Lynn’s Raw Art Works (RAW) Real to Reel Film School made two videos for songs by smart Boston-based rockers the Pernice Brothers. Now, both have been accepted for airplay on MTV and MTV2. "Baby in Two" has already been broadcast on MTV2’s indie-oriented "Subterranean" program, and "Weakest Shade of Blue" is set to show soon. But you don’t have to wait to see them. They’re part of the band’s DVD/live album Nobody’s Watching/Nobody’s Listening (Ashmont), and they’re posted on-line at pernicebrothers.com.

The collaboration between the band and RAWers Lisa Needham and Corey Corcoran, who directed "Weakest Shade of Blue," and Allison Miller, who directed "Baby in Two," was instigated by Ashmont Records co-owner Joyce Linehan. She’s also the publicist for Boston’s First Night, and she was smitten by Real to Reel shorts that were part of the celebration in December 2003. A few months later, the students were pitching their ideas to songwriter Joe Pernice. "I can honestly say I was blown away by the two presentations," he says. "Their ideas were so good and so fresh. I’ve been to big record-company video-pitch meetings before and they weren’t as good as this."

For RAW, a non-profit organization dedicated to using the arts to help youths through the difficulties of their adolescent years, it’s a possible new direction. For Corcoran, who’s now a 19-year-old student at Massachusetts College of Art, it was a hands-on experience with the challenges of commercial filmmaking, albeit on a small scale, as well as a nice tick on his creative résumé. "We tried to go for the mood of the song, which is a happy-go-lucky tune with some mean lyrics," he recounts. "We came up with an image of karate kids and little ballerinas on a beach and decided to build a narrative around that." The result is a kind of oddball blend of rumble and love fest with groups of costumed children and their adult leaders on the beach at Salem Forest River Park.

"We had a budget of about $1000, which we mostly spent on the karate and ballet outfits," Corcoran continues. "Starting last April, we did about 76 storyboards and spent two months planning for a two-day shoot. It ended up taking three days because of the weather. Working with the kids, who were from RAW and the Lynn YWCA, was challenging when they decided not to cooperate. It’s odd that we’re just getting feedback on it now, having finished it so long ago, but it was a great experience that taught me to expect the unexpected."