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Blues in african american culture
Blues in african american culture
What is the african american response to rock and roll
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The Roots of Blues Music Blues is a very important type of music. Most music that you hear today has some form of blues in it. If it wasn't for the blues there wouldn't be any rock and roll, country, rap, pop, or jazz . Blues is also important for African American culture. African Americans were also the people who started the blues. The Blues started in the late 1800's in levee camps or plantations in places like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas were many African Americans lived. The blues of that time was called country blues. It was a mixture of African music, field hollers, work songs, religious music, and ragtime. The main influence of blues music was African music which has a strong and steady beat using drums or other instruments. Its beat and singing showed in the blues. Work songs and field hollers were an influence on blues. They were mostly made up as the musicians were singing. They were a mixture of story telling and talking with a definite call and response. Religious music was very important in forming blues music. Because most blacks went to Christian churches from an early age and were exposed to Christian hymns. Ragtime was an influence that came later and is a faster blues played with the piano and someone singing which was usually played in bars called barrel houses. The first country blues that was written and published was "Memphis Blues" by W.C. Handy in the early 1900's. The first recorded blues was " Crazy Blues" by Mamie Smith in 1915. Most country blues were played with an acoustic guitar and with someone singing. It also has a definite call and response between the voice and guitar. Guitars were used because they had a broad range of notes, they were portable, affordable, and they were permitted by slave owners at that time. The slave owners didn't permit drums because they thought the drums could be used to signal to each other. There were many beginning Blues musicians but only a few had their songs written, published, or recorded.
Blues music emerged as an African American music genre derived from spiritual and work songs at the end of the 19th century and became increasingly popular across cultures in America. The Blues is the parent to modern day genre’s like jazz, rhythm and blue and even rock and roll, it uses a call-and-response pattern. While Blues songs frequently expressed individual emotions and problems, such as lost love, they were also used to express despair at social injustice. Even though Blues singing was started by men, it became increasing popular among women, creating one of the first feminist movements. Ma Rainey, a pioneer in women’s
As time progressed, music had to continue to evolve to keep up with the ever-changing styles. Blues slowly began to morph into Rock and Roll to engage people of a new era. While many changes occurred in creating Rock and Roll, it continued to carry undertones of the Blues. This can be heard while comparing Son House’s, “Walking Blues” and Elvis Presley’s, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” These two songs show many similarities, while also having their own identities.
Like mentioned before, blues did evolve around early jazz in which it from bands and gospel choirs. Also, when the bands of country blues moved around to different cities, it took on very different characteristics. Blues started spreading everywhere, are there were different kinds of blues in which many people inhabited. There was Memphis blues, St. Louis blues, and the Louisiana blues, in which many people took on different styles of the blues. This shows that the style of blues had peregrinated to all over the United
Rhythm and Blues also known as R&B has become one of the most identifiable art-forms of the 20th Century, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. The history of R&B series of box sets investigates the accidental synthesis of Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Ragtime, Latin, Country and Pop into a definable from of Black music. The hardship of segregation caused by the Jim Crow laws caused a cultural revolution within Afro-American society. In the 1900s, as a method of self-expression in the southern states, the Blues gradually became a form of public entertainment in juke joints and dance halls picking up new rhythm along the way. In 1910, nearly five million African Americans left the south for the
"Sonny's Blues" is filled with examples of music and how it makes things better. The schoolboy, the barmaid, the mother, the brother, the uncle, the street revivalists, all use music to create a moment when life isn't so ugly, even though the world still waits outside and trouble stretches above. Music and the tale it tells provide hope and joy; instead of being the instrument of Sonny's destruction, introducing him to the world of drugs, music is his way out of some of the ugliness. For Sonny and the other characters in this story, music is a bastion against the despair that pervades stunted lives; it is the light that guides them from the darkness without hope.
For Stanley, the blues tell the stories of the African-American community. Some of the stories talk about the harshness of their lives, but they also talk about the good times they had. [People] play the blues to get rid of the blues not to get them." (Lamb, 1). When people play or even listen to the blues, they are letting all of their worries go. They are not worrying about their job, the bills, or their kids. They are just trying to enjoy the moment when the blues are playing. The blues are some people's release from the stresses of their lives.
Thesis Statement: Men and women were in different social classes, women were expected to be in charge of running the household, the hardships of motherhood.
“Sonny’s Blues” displays imagery in the theme of the story as he portrays light and darkness in events throughout the story tells us as reader the good and the bad. The light of the story being the good and graceful events show when the narrator describes his brother Sonny as a child, and the way his face lit up on Sunday afternoons during their parents friendly gatherings after church. The light is everything good through the flow of the story. The light also shows when the brothers rebuild their relationship at the end of the story. Light represents all of the positivity and hopeful events that are a part of life. The darkness shows in Sonny’s addiction, the fight between the brothers, as well the narrator’s feelings towards his brother’s life style, and the loss of his daughter. When the story first opens the narrator looks out to the young boys and starts to say:
Musicologists have dated the ‘birth’ of blues to be around 1890 as a West African tradition involving blue indigo in which mourners at ceremonies would wear blue dyed attires to resemble their suffering . Although, blues derived from times of slavery, the Prohibition Era (1920’s), World War Two (1939-1945), and during the Vietnam War (predominantly 1960’s to 1970’s), it has been a continuously evolved form of music in America, in which the similarities have always remained; melancholy and protest.
Reggae and Zydeco, as well as many other musical genres have ties that go as far as Africa.
For the author, the blues are more universal than a specific type of music. The narrator describes that the blues are "the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph." With this quote, the story "Sonny's Blues" is actually a blues piece: it starts with the suffering that the two brothers face, continues with their developing communion, and ends with brotherly love and triumphs over loneliness and suffering. The story "Sonny's Blues" is like Sonny's actual music, because it tries to bring people together and, through that link of grace and understanding, to relieve suffering. The author is not playing the blues but actually putting it down in writing. The title "Sonny's Blues" doesn’t describe the music Sonny plays but it tells Sonny's story of suffering and overcoming his obstacles, through his music.
Ragtime and Blues are different in that they originated from different places. Blues developed in the south. Blues is mainly a vocal music. It was emotional, in that the earliest form was singing and hand clapping. The blues started out with slaves because they would use it to sing about their pain and problems. However, ragtime was popular among many Americans and flourished. The term “ragged time” came to be used to describe its key trait which was syncopation. Ragtime music is tuneful, but it is primarily rhythmic. Whereas a blues song can be sung freely by one person, or a chorus, without a strict rhythm, ragtime is more like a march. The popularity of ragtime flourished at world fairs and was welcomed by many people. Both styles
Sonny’s Blues is a story all about music and what it represents in the lives of different people. It varys from the positive view of Sonny to the negative views of Isabel and her parents. However, the narrator of the story switches from being negative to positive as he becomes more educated. These views cover how many people view music and how it differently impacts
“Rhythm and blues is a combination of soulful singing and a strong backbeat” (Cahoon, 2004). Rhythm and blues was created by and for African Americans between the ends of World War II. By 1946 the style of swing music started to fade away where early R&B artists started breaking away from using big bands and emphasizing using blues-style vocals and song structures. “Billboard magazine coined the term rhythm and blues to rename its’, “race records,” chart in 1949, reflecting changes in the social status, economic power, and musical tastes of African Americans” (Cahoon, 2004). Rhythm and blues was like a stepping stone for the popularity of Rock and Roll. There were several focal points for rhythm and blues music, but the main focal point for early R&B originated in Atlanta, Georgia. The first radio station to play rhythm and blues was in 1949. Even though the R&B late night show on WGST was a big hit in the African American community, it featured a white disc jockey named Zenas “Daddy” Sears. (Cahoon, 2004)
I first became aware that I, too, was hitting middle-age when I had to get my first pair of bifocals. To add insult to injury, the kid optometrist (I swear he was still in his teens) told me that most middle-aged people needed bifocals. Middle-aged! Egad, I didn’t feel much different than I had in my 20s, so I decided to ignore it.