Decline Of The Blues Essay

Music is more than just lyrics, it is seen as a way to express feelings. A simple song can be a combination of deeper meanings. This is seen in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” when Sonny finally finds a way to express himself and his struggles of life. Sonny faces many struggles while living in Harlem such as poverty, being African American, and being confined in a community that is known for being the lower part of life. Within his struggles Sonny finds a love for music. This comes in handy when his relationship with his brother is` struggling. Music gives Sonny an opportunity to reconnect with his brother since he did not understand what he was going through and express his struggles. Although Sonny has many struggles throughout life, He’s

Blues is one of the most captivating genres of music. The genre was originated in the late 1800’s as a method used by African American slaves to express the circumstances as well as to put emphasis on their feelings and emotions. In order to create these feelings in this music, blues artists incorporate many of the same techniques used to write poetry. One of the most easily identifiable songs in which it is easy to see the relation between poetic elements and blues music is the song “Empty Bed Blues” by Bessie Smith.

Blues began in the south and slowly made its way into the great cities of the North. As

As Bryan Crable notes, Burke and Ellison had the closest intellectual and social relationship when Burke was writing A Rhetoric of Motives—and, I would add, when Ellison was writing Invisible Man. Crable points out that the Rhetoric is “the only one of Burke’s books to cite Ellison,” in large part because Ellison’s 1945 essay “Richard Wright’s Blues” (which called Wright’s just-released memoir Black Boy “a nonwhite intellectual’s statement of his relationship to western culture” that illuminates a “conflicting pattern of identification and rejection” à la Joyce, Nehru, and Dostoyevsky) had a major influence on Burke “only one month into serious work on his now-canonical text” (“Blues” 263–64, Crable 47–48). The claim that the friendship was important for both Burke and Ellison is certainly true, intervening in a longstanding scholarly conversation on the Burkean influences apparent in Invisible Man (and other works of Ellison’s) that paid little attention to the ways in which Ellisonian ideas in fact inspired Burke’s work as well. Even with this helpful addition of Crable’s, though, the scholarly consensus seems to suggest that Ellison employed Burke’s philosophies of literary form in his composition of Invisible Man, while Burke developed his “thoughts on the rhetorical dimensions of race” based on Ellison’s insights about the conflicts between “individual identity” and “racial identity” (Crable 47–48). All of this is correct, but its understanding of the Burke-Ellison

The blues have deep roots embedded within American history—particularly that of African American history. The history of the blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th century and was created by slaves, ex-slaves, and descendants of slaves. They were created by individuals who endured great hardship while performing endless hours of arduous labor and blues served as a form of escapism. To these individuals, songs provided them with the strength to persevere through their struggles. Blues songs depicted individuals who persevered in the face of adversity. They were symbols of hope to those squandering in the depths of oppression. In relations to the blues, every song has a story behind it and within every story, there is something to be said. Blues artists, through their struggles, detail how they overcame hardship and laughed at the face of oppression. They defied the rules and in doing so, showed African Americans that they too are beacons of hope for the hopeless. The best blues is instinctive, cathartic, and intensely emotional. From irrepressible bliss to deep sadness, no form of music communicates more genuine emotion than that of the blues. Like many bluesmen of his day, Robert Johnson applied his craft as a lonely traveling musician on street corners and in juke joints. He was a lonely man whose songs romanticized that existence. With Johnson’s unique vocal style, haunting lyrics, and creative guitar techniques, Johnson’s innovation embodied the essence of

In the story of “Sonny’s Blues,” by Baldwin, the beginning of the story finds Sonny’s brother on his way to work reading about Sonny’s predicament. Sonny got arrested for “peddling and using heroin.” He didn’t want to believe that his brother was in trouble. While teaching his algebra class he was thinking about the past. He remembered when he first suspected his Sonny of using Heroin. He was always under the impression that Sonny was, “wild, but he wasn’t crazy. And he’d always been a good boy.” So he refused to believe that his brother was in trouble and needed him.

The life of Robert Johnson, one of the most influential early blues artists, in shrouded by vague details and encompassed in mystery. His emotion filled playing and singing blends to form some of the most moving, original blues music ever produced. Ironically, despite being one of the top influences to blues music, little is known about the shy, mild mannered bluesman. "Almost nothing, is known about his life… he is only a name on a few recordings." Where did he come from? Who was Johnson’s family. Who inspired Robert to play the blues and who influenced his music? Who exactly was Robert Johnson? Only the vague recollections of his friends and family link us to the mysterious life of

In the world of Harlem, New York the cruelties of the world become incandescently prominent. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” addresses the foreboding power of pain in a world where someone’s coping skills dictate the course of their life. The story depicts a person’s options to ignore pain, create a reason for pain, or accept pain and live within it. Baldwin explains the theme of pervasive pain and parent’s attempt to shield children from it through the characters. Their reaction to pain constructs a motif of pain management.

The title used by James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues, according to John Reilley, can be interpreted in two ways (Reilly, 56). The first interpretation is the state of unhappiness and discontent amongst the Black community and the music played by Sonny, or rather his depression (blues).

At first glance, "Sonny's Blues" seems ambiguous about the relationship between music and drugs. After all, the worlds of jazz and drug addiction are historically intertwined; it could be possible that Sonny's passion for jazz is merely an excuse for his lifestyle and addiction, as the narrator believes for a time. Or perhaps the world that Sonny has entered by becoming involved in jazz is the danger- if he had not encountered jazz he wouldn't have encountered drugs either. But the clues given by the portrayals of music and what it does for other figures in the story demonstrate music's beneficial nature; music and drugs are not interdependent for Sonny. By studying the

The blues is a musical style of feeling, a style about playing what comes from your heart. It came from work songs, field chants, spirituals, field hollers and revivalist hymns from the African American communities. Blues is associated with the sad times

One of the early types of music that influenced later in blues is mentioned early in the film. Lomax states that picnic music, which was a happy relic of the old times South hidden away in the Mississippi hills just like a reservoir of hot rhythms for the later blues.” The main thing that made the Blues was the men themselves. Mainly men where the ones who were “bluesman.” The hard work and unfair pay was demonstrated through the blues. Especially because it had such soul to it. Another popular topic for bluesman was the relationships they’re were with woman. A lot man who worked on the rivers were known the be playboys. Women would go to see them for the money, which is part of made the society

When you think of the blues you mostly think of men in a smoky, gloomy lounge, weeping among each other about their problems. Problems such a money, love, and many other issues. But one thing all these issues tie into each other is women. Without women in this world, there would be no blues. Blues is about women, for men mostly told from a man's perspective. But as I have done my research I have come to a conclusion that women are the blues and the blues actually wouldn't be what it is without them.

Perhaps it isn't possible to talk meaningfully about an art form's life or death in the literal sense of the word, but when referring to its life in connection to its demand in modern society, I believe there is a case to be made. Often times when an art form gets proclaimed as a dying art it is in reference to its downward trend as a societal norm. When looking at theater through the span of history, it becomes clear tht its popularity is not what it once was. The point I was alluding to was that although theater, in my opinion, is undoubtedly being eclipsed by our digital art forms, it will never cease to have some demand among the

The blues developed as a sub-genre of Jazz which developed from African musicians and workers in America during the 1800’s. These musicians put in place the foundations of Jazz and blues that allowed for the genres to prosper and flourish after new generations discovered them. The earliest blues musicians usually played solo, with a guitar. The dynamics of the guitar and the voice were favorable to the emotions of the time, as early blues often capitalized on being down on your luck and struggles of life. These struggles included being lonely, where you play music alone, and being poor, where you can afford few niceties like a guitar. Occasionally bluesmen would team up with another to add a new and interesting element to the music. This element evolved in ways that allowed for the genre to develop into new paths. The popular “standard” of blues performance would then became jug bands, which were popular until the 1930’s. Jug bands often featured instruments made of household objects that were used alternatively as instruments, such as jugs and washboards, however they did also use plenty of instruments made specifically to be used as instruments. These bands often used guitars, mandolins, banjos, kazoos, stringed basses, harmonicas, and fiddles to spice up the performances. For a while, this was the dominant performance medium of the genre. This style of country blues later allowed for the emergence of a new type of blues,