Essay About Blues Music

In the city of New Orleans emerged one of the most influential music genres in U.S. history. At the time, New Orleans was known for being a "melting pot" of people or rather, a region where people from all over the world came together in one place. This city served as a key seaport in the U.S. allowing for goods to be imported and exported. The purpose of this city was not only strategic to the growth of the country, but also, the atmosphere allowed for the incredible mixing of cultures, customs, and traditions that led to the creation of one of our nations most cherished genres of music: jazz.

“When first entering in America, British folk music was distinguished by three-chord tunes, sparse instrumentation (with some fiddlers), mostly male performers, improvisation, the singers’ sporadic shouts (Scottish “yips”), Christian themes served up in hundreds of hymns, and a secular collection of songs that told stories, generally about love and lost love, using metaphor and symbol to tell those stories” (Allen 101). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British music changed and became Americanized. Vocal harmonizing slowly evolved, and fiddlers were accompanied by those who played banjo, an African American opening. “Tambourines and “bones” (tapping out rhythms using pork rib bones) were a minstrel show contribution” (Allen 102). When African Americans were forced into slavery and brought to North America in the 1600s, they brought their own musical traditions and sounds. Slaves who were on the Mississippi River Valley delta soil developed what will later be introduced as blues music. On the plantations, slaves greatly changed British American hymn singing. They took non-religious British American songs and turned it into their own forms of music that followed their culture and taste of music. Blues emerged in the early twentieth century at the same time country music became settled from its folk roots. Blues music talked about the indifferences African American slaves were going through at that time. “The blues voiced human

The blues, a uniquely American art form, was born on the dusty street corners of the Deep South in the late 1800s. An evolution of West African music brought to the United States by slaves, created the blues which was a way for black people in the south

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

On the other hand, Blues were basically from work songs of African Americans slaves at the time. “It is a native American music, the product of the black man in this country, or, to put it more exactly the way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American captives”(pp.17), said Jones and Baraka. In Jazz – A History, Frank Tirro wisely analyzes and explains the relationship between the unique background and

Mississippi history is a sad history of slavery and oppression. It is a history of racism and refusal to let go of segregationist ideals. Mississippi history is enough to give many the blues. In fact, the Blues style music originated in Mississippi and gravitated outward from there. .Mississippi history and Blues history are intertwined. Delta Blues is a blues style that originated in the Mississippi Delta and influenced many musicians. Another musical art form, Jazz may be considered an offspring from the Blues and also started in the South. There are many Blues musicians and singers that come from Mississippi or have become linked to Mississippi for various reasons. Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Cassandra Wilson have

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

     The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and '30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of

In the September 14th, 2016 edition of Listening Log, we briefly explored a general overview of the musical style known as the blues. We discovered that, like rock, the blues has many subgenres and influential artists. Last time, we highlighted Mamie Smith (classic blues), Willie Mabon (Chicago blues), and Dr. John (rhythm and blues). This week, we are traveling back in time to the 1980s to explore the subgenre of electric Texas blues.

The term rhythm and blues has had several different meanings. In the early 1950's it applied to blues records, in the late 1950's it applied to electric blues along with gospel and soul, in the 1960's it was called soul music, and in the 1970's it was a blanket term for soul, funk, and disco. Much of the popular electric guitar-led blues bands like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and BB King that came from Memphis and Chicago were considered rhythm and blues since they appealed to the older demographic.

As the popularity of black artist started to build, especially in America, new variations of gospel and R&B developed; forming soul and funk. Were in the past, black musicians were ignored by the record companies, because they were not part of the music business model.

In contrast, Blues music originated from southern Mississippi and was first recorded in the 1920s. Blues music is further differentiated from Jazz as it was originally played as a solo using a slide guitar. This is not the case today as it has been modified and adapted by practising artists and utilises complex bands.

Blues started to spread during World War I to northern cities like chicago and illinois due to many african Americans trying to escape racial injustice in the south and a parasite called Boll Weevil that killed many crops in mississippi. The Blues became a more bigger platform during the 1930s and 1940s, during this time hybrid versions of the blues were being more popularized with instruments like the guitar. This urban style of jazz introduced a newer swing rhythm, which were the Boogie-Woogie and Rolling-Bass piano. Overall the Blues was an incredible genre and laid the basis for Rock and Roll.

The Chicago blues was a style of blues that developed, as the name suggests, in Chicago. It was a more modern type of blues and came about after the Great Migration of the 1900s. More than half a million African Americans migrated from the Mississippi Delta and headed north, towards cities like Chicago and Detroit (Public Broadcasting Service, 2015).

After the Romantic era of music came the era of modernism. While modernism itself has the connotation of being “now” or “current” the phrase actually refers to the rise of particular musical styles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of these styles of music was Jazz music, a style of playing that involves a great amount of emotion and connection with the music. Jazz music itself splintered into many different genres of music. One of these genres that inherited the emotional and musical connections of Jazz is the blues. While the blues is a sub-genre of the Jazz playing style, the blues itself has many very interesting and amazing characteristics, as is seen by the