Poetic Elements Within the Blues Essay examples

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

Many writers and artist feel fold art would be the best to show racial pride. James Weldon Johnson used the seven Negro Sermons a Bible turns it into a poem. By the oral tradition this author shows the tradition, plus the culture of belief of what makes them African American. (Doc C) Another way of showing racial pride is through poems by Langston Hughes, he wrote “Home Sick Blues” and “Po’ Boy Blues”. Both of these poems have blues in common in the title. Blues is a musical form created by African American. The readers can feel a negative atmosphere in both of these poems “A terrible thing to have to keep from cryin’ “from “Home Sick Blues” and “I wish I’d never been born” from “PO’ Boy Blues”. It expresses racial pride by what they

Bessie Smith is an American Jazz musician in the genre of blues. She was born on the date of 15th April 1894. She is known to well for her dominance in the blues genre music in the span of around 1920s and 1930s. Bessie attributes her success, by working continuously with Louis Armstrong. Research indicates that Louis was a key inspiration when it comes to the perfection of jazz vocals. In her time, Bessie Smith proudly boasts as one of the best Blues musicians both in the US and the world as a whole. However, her life was cut short in 1937 on September 26th, in a fatal car accident. Regarding the above-mentioned information, this paper discusses more the life of Bessie Smith, collectively with the dominance in the Blue Music (Scott, 2008).

In the first stanza, the poem consists of alternate rhyme to help the poem have a pleasant pattern and get the reader's attention to expect what will happen next. In the poem, Frances uses “Wretchedness” in line 2, to describe their situation being at a slave auction and show the emotion the slaves are feeling

Originating from the African-American community in the southern United States, blues music is a temporal folk tradition that possesses lyrics remarking life. Blues music emphasizes the emotions of individuals; the performers express their various feelings of sorrow, anger, joy, or lust through music and words. The realistic perspective on fundamental emotions of all human beings delivered by blues music produces the appeal of blues around the world. There is a variety of blues music; however, the subgenres in this discussion will be classic delta blues, Texas blues, Soul blues, Chicago blues, and British Blues Based Rock.

The main subject of the poem is a piano player and singer, who is living his last night. The message is that society works people to their deaths, especially African American workers. There is a phrase in the poem that goes, “I got the Weary Blues, And I can’t be satisfied.”. This is a metaphor for how the people have been worked to death and how everybody continues to be worked until they give up and die. The poem describes that the singer who has the “Weary Blues” and this can be interpreted as a symbol for the entire populace at the time. Hughes uses the phrase of ebony hands on ivory keys, which can mean that black people work for the white people. The final lines read, “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”, and that can be interpreted that there’s no difference between the singer being dead, or worked to

In “The Land Where The Blues Began” you see the hardships of Mississippi’s people and the every day challenges they were forcefully put through. Beatings and killings weren’t scarce and the payment for work was low. Through these times though, they were able to make light of the situation. In the works of handmade instruments and words that fully defined their feelings, these people found solace and comfort in the Blues.

Blues is defined as a feeling of sorrow, sadness, mournful, or depression. Jonathan Curiel, the author of the article states blues music were used by slaves to discuss the harsh treatment, sad times, and a yearning to escape to freedom. Sylviane Diouf plays two recordings, The Muslim call to prayer, and "Levee Camp Holler" in order to show the connection between Islam and American blues music. “Levee Camp Holler” is a product of ex- slaves who worked doing manual labor during the Post-Civil- War America. The version of the songs that he used in presentations has lyrics like the call to prayer which speak about a glorious God. “Levee Camp Holler” emphasizes the tone and words of the reciters vocal chords. Based on the article, these song shows

The conclusions that were drawn from the study of how the class biased study of Black Women’s literature left a gap in knowledge about Black Women’s sexual liberation in the 1920s and 1930s was that the woman blues singer served as a collective representation of social and sexual conflict. The songs created by women blues vocalists stood up against the ordinary perspectives of what a lady's part and place should be. It allowed black women to express their sexual desires for the same sex. Women soul music remade poetry, expression, works of fiction, and abstract craftsmanship inside of African American society by permitting black women scholars to free themselves from the repression of the women activist’s hypothesis and feel confident to express

Again in lines 20-21, internal rhyme is used to create a rhythm, with the words, ‘smooth and truth’ and ‘soothe and youth.’ This helps emphasize the good in a bad situation because the words that rhyme are positive. It relates to the slaves because they have to make everyday better than the day before, constantly trying to avoid punishments and consequences. The tone shifts, but the mood remains the same; it seems as if there is a sense of hope towards the end, but it seems unachievable. The last two lines of the song empowers the emotions expressed through the use of end rhyme, “To relax their restless flight, / Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights…” Slavery in the south offered no safe haven, they were only able to memorialize memories of the past. Throughout the entire song, there were musical devices inserted, where internal and end rhyme were used the most to justify the complications the slaves dealt

The blues show how music changed the world in the 1980's and early 1990's. Run DMC’s song “It’s Like That” is a perfect example of how artists expressed their feelings through lyrics. The quote you first mentioned, “Unemployment at a record high, people coming, people going, people born to die”, displays how people were coming to senses of the reality of life. During these times, people were starting to own up to what life really meant. As scary as life sometimes is, people must come face to face with the reality they are up against. With voicing opinions though song writing, people were able to come together and face the same issues everyone was dealing with. People began to realize they weren’t the only ones going through these same problems.

The sexual nature of the blues is an assertion of power. This music is a feeling that celebrates pleasure and success of being yourself. As a matter of fact, the lyrics deal with self-pity such as losing your job and personal misfortune like overcoming hardships. The blues is hypnotic; it bridges tragedy with comedy through sex. With this in mind, it was dangerous for African Americans to speak out so they use sexual lyrics to voice their thoughts, “therefore the writers found it easy to smuggle them into their songs and to invest them with passably respectable meanings” (Johnson, G. p. 19). By the same token, some songs with erotic tone lyrics real meaning often spoke out against racism and protest. “Hellhound on My Trail” emphasizes

“The Weary Blues" is a poem by American poet Langston Hughes, written in 1926 which was during the Jazz age. The poem is a poet telling us about a piano player that is “the Negro”, he heard some time ago. This musician is singing about how, even though he's depressed, he's going to put his worries aside. But then as the poem evolves we gradually see that he loses hope and wishes that he was dead.

This paper will examine the process of marginalization of the figure of blues woman in African-American literary domain during the 1960s by undertaking comparative assessment of her significance in black writing before and after the Black Arts Movement .The research paper will focus on the following texts for a comprehensive engagement: Not Without a Laughter(1930), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937),Invisible Man(1952) and Sonny’s Blues(1957) .The research will also study the construction

Throughout the poem, there is no consistent rhyme scheme, but this stanza has assonance. The repetition of the vowels helps to form scat music. The jazz-filled stanza incorporates a melody. This stanza dramatizes the Harlem Renaissance at its finest. In these moments, there is happiness, but the happiness is temporary because African Americans still have to live through their reality. In the last stanza, there are the letters “y-e-a-h!” It is unclear who says this line or if both the listener and the speaker say these letters together. Despite the person who delivers the line, the letters conclude the poem and the exclamation point used can represent someone shouting with happiness or maybe even