Similarities And Similarities Between Blues And Jazz

This week we learned about many genres of music, some similar some different. The two genres I want to compare and contrast are Rock and Blues. When you hear rock music, you picture electric guitars, amplified sounds, and complex styles of play. But if you take a deeper look you would probably be surprised to learn that rock would not even have existed without simple 12-bar forms, antiphonal textures, or “walking bass lines” used in much blues music. Though Rock and Blues are distinctly different they have a lot of similarities that most likely go unnoticed. Rock and Blues were developed at almost the same exact time around the late 19th century. Blues originated from African American folk music and like Blues, rock music style can also be

How did Blues Influence Rock and Roll? When we think of rock and roll, we think electric guitars, amplified sounds. Blues music is one of the most influential characteristics that gave birth to rock and roll. Beginning in the Mississippi region with African slave work songs and expanding to areas of Chicago and Dallas, blues went on to inspire rock legends such as: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix.

Different from other forms of music, blues was only recorded by memory and passed down through generations through live performances. The blues began in the North Mississippi Delta post Civil War times. It was heavily influenced by African roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups. This eventually developed into music that was set up in a call-and- response way so that the singer would sing a line and he would then respond with his guitar.

Ragtime and Blues are two different styles of music that came together to make what is known as jazz music. Ragtime was more about freedom, fun, and giving the listener an elated feeling while Blue’s intent was to appeal to the listeners emotions and make them feel better about the troubles in their life. The way Jazz came about was the collaboration of these 2 very different styles of music. Due to very influential people in the music world like Jelly Role Morton, Joe Oliver, Louis armstrong, just to name a few, Jazz has flourished into the music known all over the world. Although Jazz and Ragtime have many differences, they also had many similarities and each style is significant to the amercement of jazz.

Black folk traditions like spirituals and “ragged music” evolve into the blues, ragtime, and jazz.

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

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

Rhythm and blues, also known today as “R & B”, has been one of the most influential genres of music within the African American Culture, and has evolved over many decades in style and sound. Emerging in the late 1940's rhythm and blues, sometimes called jump blues, became dominant black popular music during and after WWII. Rhythm and blues artists often sung about love, relationships, life troubles, and sometimes focused on segregation and race struggles. Rhythm and blues helped embody what was unique about black American culture and validate it as something distinctive and valuable.

There are several stylistic characteristics of the blues. The first one is the blue notes, which is the "bent" technique for lowering the pitch of third and seventh scale degrees in the major scale(259). The next one is the blue chorus, which is three-line lyrics, and it contains fill which is the instrument response of the call and response between vocal and instrument. The third feature is the blue progression which is the form of the combination between tonic(I), subdominant(IV), and dominant(V) chords. It is usually arranged as: I- / IV- I- / V- I-. Another characteristic is that the timbre of the vocals in blues have a wide varieties. Every single piece of blue music features a different kind of vocal texture. The rhythm in the blues has a characteristic called "swung" which means the long-short pattern of the rhythm. In all three pieces of music, the blue note and the blue chorus are applied to the composition. The "bent" texture of the pitch and the neat separation of the lyrics can be easily notice in the music. The call and response in vocals and instruments, on the other hand, is not so obvious in "Can 't Help Lovin ' Dat Man," but I think, though subtle, it is still there at the end of each line. The rhythm in the "Muleskinner Blues" is more steady instead of the long- short patterned "swung." The "swung" is not so obvious in "Can 't Help Lovin ' Dat Man," either. Overall, there are some standard blue style in all three pieces of music, but we

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.

Though the blues were developed in the rural southern United States, toward the end of the 19th century, and found a wider audience in the 1940s as blacks migrated to urban areas. Jazz music has dozens of variations and also utilizes elements from other genres. Albeit the fact that it is

Nowadays the blues revolve around the meaning of sadness but doesn’t have a true message of fighting for survival or deprivation of freedom. In the process of searching for the modern day blues, it was discovered that the music is compiled by mostly Caucasian artist compared to the past where it was conceived by blacks to prompt their practices and beliefs.

At the heart of jazz, the blues was a creation of former black slaves who adapted their African musical heritage to the American environment. The blues is a 12-bar musical form with a call-and-response format between the singer and his guitar dealing with themes of personal adversity, overcoming hard luck, and other emotional turmoil.

Jazz was inspired by African-American folk music, Blues and Ragtime in the early 20th century and introduced in New Orleans. According to the text book “Discovering Humanities”, “Jazz was “the” American music, and was almost as popular in Paris and Berlin as it was in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans” (468). The first feature of Jazz is improvisation, when a song was played there is no specific arrangement, it is spontaneously elaborated around a specific song (Listen, 386). A second feature is that there is a rhythmic style that involves highly developed syncopation. Syncopation occurs when accents in