The Influence of Blues on Jazz
The blues more than any other form of music is jazz 's greatest influence. From its origin in southern United States, in the 20th century, blues and jazz have had a strong correlation. "Both the blues and jazz have multiple definitions that sometimes go beyond music and speak to the processes and viewpoints that give these revered musical art forms relevance today." From a musical structure prospective, jazz would not exist if it was not for the creation of the music of blues. The blues and its influence on jazz (and vice versa) from its beginning to today cannot be explained by one word alone, but one has to hear their sounds to truly comprehend their meaning. Two musical examples to be analyzed are
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In the song L.O.V.E by frank Sinatra, you can hear many elements of music. In the song you can hear drums at the start of the song, following the voice of Frank Sinatra. His voice is very monotone but he has expression in it. He also does some vibrato in order to express his feeling in the song. There is also a trumpet solo in the song as well. The song gives off a happy feeling. In the song L.O.V.E there is a lot of repetition. The repetition is a convening piece in the song I believe. At the end of the song the music gets louder and it crescendos and it gets faster. The initial tempo is slow at first but as the song progresses the tempo gets faster towards the end.
In the song It Don 't Mean A Thing by Duke Ellington, you here the violin, piano and the drums at the initial start of the song followed by voice and trumpets. Duke Ellington makes his voice vibrato a couple times. In the song it sounds like a person talking but that is a trumpet with a plunger on the end to create the effect. There are multiple voices in the song. The song has a feel to it as if you are in a dance mood. It has a New Orleans feel. In the song there is a trumpet and violin solo. The song gradually gets louder and faster as it progresses for dramatic affect.
Over all the song gives a feel of an old jazz club and the feeling of happiness.
Over all
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.
The relation between Blues and Jazz music can be discovered if we look closely and scrutinize the origins of both the music genres. How one developed can be found out from the roots of the other as both the separate genres use similar sound patterns. Both of these genres belong to a different decade/era however, are closely linked to one another. In this essay I will deliver a brief history of both Blues and Jazz, their similarities, and also discuss how the advancement of technology has affected the way we hear both these genres of music.
Thesis: Although Jazz music was first introduced over 80 years ago, the genre still influences artists and the new music they make to this day.
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.
Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul-the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Philadelphia club woman , turns up her nose at jazz and all its manifetations-likewise almost anything else distinctly racial... She wants the artist to flatter her, to make the white world believe that all Negroes are as smug and as near white in soul as she wants to be. But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist, to change through the force of his art that old whispering "I want to be white, hidden in the aspirations of his people, to "Why should I want to he white? I am Negro-and beautiful"
The Cotton Club lost some of its freshness as performers played dazzling, yet emotionless jazz but Ellington brought his own style of music which interested the nation’s
Ellington had the ability to take the genre of Jazz to another level. This was a popular genre in 1920. It was a style of music that was consisted of an upbeat rhythm. A verse of the song says “It don’t mean a thing if It doesn’t got that swing.” This appeared to have a hidden message. Swing is sometimes interchangeable with Jazz. This song became popular in the swing era. It was clear that his band selection was not something Ellington to for granted. His band was in sync with his vision. They played at the proper tempo, the musical structure flowed with the lyrics. The melody of it don’t mean a thing is moving. It is a hand-clapping and toe tapping melody. The skips and leaps in the melody were in sync. As a listener, it felt like the sound of swing music. There was clarity in the musical dynamics. There was never a monotonous
“The Harlem Renaissance brought a new age of culture, music, art, dance, and literature for African Americans between WWI and the Great Depression” (Wintz 7). “In the postwar period, these developments in music and literature accelerated” (Wintz 10). “The two great music forms, the blues and jazz, emerged out of the African American experience around the turn of the century” (Wintz 9). “Both the blues and jazz are African American folk music” ( Haskins 41). The blues were born in slavery, it showed the hard times of slavery (Haskins 41).
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
Throughout the many genres that exist in the world, there are always genres that have significant differences from each other. Although they may both stem from another genre, or one might be a derivative of the other, there is always more than one noteworthy characteristic of each genre that sets them completely apart from one another. Although rock’n’roll and jazz music were not genres that were discussed formally in class or in any assignments, they are each forms of music that thoroughly defined either a time period or a culture of a certain region. Rock and roll and jazz are two contrasting genres with slightly similarities between them. They have both been inspired by older and more prominent genres like blues and have also evolved later genres from different regions of the world such as pop music and reggae music. Also, jazz incorporates rock and roll in its music today. Rock and roll and jazz are analyzed singly and descriptively based on aural analyses of live performances that took place around the city of New York. Both of these genres stem may from the same genre, possibly an African genre, because of the history of each of them have, the instruments incorporated, and the general music characteristics of the music.
One cannot speak about music especially in America with referencing Jazz or the Blues. The two genres of music are synonymous with the American music scene originating from Southern America. Their similar point of origin has caused much confusion in distinguishing the two mainly due to the way today’s artists’ music crossover. Both Jazz and Blues, are two independent genres that formed concurrently in the 20th century and were produced at the same time.
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
Once we understand how improvisation plays a role in the overall tune of jazz, we can then look to how jazz is communicated. To musicians, jazz is a language. It doesn’t limit to a yes or a no, but instead it communicates feelings that show our anger, happiness, sadness, and everything in the middle. It is unique in that it seems to transcend tradition language barriers. Though a man who speaks Spanish and another who speaks English cannot understand what the other is trying to say, jazz has a way that communicates the feelings behind the words, that
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
The development of jazz, blues and literature in harlem shine a big light on langston hughes the famous writer .Who was one of harlem 's famous writer for his poetry “ Harlem Dream Deferred”.Langston Hughes is broadly viewed as one of the best artists who ever strolled the earth. A number of his subjects concentrated on the issues that were going up against the race, fairness and