The Importance Of American Blues Music

American Blues Music is a distinctive art form that encapsulates many complexities of culture and race in American society. Throughout the 20th century, the impact of the blues on music and culture has transformed and reacted to a changing landscape of musical culture and perspectives on race. The preservation of blues music has been difficult due to many factors, including limitations of technology, mass media bias, and our narrow definition of what makes the music and the culture of the blues truly authentic. Many intermediaries have affected the legacy of blues music and our memory of the art form, and this has shaped our understanding of the blues as an artifact in American culture today.

Defining the Blues as Art
Defining the blues as an art form, it is helpful to consider what other art movements were in effect during the early blues era in the 1920s-1930s. The 1920s in America are remembered for the prolific amount of art and literature produced, as well as the lively nightlife in growing urban environments. In …show more content…
Technology was a substantial barrier for music preservation, as the blues were first created during the acoustic era of sound recording that lasted until 1925. The earliest blues music was doubtlessly not recorded, and therefore we do not have any record of what early blues culture sounded like. The first record of blues music was not recorded until 1912, while the first African American record was not recorded until 1920 (by Mamie Smith). In 1925, the sound recording technology shifted to the electrical era, which greatly improved the sound quality of records and required the use of a microphone rather than a horn to capture the sound. This improvement in technology is audible through records produced before and after 1925 demonstrates how technology limited and empowered music