Essay On Blues And Ragtime

Considered the pioneer of Anglo-African music and the basis of jazz, the Blues and Ragtime can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, originating in the Mississippi Valley. Distinguished from other musical styles with its strong 4/4 rhythms and twelve-bar structure, the Blues were created by the amalgamation of American folk songs and hymns intertwined with an African beat. Often, the Blues outline the woeful tales of hopeless, unsuccessful people. Forming as an alternative to the Blues in the early 1890s, Ragtime focuses primarily on syncopation and, unlike the Blues, tries to uplift the listener with its infectious tune. Despite their differences, both the Blues and Ragtime helped transform the listening culture of America by exposing …show more content…
The actual structure of the style of music makes one value it even more. Mechanically, the blues operates on a 4/4 rhythm and a twelve-bar pattern, divided equally into three four-measure phrases. Also, the Blues melodic style focuses mostly on the vocals than the instrumental aspect. In addition, the Blues scale is located in the key of C and the lowered third and seventh scale steps are usually referred to as the “blue notes”. A large portion of Blues music is improvised using the 4/4 rhythm and twelve-bar pattern as a general format. The dawn of the Blues can be traced back to the final decade of the 1800s to the Deep South. For the first time in American history, African-Americans had developed their own genre of music. The Blues represented “the cries of the people who had nothing, who seemed to get nothing no matter how hard they tried, and whose lives seemed hopeless” (Haskins 34). The main influence of the blues germinated back to the early days before the Civil War where slaves sang while working tirelessly in the fields of the plantation. The slaves who originally came from West Africa to America brought over their