Before watching the documentary, I believed that the blues was nothing more than old genre of music. I was oblivious toward the fact that the blues had made such an impact on modern day music and that it was the foundation from which many of my favorite genres stemmed from. A topic that I specifically found interesting was that this very special genre of music, a genre that had been brought out of slavery and the black struggle had been abandoned by its demographic, the black community. During this time period, the early sixties, blacks had generally turned their favoritism toward Motown and Jazz, leaving the blues behind. What had been created to bring ease to the minds of blacks was taken by young white people whom I’d like to refer to as…
ezilla, Michael. "Blues and Gospel Recording Artists from 1920s Left Imprint on Today's Music | Penn State University." PSU. Penn State University, 12 Nov. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2016. This article describes how blues and gospel artists from the 1920s influenced today's music greatly. It touches on the fact that blues is one of jazzs greatest influence. It summarizes what blues is, and the aspects of blues that have found their way into the seams of jazz. The article…
Boston Globe Review Jacqueline Novogratz’s memoir, The Blue Sweater, is eye opening, inspiring and thought provoking. Written and published in 2009, the book quickly grew in popularity and instantly became a New York Times Bestseller. It begins with an embarrassing memory from high school, where the author, Jacqueline Novogratz, is harassed for the shrinking blue sweater that her uncle had given her. That same day, she immediately goes home, boxes up the sweater and donates it to goodwill,…
When comparing the blues, the Chicago and Delta blues are a great way to show the progression of the blues style. You can almost say that the blues were born in the Delta, and even trace many of the styles seen in the Chicago blues to that seen in the Delta. In the Delta, blues were sung for the relieve of people struggle, used as venting. It was anything and everything that you could find to create a rhythm and tune. The structure resembled that of church call and response. Where you could have…
The Guidance of Blues Blues is an African American art form that was created in the early 20th century. It was a secular response for the segregation that African Americans faced during the post-reconstruction era. African Americans use blues for catharsis, a spiritual relief from physical and emotional grievance in their difficult position in the society. Elements of it has been passed through the adaptations over the century and still exists in the modern blues we hear nowadays. Looking back…
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,…
Literary Stylistics and the Creation of Weariness in “The Weary Blues” This paper will focus to use the relative knowledge of literary stylistics, deviation and foregrounding to analyze Langston Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues”, and use strong evidence from the poem to support the argument of Hughes’s use of literary stylistics to create and highlight the sentimental elements of weary in this poem. The weary sentimental elements are significant to the theme of this poem. Blues is the music in…
Ragtime and blues are the foundations of jazz. Both were initially very popular among African Americans as jazz came from an African background. The blues contain the musical structure of jazz with the 12 bar pattern, while ragtime supplies the unique syncopations and improvisations. The early musicians of blues and ragtime would eventually provide the transition necessary to move into jazz.…
something different. Something quiet but loud. They sang! They wrote songs about their slave life and racism that they had to see every day. Their songs had different codes that only, but only they could understand. Then they added instruments and they used anything they could find or use. They had fun and the music was marvelous. By the 1920s jazz and blues were exploited. Everyone wanted to hear it even the white people. Whites wanted to hear them sing…
The Blues have been around for a long time. In fact, “the blues flourished from African American folk music, such as work songs, spirituals, and the field hollers of slaves” (Music Pg. 357). The exact time frame in which blues music originated is unknown. However, during the 1980s blues music was gaining popularity in rural areas of the south. Blues music speaks to the soul and heart. During a period in time where African Americans were physically and systematically oppressed, the Blues gave…