Blues

“Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, was first published in 1957 in Partisan Review and was later published again by Baldwin in a collection of short stories called Going to Meet the Man. “Sonny’s Blues” is the story of two brothers, one an Algebra teacher in Harlem and the other a jazz musician tuned heroin addict and drug dealer both suffering from the inequalities faced by African Americans before and during the Civil Rights Movement. The story does not begin with background information…

which “points toward the future of jazz” makes a valid point (Starr & Waterman, 88). ODJBs were playing during the ragtime craze, so their music exemplifies some of that, but begins to carry some of the predominate features of jazz. Even “Dipper Mouth Blues” still has some of the ragtime influence in it and there is again a difference between this song and…

‘Blues For Alice’ is a jazz standard composed by a American jazz saxophonist called Charlie Parker. This jazz standard is a 12 Bars Blues form but it is a modified version of Blues in the key of F major. Instead of normal 12 Bars Blues progression of just using I, IV and V chords, Charlie Parker composed it through a lot of ii - V sequences. For melody lines, Charlie Parker’s famous Bebop tune was used, as well as arpeggios, syncopation and also anticipation. These make Blues For Alice famous…

Music, culture, and drugs have interrelated together in various levels of harmony and conflict throughout contemporary music, affecting patrons and creators alike. James Baldwin’s sonny’s blues is an illustration of this triangle of traditional relations that has plagued three generations of American culture. The unfolding of the story dates back to 1950's a time in which the African American community swung into a downward spiral. Sonny’s, the protagonist of the story discovers music as his aim…

Why I chose this book: I’ve decided to read Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie for book report #3. I think that I will enjoy it because I have read another book by the same author called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and I absolutely loved it. Not only does this book seem like a good fit for me, Sherman Alexie also happens to be a minority author which was part of the criteria for this assignment. Sherman grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and many of his books shed…

majority of all ethnic backgrounds. “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, conveys a first person view of the effects of drug addiction and the recovery processes power to bring family back together after an immense amount of hardship. Throughout “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny has been released from jail and is dealing with his heroin addiction. During Sonny’s incarceration, his relationship with his brother, the Narrator, demolishes and he uses his talents with Blues music to recover from his…

or her individual path to follow, no two paths are exactly the same; but, every now and then, paths interweave and people construct bonds with each other. In the case of Sonny and his brother, the narrator, in James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, their paths were parallel with one another until they grew up. Sonny left the slums of Harlem, aspiring to become a musician, while his brother settled in Harlem and became a teacher. Although the narrator and his brother ended up with…

street clap and dance to the beat of the music. The lyrics speak of overcoming all and living in what seems to be such a distant world. The people enjoying the music are African-Americans and they are playing a genre known today as the Blues. The origin of the Blues genre dates back to the Atlantic Slave Trade, which took place from 1619 to 1809 and beyond. In order to get the cheapest labor for future plans in the New World, Europeans travelled to Africa in search of people who would soon…

When the blues was first produced, it was grown out of a tradition of sorrow songs from the slavery period; songs that spoke about the African American soul during conflicting times. Several writers have identified the blues as a multifaceted concept that can be defined through the lens of the traditional, black conservative politics; the white liberal ideology; and through the secularization of the traditional religious ideology. The blues created an era when African American could air their…

R&B, or Rhythm and Blues is a musical genre born in the middle of the 20th century that, perhaps, bridged the gap between the mainly black audience of early blues and what eventually became an international audience that transcended racial and social barriers. The musical term rhythm and blues was coined as a musical marketing term by Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler in 1948 as a substitute for the term “race records”. This distinctive music style described as rocking and jazz based with…