Information AboutBlues |
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The blues is a Vocal and instrumental form of Music based on a Pentatonic Scale and a characteristic Twelve-bar Chord Progression . The form evolved in the United States in the communities of former African Slaves from Spirituals , praise songs, field hollers, shouts, and Chant s. The use of Blue Note s and the prominence of Call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of the blues' West Africa n pedigree. The blues has been a major influence on later American and Western Popular Music , finding expression in Ragtime , Jazz , Bluegrass , Rhythm And Blues , Rock And Roll , Hip-hop , and Country Music , as well as conventional Pop Song s. The phrase ''the blues'' is a synonym for having a fit of ''the blue devils'', meaning low spirits, depression and sadness. An early reference to this can be found in , ISBN 0252028740 CHARACTERISTICS Origins There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the peculiarities of individual performances.Southern, pg. 333 However, some characteristics have been present since before the creation of the modern blues and are common to most styles of African American Music . The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure."Garofalo, pg. 44 This pre-blues music was adapted from slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".Ferris, pg. 229 The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European Harmonic Structure and the West African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.Morales, pg 276 Morales attributes this claim to John Storm Roberts in ''Black Music of Two Worlds'', beginning his discussion with a quote from Roberts ''There does not seem to be the same African quality in blues forms as there clearly is in much Caribbean music''. Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the Music Of Africa . Sylviane Diouf has pointed to several specific traits—such as the use of Melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation—that suggest a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and bluesSFGate. Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to contend that certain elements of the blues have roots in the Islamic Music of West and Central Africa. Stringed instruments (which were favored by slaves from Muslim regions of Africa…), were generally allowed because slave owners considered them akin to European instruments like the violin. So slaves who managed to cobble together a banjo or other instrument…could play more widely in public. This solo-oriented slave music featured elements of an Arabic-Islamic song style that had been imprinted by centuries of Islam's presence in West Africa, says Gerhard Kubik, an ethnomusicology professor at the University of Mainz in Germany who has written the most comprehensive book on Africa's connection to blues music (''Africa and the Blues''). {Link without Title} Kubik also pointed out that the Mississippi technique of playing the guitar using a knife blade, recorded by W.C. Handy in his autobiography, is common to West and Central Africa cultures where the Kora , a guitar-like instrument, is often the stringed instrument of choice. This technique consists of pressing a knife against the strings of the guitar, and is a possible antecedent of the Slide Guitar technique. , a Delta Blues singer, is generally considered responsible for the standardization of the 12-bar blues.]] Blues music later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian airs"—"Ethiopian" is used here to mean " Black "—of Minstrel Show s and Negro Spiritual s, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment.Garofalo, pg. 44 ''Gradually, instrumental and harmonic accompaniment were added, reflecting increasing cross-cultural contact.'' Garofalo goes on to cite others mentioning the "Ethiopian airs" and "Negro spirituals". The style also was closely related to Ragtime , which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".Schuller, cited in Garofalo, pg. 27 Songs from this early period had many different structures. Examples can be found in Leadbelly 's or Henry Thomas's recordings. However, the Twelve- , Eight- , or Sixteen-bar structure based on Tonic , Subdominant and Dominant Chord s became the most common.Garofalo, pgs. 46-47 What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from Oral History and Sheet Music appearing in African American communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River during the first decade of the 1900s (and performed by white bands in New Orleans at least since 1908). One of these early sites of blues evolution was along Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee . Lyrics
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often with the singer voicing his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, hard times".Ewen, pgs. 142-143 Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, in contrast to much of the music being recorded at the time. One of the more extreme examples, " Down In The Alley " by Memphis Minnie , is about a Prostitute having sex with men in an alley. Music such as this was called "gut-bucket" blues. The term refers to a type of homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket used to clean pig intestines for Chitterlings , a Soul Food dish associated with slavery and deprivation. "Gut-bucket" described blues that was "low-down" and earthy, that dealt with often rocky or steamy man-woman relationships, hard luck and hard times. Gut-bucket blues and the rowdy juke-joint venues where it often was played, earned blues music an unsavory reputation. Upstanding church-going people shunned it, and some preachers railed against it as sinful. And because it often treated the hardships and injustices of life, the blues gained an association in some quarters with misery and oppression. But the blues was about more than hard times; it could be humorous and raunchy as well: :Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, :Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, :It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me. Author Ed Morales has claimed that Yoruba Mythology played a part in early blues, citing Robert Johnson 's " Cross Road Blues " as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleggua , the Orisha in charge of the crossroads".Morales, pg. 277 However, many seminal blues artists such as Joshua White , Son House , Skip James , or Reverend Gary Davis were influenced by Christianity . The original lyrical form of the blues was probably a single line, repeated three times. It was only later that the current, most common structure—a line, repeated once and then followed by a single line conclusion—became standard. Ferris, pg. 230 Musical style Though during the first decades of the twentieth century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of chords progression, the twelve-bar blues became standard in the '30s. However, in addition to the conventional twelve-bar blues, there are many blues in 8-bar form, such as "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and Big Bill Broonzy 's "Key to the Highway". There are also 16 Bar Blues , as in Ray Charles 's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars". More idiosyncratic numbers of bars are also encountered occasionally, as with the 9 bar progression in Howling Wolf 's "Sitting on top of the World". The basic twelve-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard Harmonic Progression of twelve bars, in 4/4 or 2/4 time. The blues Chords associated to a Twelve-bar Blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme: where the Roman Number s refer to the Degrees of the progression. That would mean, if played in the Tonality of F, the chords would be as follows: In this example, F is the Tonic Chord , Bb the Subdominant . Note that much of the time, every chord is played in the Dominant Seventh (7th) form. Frequently, the last chord is the dominant (V or in this case C) Turnaround making the transition to the beginning of the next progression. The lyrics generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the eleventh bar, and the final two bars are given to the instrumentalist as a break; the harmony of this two-bar break, the Turnaround , can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that defy analysis in terms of chords. The final beat, however, is almost always strongly grounded in the dominant seventh (V7), to provide tension for the next verse. Musicians sometimes refer to twelve-bar blues as "B-flat" blues because it is the traditional pitch of the tenor sax, trumpet/cornet, clarinet and trombone. " (1914)]] Melodically , blues music is marked by the use of the Flat ted Third , Fifth and Seventh (the so-called ''blue'' Or ''bent Notes'' ) of the associated Major Scale .Ewen, pg. 143 While the twelve-bar harmonic progression had been intermittently used for centuries, the revolutionary aspect of blues was the frequent use of the flatted fourth, flatted seventh, and even flatted fifth in the melody, together with ''crushing''—playing directly adjacent notes at the same time, i.e., diminished second—and ''sliding''—similar to using Grace Note s.Grace notes were common in the Baroque and Classical periods, but they acted as ornamentation rather than as part of the harmonic structure. Mozart comes very close in the slow movement of his '' Piano Concerto No. 21 '', holding a flatted fifth in the dominant for a full quarter-note. But this was a technique for building unbearable tension for resolution into the major fifth, while a blues melody could sustain the flatted fifth indefinitely as part of the scale. In other words both a blues musician and Mozart could slide from a flatted ''mi'' to a major ''mi'' over a dominant chord, but the blues musician could also use the flatted ''mi'' as a harmonic resolution in a major key. Where a classical musician will generally play a grace note distinctly, a blues singer or harmonica player will Glissando ; a pianist or guitarist might crush the two notes and then release the grace note. Blues harmonies also use the subdominant major chord with and added minor seventh (IV 7) and the tonic major triad with an added minor seventh (I 7) in place of the tonic. Blues is occasionally played in a Minor Key . The scale differs little from the traditional minor, except for the occasional use of a flatted fifth in the tonic, often crushed by the singer or lead instrument with the Perfect Fifth in the harmony. Janis Joplin 's rendition of "Ball and Chain", accompanied by Big Brother And The Holding Company , provides an example of this technique. Also, minor-key blues is most often structured in sixteen bars rather than twelve—e.g., " St. James Infirmary Blues " and Trixie Smith 's "My Man Rocks Me"—and was often influenced by evangelical religious music. Blues Shuffles are also typical of the style. Their use reinforces the rhythm and call-and-response trance, the Groove . Their simplest version commonly used in many postwar Electric Blues , Rock-and-roll s, or early Bebop s is a basic three-note Riff on the bass strings of the guitar. Played in time with the bass and the drums, this technique, similar to the Walking Bass , produces the groove feel characteristic of the blues. The last bar of the chord progression is usually accompanied by a Turnaround making the transition to the beginning next progression. Shuffle Rhythm is often vocalized as "''dow'', da ''dow'', da ''dow'', da" or "''dump'', da ''dump'', da ''dump'', da"David Hamburger, ''Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics'', 2001, ISBN 1890490385. as it consists of uneven eight notes. On a guitar this may be done as a simple steady bass or may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the seventh of the chord and back. An example is provided by the following Tablature for the first four bars of a blues progression in E:1 Wilbur M. Savidge, Randy L. Vradenburg, ''Everything About Playing the Blues'', 2002, Music Sales Distributed, ISBN 1884848095, pg. 35 E7 A7 E7 E7 NOTES |
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