More handpicked essays just for you.
African music history
African American music and slavery
African american culture and its impact on american culture
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
African Americans developed the blues by expressing their hardship through the lyrics of their songs. Most Blues songs are conformed with 12 Bar structures, AAB lyric order and a steady tempo. The Blues have been a positive and influential source of music for other genres of music such as: country, jazz, folk, etc.There are different types of blues music that include traditional county blues, jump blues, Chicago blues, west coast blues and others. Willie McTell was an artist apart of the Piedmont Blues. In the song “Savannah Mama”, McTell shows off his own guitar style in this song that not many blues artists were using in their own songs. This song speaks of him moving back to Savannah after staying in Atlanta. The song reflects on the type of blues that were written in different states such as: Georgia, Virginia, and Richmond. …show more content…
“Boll weevil blues” is a traditional blues song that was about a beetle that infected cotton growing in the United States and cause problems around the U.S. Ma Rainey was telling a story in most songs she wrote. She sings about the boll weevil being everywhere she went . There has been many songs recorded about the boll weevil from different blues artists but Ma Rainey’s version was well known. “Dealing with the Devil” by Brownie McGhee and “Boll Weevil” by Jaybird Coleman were chosen due to their great representation of the country and folk blues. Country Blues are known for their use of banjos, acoustic guitars, and harmonica. In “Boll Weevil”, Jaybird Coleman uses a harmonica as his source of music, much like legendary harmonica player Sonny Terry. In “Dealing with the Devil”, Brownie McGhee uses a banjo and harmonica for the music. Each represent the swing like, folk style blues that were famously known in the
Blues has played an extreme role in todays’ music. The music genre of blues, helps us express ourselves in which you can feel it from the ubiquitous in the jazz to the blues scale and the specific chord progressions. To start off, the blues is musically originated by African Americans in the deep South of the United States. Growing up in a southern household, I was used to listening to a variety music, but blues was always most listened to. Every time I listen to blues, the lyrics often deal with personal adversity, and it goes far beyond pity.
Rhythm and Blues also known as R&B has become one of the most identifiable art-forms of the 20th Century, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. The history of R&B series of box sets investigates the accidental synthesis of Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Ragtime, Latin, Country and Pop into a definable from of Black music. The hardship of segregation caused by the Jim Crow laws caused a cultural revolution within Afro-American society. In the 1900s, as a method of self-expression in the southern states, the Blues gradually became a form of public entertainment in juke joints and dance halls picking up new rhythm along the way. In 1910, nearly five million African Americans left the south for the
In Langston Hughes' The Blues I'm Playing, the blues are the source of Oceola's life and her choices. Langston is trying to illustrate the conflict between life and art. The art in this story is represented in a confined manner, as a disciplined career with a white woman acting as the overseer in the young lady's life. Art to Oceola, with its profit, convenience and privileges offers an array of benefits, but being embodied in Dora Ellsworth, the art seems to drift away from life's vitality. Life in Oceola sings itself in jazz and blues in Harlem, ignores the artistic East 63rd Street and the rules by which are claims its superiority. There is a closeness between the blues and the life of Oceola as she summarizes her life for her patron. She remembers Mobile's roast pig and the large mouth of Billy Kersands, the minstrel leader who let her as a child place both hands inside it. The relevance of Negro experience to blues and jazz is the point in her recollection that her parents, both musicians, we...
The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and '30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of someone's anguish, the key factors, and the resolution of the situation. This is precisely what Hughes' poem, "The Weary Blues," describes. Hughes uses the rhythmic structure of blues music and the improvisational rhythms of jazz in his innovative development of "The Weary Blues." The poem opens by first setting the scene. "Down on Lenox Avenue" the speaker heard a "mellow croon" (lines 2 and 4). The tune was played on a piano and sung by a man with the emotions coming from the "black man's soul" (15). The piano man expresses his feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction with his life in lines 19-22 and 25-30:
It is very difficult to determine the exact origin of the blues. Although its earliest roots evolved from West Africa, the blues probably emerged in the United States around the 1800's relative to the African America plight into slavery, as spirituals, work songs, and "arhoolies" (traditional, vernacular, or regional music) (The Arhoolie Foundation). All had some form of influence on the blues as a distinct form of music. The emergence of the blues would have occurred with the social and economic circumstances of the African Americans. (Crosby) Blues was a way of communicating discontent. But it was the spiritual blues that was the music of an unhappy people - the music that told of death, and suffering, and a cry for some hope of freedom and liberation from their torment. Yes, the slaves did get their freedom but were still bound to their "Chains" by racism.
“The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It’s what they’ve come from. It’s what they know. The child knows what they won’t talk anymore because if he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to him.” page100. (Norton Introduction to Literature, Sonny’s Blues). This quote shows the cruelty and suffering the community had to go through. In “Sonny’s Blues” the mom goes on telling a story about the narrator and Sonny’s uncle who had been out with his brother (Sonny’s dad) one late night who was drunk and decided to run down a hill with his guitar and was killed by drunken men in a car. She says “This car was full of white men” Page101(Norton Introduction to Literature, Sonny’s Blues).The mother says this to warn the narrator that Sonny might fall through the same steps like his uncle not only that but she was showing her concern and worries that racism is still a big threat to her
Jackson, Buzzy. A Bad Woman Feeling Good Blues and The Women Who Sing Them. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005. N. pag. Print.
In “Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin”, the theme darkness and light appear throughout the story. The narrator's perspective of the Harlem is rough and shady due to his ability to accept new ideas and gestures. In the opeining introduction, the Narrator introduces darkness by comparing children to darkness by saying “All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness” (Baldwin, James). The Narrator is not only disgusted by the way the children acted but also by the music that contributes to darkness by not dealing with the real world. In Sonny's Blues, the narrator demonstrates being close-minded, strong, and accepting toward his family members.
...g for only a few minutes, Sonny starts to truly feel the music. The narrator can hear the clarity and freedom echoing from Sonny’s fingers. The narrator envisions Creole telling the other band member and the audience “what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen.” (pg 148) Through the Blues, Sonny has the means to fill the air with life; his life” (pg 145) and the narrator starts to really hear the music. Sonny’s dangerous, drunken blends of music and raw notes from the heart cause the narrator to remember the great misfortune of his parents and the death of his beloved daughter. The narrator realizes why Sonny chose the life he did: unsafe and sorrowful, but infinitely more satisfying in the end.
In the story, Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin uses music, jazz, and hymns to shape the story and show how it shapes Sonny’s life and how music is inherent to his survival. All of this is seen through the older brother’s eyes; the older brother is the narrator and the reader begins to understand Sonny through the older brother’s perspective. Baldwin writes the story like a jazz song to make a story out of his father’s past and his brother’s career choice and puts them together, going back and forth, until it creates a blending of histories and lives. He shows how the father’s past is similar to the narrator’s life; the older brother has conflicts with his younger brother, Sonny. Music heals the relationship.
The Roots of Blues Music Blues is a very important type of music. Most music that you hear today has some form of blues in it. If it wasn't for the blues there wouldn't be any rock and roll, country, rap, pop, or jazz . Blues is also important for African American culture. African Americans were also the people who started the blues.
Throughout the emotional lyrics of Tupac Shakur’s song “Dear Mama”, he constantly reveals trial and tribulation. Shakur sympathetically expresses the obstacles he endures due to the undying support of his mother who displays sacrificial love. He explains the abnormal circumstances in which his family undergoes such as poverty, single parenting, and even feelings of hopelessness. Shakur characterizes his mother as a heroic figure, who outshines the negative aspects of his life by providing the essentials only a mother could both physically and morally instill in her child. The artist brilliantly captivates his audience by revealing personal information from his childhood in which many can relate to.
It would be difficult to argue that the blues are not a product of the African American experience. However, the music style definitely became popular because of the characteristics included in the blues music genre. What characteristics led the blues music style to be successful? Blues music is popular because of the characteristics it contains, for example, the musical form of the style.
They thought of blues music as many white Americans think of rap/hip-hop in present day. It was just a bunch of noise that didn’t tell a story. August Wilson tells a power yet subtle story about the struggle of Black Americans during the 1900s. He writes about struggles in equality, and identity through the cast members of Ma Rainey music group.
Various authors have varyingly explored the origins of the blues, as a genre, possibly because of its influence in modern-day music world. In fact, the blues significantly influence today’s music scene and it is common to find other music genres borrowing from the blues in terms of style, tunes, as well as other features. Nevertheless, the blues have emerged as a widespread genre since its inception in the United States in the early 19th century. It is believed to belong to the popular (commonly referred to as pop music) style of music. In addition, it is associated with African-American culture. This paper looks into the work of two authors (R. Palmer and W. Barlow) by comparing and contrasting their views about the origin of the blues as