Kind of Blue the analysis By Maddison H-E
The album ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis was released on the 17th of August 1959. Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. The style of the genre is called modal jazz a part of the cool jazz genre. I will be discussing the Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, Form and Structure and texture of the album ‘Kind of Blue. The Album ‘Kind of blue’ has five songs, called ‘So What’, ‘Freddie Freeloader’, ‘Blue in Green’, ‘All Blues’ and ‘Flamenco Sketches’. Since its release on August 17, 1959, Kind of Blue has been regarded by many critics as Davis's
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In the song ‘So What’ there is not much change in the rhythm and is in the 4/4-time signature, while ‘Freddie Freeloader’ went back to the roots of blues, blues take us on an emotional journey. ‘Flamenco Sketches’ is in 4/4 metrical time and has a slow tempo, ‘blue in green’ is in 4/4 and has a slow melody. Now for the rhythm in ‘All Blues’, it’s in a 6/4-time signature, the rhythm is lyrical with a swing rhythm, and is performed with swinging quavers. This represents cool jazz because it has no vocals. In the duration of the album is 44:29 minutes long with songs varying from 5 to just over 11 minutes long, the longest song being ‘all blues’ at 11:34 minutes. In music, rhythm is important because without it, you would not have music, as we need something to lock onto and it keeps the music or song moving …show more content…
In the song ‘So What’ it’s mostly played by the horns in the song, however, the piano takes over on the 32nd bar. Due to the lack of vocal song has very powerful horns to control the song. But in the song ‘Freddie Freeloader’ the melody is quite simple and built of largely of intervals of 2nds. In ‘All Blues’ it's calm and a quiet piece, mostly in Mezzo forte. With a few loud trumpet bits, while the ensemble plays piano during the solos. ‘Flamenco Sketches’ has no written melody but defined, by a set of chord changes that are improvised and has a slow tempo. In ‘Blue in Green’ the melody is simple and evocative, one of the features is that almost every measure begins with a long
Jazz music of the 1940’s and 1950’s was defined by a history of change since its beginning at the dawn of the 20th century. Almost every decade brought a new flavor to the movement, and by the 1940’s jazz had developed into a mature, complex form of music, with many nuances and avenues for continued change. It is important to trace the early movements in jazz to better understand the innovations of the Bebop and Cool jazz eras of the 40’s and 50’s.
Perhaps the blues was representation of optimism and faith for the entire city of Harlem and all of African-American descent. Music is portrayed fluently and abundantly throughout the entire story of “Sonny’s Blues”. Despite the fact that Sonny frequently plays the piano, there is always a juke box playing, the “humming an old church song”, a “jangling beat of a tambourine”, a tune being whistled, or a revival meeting with the singing of religious words (Baldwin 293-307). The repetition of music in the short story is a realistic portrayal of how regular the blues, musically and emotionally, was present in an African-American’s life during the era of racial discrimination. Flibbert explains that the rooted, burdensome emotion felt by African Americans is difficult to put to words, other than describing it as the blues. He best defines the blues as “a mental and emotional state arising from recognition of limitation imposed-in the case of African-Americans-by racial barriers to the community” (Flibbert). Though a definite definition exists, the blues cannot simply be construed. To cope with this unexplainable feeling of blue, the African-American folk genre of jazz music was created. Finally, the blues was something African-Americans owned and that the white man could not strip them of. Though music appears to show up at the most troublesome times in “Sonny’s Blues”, it brings along “a glimmer of life within the
Musicologists have dated the ‘birth’ of blues to be around 1890 as a West African tradition involving blue indigo in which mourners at ceremonies would wear blue dyed attires to resemble their suffering . Although, blues derived from times of slavery, the Prohibition Era (1920’s), World War Two (1939-1945), and during the Vietnam War (predominantly 1960’s to 1970’s), it has been a continuously evolved form of music in America, in which the similarities have always remained; melancholy and protest.
Albert, Richard N. "The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues"" College Literature 11.2 (1984): 171-85. College Literature. Web. Apr.-May 2014.
Mike Stern is an American jazz guitarist known presently for his solo work and previously as the guitarist for legendary trumpeter Miles Davis in the early 1980s. Much of Stern’s compositions and improvisations incorporate a variety of musical styles including rock, blues and jazz traditions. Big Neighborhood is Stern’s 14th solo album released in 2009. The album is recognized for its eclectic musical styles and guest artist collaborations. As one reviewer states, “Big Neighborhood’s styles range from blazing jazz-fusion to African tinged exotica and trippy Middle Eastern journeys.” (Widran, 2009). Both reviews incorporate Stern’s diverse musical content and guest artists as the focus for their arguments.
When it comes to jazz music, there is one name that everyone knows, whether they’ve never listened to jazz before or if they’ve listened to it their whole lives. That name is Louis Armstrong. Armstrong was one of the pioneers of jazz music, from his humble beginnings in one of New Orleans roughest districts, “the Battlefield”, to playing concerts for sold out crowds in Chicago and New York City, Louis left a massive impact on the way America listened to music for a long time. One of his premier tracks, “West End Blues”, left an impact on jazz music, which other musicians would try to emulate for years.
Others do not explore the significance of how blues music relates to the commonly-agreed-upon basic themes of individualism and alienation. The chief value of living with music lies in its power to give us an orientation in time. In doing so, it gives connotation to all those indefinable aspects of experience, which nevertheless helps us make what we are. Works Cited • http://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/marie.dybala/engl-1302/research-paper-assignments-and-documents/baldwin-articles-on-sonnys-blues/Sherard%20Sonnys%20Bebop.pdfhttp://cai.ucdavis.edu/uccp/sblecture.html#bebop • http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/1321/1353476/essays/jbgioia.htmlhttp://cai.ucdavis.edu/uccp/sonnylinks.html • http://introduction-to-literature.wikispaces.com/Baldwin+and+Sonny's+Blues http://davinci.choate.edu/dloeb/webpages/SummerSchool/sonny'sblues.htm http://www.marinaskendzic.com/essayscriticalpieces/baldwinssonnysblues.html • http://www.jstor.org/pss/2901246
According to Albert Murray, the African-American musical tradition is “fundamentally stoical yet affirmative in spirit” (Star 3). Through the medium of the blues, African-Americans expressed a resilience of spirit which refused to be crippled by either poverty or racism. It is through music that the energies and dexterities of black American life are sounded and expressed (39). For the black culture in this country, the music of Basie or Ellington expressed a “wideawake, forward-tending” rhythm that one can not only dance to but live by (Star 39).
Nisenson, Eric. The making of Kind of blue: Miles Davis and his masterpiece. Macmillan, 2001.
Jazz music prospered in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Jazz was created by African Americans to represent pain and suffering and also represented the adversity that racial tension brought. (Scholastic) African American performers like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie “Bird” Parker came to be recognized for their ability to overcome “race relati...
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Jazz Fiction Anthology. Ed. Sascha Feinstein and David Rife. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2009. 17-48.
The first song, “Love for Sale” had a constant tempo. It also had a slow, funky, and earthy sound to it, which would make it fall under the blues category. The guitarist seemed to be improvising during his solo. The drummer was mostly using the crash cymbal and the high hat. He was also acting as the timekeeper in this piece. The second song entitled “Once I Loved” was a standard tune from Brazil. It had a similar sound as “Love for Sale,” however one of the differences was that the bassist was using the pizzicato technique instead of the arco technique as he did in the first piece, except during his solo.
Jazz is the best-known artistic creation of the Harlem Renaissance. “Jazz is the only pure American creation, which shortly after its birth, became America’s most important cultural export”(Ostendorf, 165). It evolved from the blues. In the formally standardized, instrumentally accompanied form of “city blues”(as opposed to the formally unstandardized and earlier “country blues”), the blues was to become one of the two major foundations of 1920s jazz (the other being rags). City blues tended to be strophic songs with a text typically based on two-line strophes (but with the first line of each strophe’s text repeated, AAB) and a standard succession of harmonies underlying each strophe’s melody.... ...
In order to see the parallel between the novel and jazz, one must first see how Ellison incorporates jazz music in the prologue of the novel. He not only sets the scene with jazz music in the background but also gives the narrator a deep understanding of music. The music that the narrator listens to is Louis Armstrong’s “Black and Blue,” which is appropriate because Armstrong is a prominent African-American jazz musician who protests the treatment of African-Americans through his music. The narrator embraces every line of the song and gives an apt description of its message:
Am I Blue? When hearing this title one might insight a colorful narrative that is meant for a youthful audience, when in fact the title is a representation of society’s dark and concealed meanings. Am I Blue by Alice Walker depicts all the struggles and hardships people have been through and still go through on a day to day basis. While the title suggests something pretty, the story itself proves to be far from it as one looking closely at the words and reading between the lines.