It blues (meaning melancholy or sadness) is a genre of vocal and instrumental, based on the use of Blue Notes and a repetitive pattern, which usually follow a structure of twelve bars. Originating communities African-American United States, developed through the spiritual songs of prayer, work songs, rhymes English, ballads Scottish and Irish story and cries of field. The use of blues notes and the importance of call and response, both music and lyrics, patterns are indicative of inheritance africana-occidental of this genre. A characteristic feature of the blues is the extensive use of “expressive”-bend, vibrato, slide guitar techniques that would later influence in their own styles as rock. Blues influenced American and Western popular music in general, becoming part of genres as ragtime, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, funk, heavy metal, hip hop, country music and songs pop.
The genres associated with blues share a small number of similar characteristics, since this musical genre takes its form from the personal characteristics of each artist who interprets. However, there are a number of characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues.
One of the earliest forms of known music similarity with the blues, which saves corresponds to the cries of call and response, which were defined as ‘away from the formality of any musical structure and functional style with accompaniment or harmony expressions’. A form of this style pre-blues could hear the cries or shouts field slaves, which took the form of ‘ songs of an only interpreter with emotional content “. Blues, today, you can define as a musical genre based both on a structure harmonic European in the tradition of call and response from West Africa and transformed into an interaction between voice and guitar.
Many of the elements of blues, call and response pattern and use blues notes can be found in the roots of African music; Sylviane Diouf says some predicate Blues features such as the use of melismas and nasal intonation, which may suggest the connection between West African music and the blues. Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to say that certain elements of the blues are rooted in Islamic music of the central and western part of Africa.
String instruments (preferred by from Muslim regions of African slaves), were generally allowed as they slave owners felt that these instruments resembled other European instruments like the violin. As a result, those slaves who were capable of playing a banjo or another instrument string, could do so with greater freedom. This type of slave solitary music shows elements of árabe-islámico style based on the imprint that Islam has been printed for centuries in West Africa
Gehard Kubik
Kubik also noted the Mississippi playing technique guitar, using a sharp knife (used by W. C. Handy), corresponds to a type of similar musical technique used in some cultures of West and central Africa. The diddley bow – which thought that it was very common throughout the South American continent during the first years of the 20th century-, is a derivation of an African instrument, which is likely to assist in the transfer of techniques in the early beginnings of the blues.
Blues music later adopted elements of the ethiopian airs, minstrel shows and Black spirituals, including instrumentation and harmonic accompaniment. Gender is also related to ragtime, which developed around the same time, though the blues ‘best preserved melodic patterns of African music”.
Blues from this period, as lead belly or Henry Thomas songs show a wide variety of structures, making it the most common musical forms of twelve, eight or sixteen bars, tonics, subdominants and dominant chords-based. Roots which today is called structure twelve blues bars, are documented in the oral history and scores of African-American communities inhabiting regions of the lower Mississippi white New Orleans in the Beale Street in Memphis and bands.
Lyrics
The original form of blues lyrics probably consisted of a single line repeated three times. Later, the current structure, based on a single repeating a line followed by a final line became standard. These lines used to be sung in a closer to a rhythmic conversation that a melody pattern.
The first blues, often taking the form of a narrative which used to convey their personal sorrows in a world of stark reality through the voice of the singer: «a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression of whites and difficult times». Much of the oldest blues contain more realistic lyrics as opposed to most of the popular music recorded by those times; for example, the song Down in the Alley Memphis Minnie, deals with a prostitute who has sexual intercourse with a man in an alley.
This type of music known as gut-bucket blues, a term that to reference to a musical instrument home (shaped low) manufactured from a cube of metal which was used to clean the intestines of pigs to prepare chinchulín (a type of food associated with slavery). The blues gut-bucket tended to be depressive and dealt with the rough and difficult, bad luck and bad times; relations due to this kind of songs, and streets where interpreted, blues music acquired bad reputation, becoming be criticised by preachers and parishioners.
While the blues used to associate with misery and oppression, you can also buy dyes comic or humorous, and in many cases, sexual connotations.
Author Ed Morales says the yorubá mythology played an important role in the early blues, citing the Cross Road Blues musician Robert Johnson as a “thinly veiled reference to Elegua, the Orisha responsible for roads’ theme. However, some prolific artists of blues, as Son House or Skip James had several Christian religious songs in his repertoire or spiritual style. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are examples of artists who are often categorized by their music as blues musicians while the lyrics of their songs correspond clearly to spiritual.
Style gender
During the first decades of the 20th century, blues music was not clearly defined in terms of chord progression. Had a lot of topics that used a blues structure of eight bars, such as How Long Blues, Trouble in Mind, and Key to the Highway musician Big Bill Broonzy. You could also find themes structure of sixteen blues bars, as in the instrumental Ray Charles Sweet 16 Bars and the Herbie Hancock Watermelon Man. Structures could also be found in bars less frequent as the progression of nine bars of the topic of Howlin’ Wolf Sitting on Top of the World. Basic development a composition blues twelve bars is reflected in the chord progression of twelve standard bars, a compass 4/4 or (rarely) in a 2/4. Slow blues topics often play in a 12/8 (4 pulses by compass with 3 sub-categories for each pulse).
By the 1930s, the blues with a structure of twelve bars was standardized. Chord blues associated to a structure twelve-bar blues tend to normally be composed by three different chords, which are touched on a scheme of twelve bars:
In the previous example, f is the tonic chord and sib is subdominant chord. Most of the time each chord is played the dominant seventh structure. Frequently, the last chord is often the dominant turnaround (corresponds to the V or do in the examples above) creating the transition at the beginning of the next progression.
Topics blues lyrics usually end in the last tenth compass coup or in the first coup of the eleventh compass, being the last two last bars an instrumental; break time the harmony of these bars of rupture, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of loose notes that modify the discussion altogether. Unlike previous final coup, often almost always positioned firmly in the dominant seventh to supply voltage to the following verse of the topic.
Musical score of St. Louis Blues (1914).
It melodically, blues music is marked by the use of thirds and fifths and diminished seventh (calls blues notes) of the scale more relevant. These tones of scales can replace the natural tones of scales or add to the same scales, such as minor blues, where third replace third natural pentatonic scale, the meter to the seventh natural and the fifths are added between the fourth and fifth natural ones. While the chord progression structure twelve bars has been used for centuries, one of the most revolutionary aspects of the blues was the frequent use of the third, the meter and even of the fifths in the melody, along with the crushing (playing two adjacent at the same time, such as diminished second notes) and the sliding (similar to notes adorner).
Whereas a classical musician typically play a note adorner distinctly, a singer blues or a harmonica, touches glissandos, ‘hitting the two notes to detach “Note ornaments” then’. Progressions of dominant and chords, blues chords tonics subdominants usually playing as dominant seventh minor seventh being an important component of the scale. Blues usually played occasionally on a smaller scale, differentiating it from the traditional smaller scale in the occasional use of the fifth in the tonic (sung by the musician or the main instrumentalist with the fifth fair in harmony).
The topic of Big Mama Thornton Ball and Chain, played by Janis Joplin accompanied by Big Brother and the Holding Company, an example of this technique.
Blues in minor scales usually structured by sixteen bars instead of twelve, style of music genre gospel, as it can be seen in the St. James Infirmary Blues theme and Trixie Smith My Man Rocks Me theme.
Sometimes is used a scale Dorian blues minor scales being the lowest note the third and seventh but most corresponding to the sixth.
Essentially flipped Blues reinforce the pace and pattern of call and response, forming a repetitive effect called groove. Essentially flipped more simple, widely used in electric blues, rock and roll or in the initial post-war bepop, consisted of a riff of three notes of the strings of the guitar; groove the effect was created when interpreted this riff with bass and drums. Likewise, the walking bass was another device which allowed creating groove effects.
Pace shuffle tends to vocalize as «dow, da dow, da dow, da» or «dump, da dump, da dump, da» and consists of eight notes. An example of this can be found in the following tablature showing the first four bars of a progression in my blues:
Blues in jazz differs greatly from blues in other genres (such as rock and roll, rhythm and blues, soul funk). Jazz blues usually played at the chord V through bars 9 and 10, emphasizing the tonic structure of traditional blues (tonic resolution about the subdominant). This final Cadence V chord itself involves a large number of variations, being the most basic ii-V-I chord progression in bars 9, 10 and 11. From this point, the dominant approach (ii-V chords) and resolution (chord I) can be altered and replace almost indefinitely, including for example the complete omission chord I (bars 9–12: ii |) (V) | (iii), (iv) | (ii, V |). In this case, bars 11 and 12 function as an extension of the turn-around for the next chorus.
History of the blues genres
Origins
The blues has evolved from a vocal music without accompaniment, performed by black working poor, a variety of subgenres and styles, with regional varieties of all United States and later in Europe and Africa. Musical structures and styles that are considered today as the blues as well as modern country music, born in the same regions United States South during the 19th century. Blues and country music dating back to the 1920s, period in which the recording industry created marketing categories called ‘ racial ‘ and ‘hillbilly music’ to sell songs to blacks and whites, recordings can be found.
At that time, there was no clear musical distinction between genders blues and country, except for the race of the interpreter and even in certain occasions this detail used to be improperly documented by the record companies.18
While the blues emerged of African-American culture, some blues musicians were already known worldwide. Some studies place the origin of the spiritual black in the exhibition were the slaves to the gospel, (originating from the Outer Hebrides) of their masters. The African-American historian Thomas Sowell and indicates that the southern, black population and ex-esclava splintered among its neighbours redneck Scottish/Irish. However, the discoveries of Kubik and other scholars clearly show the African essence of many vital aspects in the expression of the blues.
The social and economic reasons the home of the blues are not known in its entirety.The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, in a period that coincides with the emancipation of slaves and the transition from slavery to agriculture in the South of United States small-scale. Paul Oliver cites a text of Charlotte Forten of 1862, which already speaks blues as a State of mind and how some work songs were sung in a special way, to overcome the blues.
Some researchers associated development of blues in the early years of the 20th century as a movement from a group toward a more individualized genus interpretations arguing the development of the blues is associated with the new condition of freedom to slaves. According to Lawrence Levine There was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of the teachings of Booker T. Washington and blues boom». Levine indicates that ‘ psychologically, socially and economically, blacks were culturally disaggregated so that would have been impossible during slavery, and is surprisingly difficult to secular music to reflect this fact as it did his religious music ‘.
Pre-war Blues
American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, this industry published three compositions associated with blues, precipitating the adoption of the Tin Pan Alley blues elements: Baby Seals’ Blues of Baby f. Seals (with Artie Matthews arrays), Dallas Blues Hart Wand and Memphis Blues of W. C. Handy.
Handy was a musician, composer and arranger well-formed helped popularize blues transcribing and orchestrating in almost any symphonic, gender groups and singers. He became a famous and prolific composer named himself as the “father of the blues”; However, his compositions can be defined as a mixture of ragtime with jazz (facilitated by the use of the Latin beat habanera, which was present for some time in the ragtime mixture). One of major themes of Handy was St. Louis Blues.
In the 1920s blues became a principal element of African-American culture and popular music American, even reaching the white audience through Handy arrays and interpretations of Classic female singers Blues. Blues evolved from informal performances in bars to a form of entertainment in theatres. Blues performances were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in clubs such as the Cotton Club and juke joints such as that found in the Beale Street in Memphis; due to this evolution, marked the path towards an important diversification of styles and a more clear distinction between the blues and jazz. It was in this period in which record companies, as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records and Paramount Records, began to record African-American music.
While the music industry grew, country as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Charlie Patton, lead belly blues performers, Son House, Blind Blake or acquired notoriety in African-American communities. Jefferson was one of the few country blues that he recorded prolifically and may have been the first to record with the technique of slide guitar, technical who became an important element of the delta blues performers. In the 1920s, the first blues recordings categorized into two categories: a rural blues (country blues, more traditional) and a more polished and urban blues.
Country blues performers often improvise, sometimes without accompaniment and others making use of a bass or guitar. In the early years of the 20th century there was a wide variety of regional styles in the country blues; Mississippi Delta Blues was a deep roots with passionate voices accompanied by Steel guitar style. Robert Johnson, which recorded a few songs, combined elements of both of the rural and urban blues. Together with Robert Johnson, influential performers of this genre were his predecessors Charlie Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller performed ‘delicate and lyrical’ southern tradition of the Piedmont blues, which used a very elaborate technique without spike guitar playing style. Georgia also had an early tradition towards the slides.
Bessie Smith was a famous singer in the beginnings of the blues.
The Memphis blues, which developed during the 1920s and 1930s around of Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by bands such as Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers and Memphis Jug Band. Performers like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy or Memphis Minnie (famous the latter for his virtuosity of the guitar) used a variety of atypical kazoo, violin and mandolin instruments. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but its quiet and distinctive style was much smoother and already contained some elements of the swing. Much of the living in Memphis blues musicians moved to Chicago at the end of the thirties and early forties, forming part of the movement of urban blues that unite the country with electric blues music.
Urban blues styles were developed and codified. Classic female blues and the singers vaudeville blues were famous in the 1920s, emphasizing interpreters as Mamie Smith, Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, which was more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920; its Crazy Blues sold 75,000 copies in the first month.
Ma Rainey (called the mother of the Blues) and Bessie Smith singing ‘… every song around Central, perhaps to project their voices more easily to the back room tones “. Smith «… sang a song in an unusual intonation and its quality as artist mixed and stretched notes thanks to its powerful and beautiful contralto voice to accommodate the interpretation of an unparalleled way». Urban blues male performers included popular black musicians such as Tampa Red (occasionally referred to as the guitar Wizard), Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr, taking the latter unusual decision to accompany himself with a piano.
The Boogie-Woogie was another important urban blues genres in the 1930s and early 1940s. While the genre typically associated with a single piano, Boogie-Woogie used to interpret with singers as accompaniment in some bands. This style was characterized by a figure in form of bass, an ostinato or riff and a change in the left hand, preparing each chord and creating ornaments with his right hand. Boogie-Woogie was developed mainly by Jimmy Yancey Chicago musician and the trio of boogie-Woogie (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). The interpreters of this genre in Chicago included Clarence Pine Top Smith and Earl Hines, which ‘bind the rhythms of the left hand of the ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to that played Louis Armstrong with the right hand’.
In the 1940s, he began to develop gender jump blues, which was influenced by the music big band, using the saxophone or other wind instruments, apart from the guitar rhythm to create a sound jazzero sections and declamatory voices clearly marked. The melodies jump blues by Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, Kansas City, influenced the development of subsequent genres such as rock and roll and rhythm and blues. Both the soft style of Professor Longhair Louisiana and the latest from Dr. John, mixed classic rhythm with the genres of blues.
Initial post-war Blues
After World War II, and in the 1950s, Americans moved to the cities of Northern United States and new musical genres (such as electric blues), became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City. Electric blues used electrically amplified guitars, electric bass, batteries and harmonicas. Chicago became the center of this genre at the beginning of the 1950s.
The Chicago blues is influenced in large part, by gender of Delta Blues, due to the migration of performers from the State of Mississippi. Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Willie Dixon were born in Mississippi, and moved to Chicago during the great African-American migration. His style was characterized by the use of electric guitar, the Steel guitar, harmonica and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown, which played in the bands of Elmore James or J. B. Lenoir, he also used saxophones, but secondarily for use as main instruments.
Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II, famous players (called harp in the argot of blues musicians), belong to the initial phase of the Chicago blues. Other players as Big Walter Horton also played an important role in that stage. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of the Steel guitar electric. B. B. King and Freddie King, did not use the Steel guitar but were influential in the genre of the Chicago guitarists blues. Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters were also known by their voices deep and serious.
Bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon played an important role in the scene of the Chicago blues; composed and wrote many subjects of that period, such as Hoochie Coochie Man, standard blues I Just Want to Make Love to You (both compounds for Muddy Waters), Wang Dang Doodle (composed for Koko Taylor and Back Door Man (composed for Howlin’ Wolf).) Most of the artists of the Chicago blues recorded albums for the label of Chicago Chess Records.
In the 1950s, blues had a great influence on masses of American popular music. UU. While popular like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley musicians were influenced by the Chicago blues, his enthusiastic of playing style clearly differed from the melancholy aspects of blues and achieved pigeonhole the world of rock and roll. Precisely, playing Diddley and Berry was one of the factors of influence in the transition from blues to rock and roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were more influenced by the jump blues, boogie-woogie, and country, popularized both rock and roll of the white population of the time segment. The Chicago blues also influenced music zydeco Louisiana in which Clifton Chenier used blues accents. The musicians of the genus zydeco used electric guitars and Cajun arrays based on blues standards.
Other blues artists, such as T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker, were not directly influenced by the Chicago subgenre. Born in Dallas, T-Bone Walker is usually associated with the West Coast blues, which is softer than the Chicago blues and provides a transition between the Chicago blues, jump blues and swing with some influence in jazz guitars. John Lee Hooker blues is more personal, based on his deep voice and the only accompaniment of an electric guitar and double bass; in spite of not be influenced directly by the Boogie-Woogie, the genre is often called guitar boogie. His first success Boogie Chillen reached # 1 in R & B lists in 1949.
Towards the end of the 1950s, swamp blues developed near Baton Rouge, with performers such as Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain. This genre had a pace slower and used a more simplified to performances by artists of the Chicago harmonica blues such as Muddy Waters and Little Walter. Some songs in this genre are Scratch my Back, She’s Tough and I’m King Bee of Slim Harpo.
Blues in the 1960s and 1970s
At the beginning of the 1960s, influenced by African American rock and roll and soul music genres were already part of American popular music. Interpreters Caucasians had led African-American music to new audiences, both United States and the rest of the world. United Kingdom bands of musicians emulated the American blues legends, and of the decade English blues played an important role recovery of African-American singers to bring to Europe and re-interpret their classic themes.
Bluesmen like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker continued playing for his admirers enthusiasts and inspiring new artists in the field of traditional blues musician born in New York, Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker mixed style Blues with rock elements and started playing with young musicians white, creating a musical genre that can be heard in the 1971 album Endless Boogie. The technical virtuoso B. B. King earned him the nickname of King of the Blues. Unlike the subgenre of Chicago, the band King used support wind (in the form of saxophone, trumpet, trombone), instead of using only the Steel guitar and harmonica. Tennessee, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, as well as b.b. King, singer also mixed genres of blues and rhythm and blues.
Music by ‘ civil rights ‘ and ‘ freedom of expression ‘ movements propelled in United States a resurgence of interest in the roots of American music and the beginnings of African-American music. Music festivals, such as the Newport Folk Festival, brought traditional blues to new audiences, and made a resurgence by acoustic pre-war blues and the recordings of performers such as Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Reverend Gary Davis; interest many of these recordings were reprinted, inter alia, by the Yazoo Records label. J. B. Lenoir, belonging to the movement of the Chicago blues of the 1950s, he recorded several vinyl with acoustic guitars, which was attended by the occasional accompaniment of Willie Dixon acoustic bass or drums; his songs spoke as racism or Viet Nam war, political problems which was not very usual at that time. The recording of his topic Alabama blues reads as follows:
I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me.
You know they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world let them go down there free peoples.
Original in English
I will never return to Alabama, this is not the place for me
You know that they killed my sister and my brother,
and the whole world left the gentuza get out there free.
The interest of the audience Caucasian Blues during the 1960s was increased due to the movement led by Paul Butterfield Blues Band group and British blues (British Blues). This genus, promoted mainly by Alexis Korner, developed in United Kingdom, where bands like Graham Bond Organization, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Cream, and the Irish Them performed classic songs of the subgenera Delta blues blues and Chicago blues.
Blues from the beginning of the 1960s British musicians inspired at the same time, a number of American blues-rock, performers including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The j. Geils Band and Ry Cooder. Much of the first successes of the English rock band Led Zeppelin were tributes to traditional blues songs which is not uncommon if we take into account their guitarist Jimmy Page came from the Yardbirds. An original Seattle, Jimi Hendrix, blues-rock performer was a rarity in his field by those times: a black who played ‘ rock’; Hendrix was a virtuoso guitarist and a pioneer in the use of distortion and ‘ feedback’ in his music. Through these and other artists, blues music influenced the development of rock music.
At the end of the fifties, the West Side blues emerged in Chicago with Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Otis Rush; its main characteristic was based on a rhythmic support granted by a guitar, a bass guitar and drums. Albert King, Buddy Guy and Luther Allison were components of this genre, which was dominated by an amplified electric guitar.
Blues from the 1980s until today
Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence of interest in certain sector of the population African-American, mainly in the Jackson area and other regions of the deep South blues. Soul blues, commonly known as southern soul, was an unexpected success thanks to two recordings record label Malaco settled in Jackson: the theme of z. z. Hill Down Home Blues (1982) and the subject of Little Milton The Blues is Alright (1984). Contemporary African American performers who worked for this resurgence may appoint to Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Soul Billy Bonds, T. k. soul, Mel Waiters and Willie Clayton. The U.S. blues radio stations network. U.s., founded by Rip Daniels (a black citizen of Mississippi) issued soul blues in its emissions and counted with the presence of radio personalities as Duane DDT Tanner and Nikki deMarks.
Since 1980, the blues has continued both in its traditional form and giving way to new genres. The Texas blues was born with the use of guitars both for rhythmic in solo roles. To difference of the West Coast blues, Texan gender is influenced mainly by the movement British rock-blues. Artists renowned Texas blues are Stevie Ray Vaughan, Johnny Winter, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, ZZ Top. The 1980s also saw the revival of the popularity of John Lee Hooker, doing collaborations with Carlos Santana, Miles Davis, Robert Cray and Bonnie Raitt, among others. Eric Clapton, famous for his performances with the Blues Breakers and Cream, recorded his album MTV Unplugged, in which he played several topics blues with an acoustic guitar in the 1990s. Since then has paid tribute to this style with disks that may be considered totally blues, as From the Cradle or Me and Mr. Johnson, and approached by gender to the general public.
In the 1980s and 1990s began to distribute publications Blues as Living Blues and Blues Revue, forming associations of blues in major cities, blues, outdoor festivals and increasing the number of nightclubs and buildings associated with the blues.
In the 1990s, blues performers explored a wide range of genres, as it can be seen in the nominations for annual awards Blues Music Awards, called before w. C. Handy award or in the nominations for a Grammy in the best contemporary blues album and best traditional blues album categories. Contemporary blues music is represented by several record labels such as Alligator Records, Blind Pig Records, MCA, Delmark Records, Delta Groove Music, NorthernBlues Music and Vanguard Records, being some of the most famous for having rediscovered and remastered Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Yazoo Records and Document Records blues rarities.
Today, young blues artists are exploring all aspects of this genre of music, from classic Delta blues until more oriented to the rock, blues artists who were born in the 1970s as Shemekia Copeland, Jonny Lang, Corey Harris, John Mayer, Vargas Blues Band, Susan Tedeschi and North Mississippi Allstars have developed their own styles. in the years 80s asta today an last 30 years.
Musical impact
Genres of blues, their structures, melodies and the blues scale have influenced many other genres such as rock and roll, jazz and music pop. Renowned artists of jazz, folk or rock and roll as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan have several important blues recordings to his credit. Scale blues is often used in popular songs like the musician Harold Arlen Blues in the Night, blues ballads as Since I Fell for You and Please Send Me Someone to Love even in orchestral works such as works of George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in f.
Scale blues rock (for example in the topic The Beatles A Hard day’s Night) is present in much of modern popular music, especially the progression of thirds used in music. Blues structures are used in headers of series television as success teen idol Fabian in the Batman series topics country as interpreted by Jimmie Rodgers and even famous guitarists themes Turn Me Loose or vocalists as of Tracy Chapman Give Me One Reason.
The blues can dance as a kind of swing without fixed patterns of movement and focusing on sensuality, bodily contact and improvisation. Most of the blues dance movements are inspired by the music traditional blues. While blues dancing is usually done with blues songs, this can occur with any music that has a pace slow 4/4.
The origin of rhythm and blues can follow up to the spiritual and blues. Musically, spirituals were descendants of the choral tradition of New England, including hymns of Isaac Watts, and mixing African rhythms with musical patterns of call and response. The spiritual or religious chants of African-American communities, are more and better documented than the blues low-down (or depressive blues). Spiritual singing was developed because African-American communities could thus to meet more people in their meetings, which were called meetings in the field.
Duke Ellington, in spite of being a jazz artist used extensively blues structures.
The first other country apart from being influenced by the spiritual singing, music intepretaron country and urban; blues some of these musicians parlor to Skip James, Charlie Patton, and Georgia Tom Dorsey. Dorsey helped popularize music gospel music genre developed in the 1930s through the Golden Gate Quartet group. In the 1950s, music soul (with artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown) already used elements of gospel and blues. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues blues were merged in soul music. The genus seventies funk had major influences from soul; Likewise, funk can be considered the ancestor of hip hop and rhythm and contemporary blues.
The Second World War, the borders between jazz and the blues were not clear. Generally, the jazz used different structure twelve harmonic structures bars associated with the blues, however, subgenus jump blues 1940s brought together both genders. After the second world war, the blues had a great influence in jazz: classics of bebop, as the subject of Charlie Parker now’s the time, used the blues with the pentatonic scale structures and blues notes.
Bebop marked a great change in the role of jazz, making it a popular genre to dance to a’ high’, “less accessible and cerebral music for musicians”. The audience for both genders, jazz and blues, split and the distinction between both genders was clearly defined. Moving between the border of jazz and blues artists fall of the jazz blues sub-genre.
The structure of twelve bars and scale blues were a major influence for rock and roll. A clear example of this is the theme of Elvis Presley Hound Dog (a topic blues turned into a rock and roll song), which maintains a structure twelve bars (both harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on the third of the tonic (apart from in the seventh of the subdominant).
Many of the early rock and roll themes are based on the blues: Johnny B. Goode, Blue Suede Shoes, Whole Lotta’Shakin’ Going On, Tutti Frutti, Shake, Rattle, and Roll, What’d I Say and Long Tall Sally; Likewise, much of these themes retained sexual themes and innuendos music blues and even the argument of the Hound Dog song contains sexual references hidden between the letter and double entendres in some of their words. Examples of this theme include:
Got a gal named Sue, she knows just what to do
(Little Richard Tutti Frutti). Original in English
I have a girl named Sue; She knows exactly what to do
See the girl with the red dress on, she knows how to do it all night long
(What I’d say Ray Charles). Original in English
Look at the girl with the red dress, know how to do it all night
The Spanish translation
Subsequently, a more mature white rock borrowed the structure and the harmonies of the blues, despite having fewer sexual frankness and a poor harmonic creativity (for example the subject of Bill Haley Rock Around the Clock). Much of the white musicians who played black artists themes changed some words from the letters: an example corresponds to change Pat Boone, who introduced in his rendition of Tutti Frutti, modifying the original letter («Tutti_frutti,_loose_booty…_a_wop_bop_a_lu_bop,_a_good_Goddamn») with a milder version.
Social impact
As well as jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal and hip hop, blues has been accused of being the “Devil’s music” and of inciting violence and all types of criminal behaviour.During the 1920s (period in which the white audience became interested by blues music) this genus enjoyed bad reputation23 w. C. Handy was the first musician to improve the image of the blues before the rest of the Americans were not black.
Today, blues is one of the main components of African-American culture and American cultural heritage in general, reflecting the importance not only in university studies but also in films such as Sounder, The Blues Brothers, Crossroads and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (film appears marked, with certain licenses, Robert Johnson blues guitarist). The Blues Brothers, in which several musical genres as the rhythm & blues or the zydeco, blues-related intertwine films have had a major impact in the image of blues music (while the music of the most famous film, the first is mostly rhythm and blues); Likewise, these films touted traditional Sweet Home Chicago, using the best-known version attributed to Robert Johnson, to the status of unofficial anthem of the city of Chicago blues song.
In 2003, Martin Scorsese made a major effort to promote blues, asking famous as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders film directors to participate in a series of films called The Blues. Scorsese also participated in a tribute to the most important artists of the blues on the editing of several music compact discs.
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