WEEK 4: THE BLUESMSIT

MUSIC GENRESWEEK 4

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE BLUES?

“When you think of the blues, you think about misfortune, betrayal and regret. You lose your job, you get the blues. Your girl/guy falls out of love with you, you get the blues. Your dog dies, you get the blues”

FAMOUS BLUES MUSICIANS

THE BLUES: A BRIEF HISTORY

Originated in African-American communities of the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spiritual work songs where call-and-response shouts from slaves were an early form of blues-like music in the cotton fields.

Blues music history is very poorly documented, due to racial discrimination within US society, including academic circles, and to the low literacy rate of the rural African American community at the time.

World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners.

Though the use of the phrase ‘Blues’ may be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition.

WHERE IS THE DEEP SOUTH OF THE USA?

BLUES MUSIC: A GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORY

Geographical locations for Blues Music: British blues · Canadian blues · Chicago blues · Detroit blues · East Coast blues · Kansas City blues · Louisiana blues · Memphis blues · New Orleans blues · Piedmont blues · St. Louis blues · Swamp blues · Texas blues · West Coast blues · Hill country blues

The blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th Century. Its inventors were slaves, ex-slaves and the descendants of slaves - African-American sharecroppers who sang as they toiled in the cotton and vegetable fields.

It's generally accepted that the music evolved from African spirituals, African chants, work songs, rural fife and drum music, revivalist hymns, and country dance music.

The blues grew up in the Mississippi Delta just upriver from New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz. Blues and jazz have always influenced each other, and they still interact in countless ways today.

Unlike jazz, the blues didn't spread out significantly from the South to the Midwest until the 1930s and '40s. Once the Delta blues made their way up the Mississippi to urban areas, the music evolved into electrified Chicago blues, other regional blues styles, and various jazz-blues hybrids. A decade or so later the blues gave birth to rhythm 'n blues and rock 'n roll.

When the country blues moved to the cities and other locales, it took on various regional characteristics. Hence the St. Louis blues, the Memphis blues, the Louisiana blues, Chicago blues

THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA: "THE MOST SOUTHERN PLACE

ON EARTH"

WHAT DID EARLY BLUES MUSICIANS SING ABOUT?

The lines are often sung following a pattern closer to a rhythmic talk than to a melody. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. The singer voiced 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 and hard times.

The blues is about overcoming hard luck, saying what you feel, ridding yourself of frustration, letting your hair down, and simply having fun. From unbridled joy to deep sadness, no form of music communicates more genuine emotion.

The term "the blues” often refers to melancholy and sadness. WHY?

The lyrics often relate troubles experienced within African American society. For instance Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Rising High Water Blues" (1927) tells about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

BLUES MUSIC ORIGINS

The first appearance of the blues is often dated after the Emancipation Act of 1863, between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with Emancipation and, later, the development of juke joints as places where Blacks went to listen to music, dance, or gamble after a hard day's work.

This period corresponds to the transition from slavery to sharecropping, small-scale agricultural production, and the expansion of railroads in the southern United States.

The development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people.

The Diddley bow (a homemade one-stringed instrument found in parts of the American South in the early twentieth century) and the banjo are African-derived instruments that may have helped in the transfer of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary.

Depending on the religious community a musician belonged to, it was more or less considered as a sin to play this low-down music: blues was the devil's music.

Musicians were therefore segregated into two categories: gospel and blues singers, guitar preachers and songsters.

SLAVERY IN AMERICA

JUKE JOINTS #1

JUKE JOINT #2

JUKE JOINT #3

THE DIDDLEY BOW #1

THE DIDDLEY BO #2

THE DIDDLEY BO #3

STYLES OF BLUES MUSIC

Jump blues: A danceable amalgamation of swing and blues and a precursor to R&B. Jump blues was pioneered by Louis Jordan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VGtnM_e3eY

Boogie-woogie: A piano-based blues popularized by Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammos and Pete Johnson, and derived from barrelhouse and ragtime: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrHrbSxUFDI&feature=fvst

Chicago blues: Delta blues electrified: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDKvjNf3Y7k

Cool blues: A sophisticated piano-based form that owes much to jazz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pVxWdnInWY

West Coast blues: Popularized mainly by Texas musicians who moved to California. West Coast blues is heavily influenced by the swing beat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbuRMYi2F6Q

PRE WAR BLUES

In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching white audiences.

Several record companies began to record African American music.

Kentucky-born Sylvester Weaver was in 1923 the first to record the slide guitar style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle. Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar.

Fingerpicking guitar technique became popular.

Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African-American woman to record a blues song in 1920.

Example: Sylvester Weaver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plsT3v5tlg4

POST WWII BLUES MUSIC

The Great Migration: The transition from country to urban blues, that began in the 1920s, had been driven by the successive waves of economic crisis and booms and the associated move of the rural Blacks to urban areas.

The new migrants constituted a new market for the music industry.

This rapidly evolving market was mirrored by the Billboard Rhythm and Blues Chart.

After World War II and in the 1950s, new styles of electric blues music became popular in cities such as Chicago, Memphis, Detroit and St. Louis.

Electric blues used electric guitars, double bass (slowly replaced by bass guitar), drums, and harmonica played through a microphone and a PA system or a guitar amplifier became more popular

In the 1950s, blues had a huge influence on mainstream American popular music. Popular musicians like Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry departed from the melancholy aspect of blues and started to play more enthusiastic blues/rock and roll music.

Example 1: Muddy Waters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_ZhBcNiQQ&feature=fvst

Example 2: Bo Diddley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu3LjImHT6g

BLUES AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The music of the Civil Rights and Free Speech movements in the US prompted a resurgence in the blues

Newport Folk Festival brought traditional blues to a new audience, which helped to revive interest in prewar acoustic blues

White audiences' interest in the blues during the 1960s increased due to the British blues movement when bands such as The Animals, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, and Cream performed classic blues songs from the Delta or Chicago blues traditions. Many of Led Zeppelin’s earlier hits were renditions of traditional blues songs.

One blues rock performer, Jimi Hendrix, was a rarity in his field at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock. Hendrix was a skilled guitarist, and a pioneer in the innovative use of distortion and feedback in his music. Through these artists and others, blues music influenced the development of rock music.

Blues music started to be broadly popularized within the 1970s by J.J. Cale and the cover versions performed by Eric Clapton of "After Midnight" and "Cocaine".

Example 1:The Animals http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk

Example 2:Eric Clapton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdDhV45lYHU&ob=av2n

Example 3: Jimi Hendrix http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HObqZh_RTds&feature=fvst

NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL, RHODE ISLAND USA 1960

INSTRUMENTS USED IN BLUES MUSIC

Guitar · Bass guitar · Piano · Harmonica · Double bass · Drums · Saxophone · Vocals · Trumpet · Trombone

The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and response scheme commonly found in African and African-American music.

Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and they form a repetitive effect called a groove.

BLUES INSTRUMENTS

BLUES TRACKS USED IN TODAY’S CLASS

Bo Diddley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu3LjImHT6g

BB King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBWcSc3nPow

Howlin’ Wolf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex3nc0Km77g&feature=fvst

Hart Wand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suX32wuV3s0

Son House: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgkvFJ--G8

John Lee Hooker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSnQ0bdHW0s

Bessie Smith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Who6fTHJ34

Robert Johnson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A

Freddie King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHXKlNP4-Aw

Sylvester Weaver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plsT3v5tlg4

Jimi Hendrix: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HObqZh_RTds&feature=fvst

Muddy Waters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV_ZhBcNiQQ&feature=fvst

Eric Clapton/Cream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdDhV45lYHU&ob=av2n

TDS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIMNi1_rTrg

Seasick Steve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoPNC3ebYQ

TOP BLUES MUSIC LISTS

Top 100 Blues: http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_bluesong.html

Top 20 Blues albums of all time: http://dkpresents.wordpress.com/2007/04/29/the-20-greatest-blues-albums-of-all-time/

Top Blues songs: http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/list-of-the-day/the-25-best-blues-rock-bands.html

List of 100 Best Blues Guitar Players & The Greatest Blues Guitar Solos: http://www.50blues.com/100bestblues.htm

History of Blues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRwXVNt0i3k

BLUES MUSIC IN AUSTRALIA/BRISBAN

E The Blackwater Fever

Transvaal Diamond Syndicate

Asa Broomhall

The Fumes

ASSESSMENT TASK

Task 1 – Observation Week: 13 Date: 3rd May 2012

Task 2 – Written Task Week: 8 Date: 5th April 2012

Task 3 – Portfolio Week: 13 Date: 3rd May 2012

HOMEWORK WEEK 5

Bring two songs to class on the following genre

ROCK AND ROLL

1. Present one YouTube clip to play in class and talk about for 30 seconds.

2. Post one to the Class Forum

3. Include in both of these, your brief comments on some of following aspects.

The style and look of the artist/genre

Musical instruments used

Cultural significance

Geographical location

Other artists in this genre

What influences does this genre pull from?