Art And Ideas

Final Exam: Arts and Ideas

Section I:

The blues is a vocal and instrumental musical genre, based on the use of blue notes and a repetitive pattern that typically follow a twelve-bar structure. Originating in African American communities in the United States was developed through the prayer songs, work songs, Irish songs and narrated cries out over the field. The use of blues notes and the importance of the call and response patterns, both in music and lyrics are indicative of African - Western heritage of the genre. A main characteristic of the blues is the extensive use of "expressive" guitar techniques (bend, vibrato, slide), which subsequently influence solos styles like rock. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music in general, becoming part of musical genres such as jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, heavy metal, hip- hop, country and pop songs.

One of the earliest known forms of music that keeps similarity with the blues, corresponds to the cries outs of call and response, which is defined as “a functional expressions away with accompaniment or harmony style and formality of any musical structure”. A form of this pre-blues was heard in the cries out, or screams of slave camp, which took the form of "songs of a single artist with emotional content". The blues today, can be defined as a musical genre based on both European harmonic structure and the tradition of call and response in West Africa and transformed into interaction of the voice and the guitar.

Many elements of the blues, as the pattern of call and response and the use of blue notes, can be found in the roots of the music:

African; Sylviane Diouf pointed specific characteristics of the blues, such as the use of melisma and a nasal pitch, which suggest a connection between West African music and the blues. The ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to say that certain elements of blues rooted in Islamic music of central and western Africa.

Kubik also noted that the Mississippi guitar playing technique, using a sharp knife (used by WC Handy), corresponds to a similar type of musical technique used in certain cultures of central and western Africa. The diddley bow which is thought to have been very common throughout the South American continent during the early years of the twentieth century, is a derivation of an African instrument, which was created to help the invention of new technics at the beginnings of the blues.

The blues later adopted Ethiopian characteristics, minstrel shows and Negro rituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment. The blues is also related to ragtime, which was developed around the same time, however the blues “preserved better the melodic patterns of African music”.

Blues songs of the period, such as Leadbelly

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