Added: 09/29/2005 |
What acually the blues music isThe blues music, as a unique and inimitable in its nature phenomenon, gives rise to an abundance of questions, concerning its history, traditions and development. Generally, the slavery, although being a negative and terrific experience for people in many countries, gave rise to a great number of unique "inventions" in art, philosophy and religion, among which the blues music was.
The blues history tells us that African slaves sang songs about their suffering, loneliness and despair, which eventually merged with elements and traditions of the European music and as a blending of African and European musical traditions the blues music appeared.
Alan Lomax, a famous researcher, having studied the blues history, states that the blues tradition was regarded as the masculine discipline only, as not so many white or black women were found to sing blues. The more striking point is that the Southern prisons made a great contribution to the blues traditions by means of work songs as well as the songs about death, murder, the hot sun, the warden, and an abundance of other privations.
Until 1890, people sang the blues in the rural areas of the South. Mamie Smith recorded the first vocal blues song "Crazy Blues" in 1920. The thirties and forties were the years, when the blues spread to the north, since many blacks migrated from the south, where, later on, jazz and rock musicians successfully adopted its traditions. In the early 60s, young white American and European musicians began to view blues as a great musical potential and many of them, including Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, the Yardbirds and Cream brought the blues music to the young white audiences.
Due to its special tonality and original lyrics, many suppositions occur of what the blues really is: whether it is a note out of tune or even a philosophy. The matter is that any blues band did not perform the blues according to the European ideas of even-tempered pitches but, on the contrary, they performed the music with a free use of bent pitches and vocal sounds of high emotionality. These "bent" pitches are known as "blue notes" or blue tonalities and when the copyists tried to write down the blues music, they came across the so-called "blues-scale": there were many melody shades, which were impossible to write down.
This is the blues music, difficult to write down, inimitable in any sample, touching in every nuance of the melody. What can we say about the blues lyrics? The blues lyrics often concern the pain of betrayal, loneliness, unrequited love, unhappiness and depression. The song is intensely personal and it seems that the singer relieves his heart and feelings by sharing his personal experience with the listener. It can also contain such unhappy situations as being away from home, jobless, deceived and brokenhearted.
Somewhat "chaotic" lyrics harmonically penetrate into the unique passionate melody and fantastic music, called blues, comes into being: the music, which brings about great indulgence and admiration, captures both the imagination of musicians and listeners, gives rise to personal meditations and thoughts.
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