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Chicago Blues The definition of the Blues by The Random House Dictionary of the English Language is “A song of American Negro origin, that is marked by the frequent occurrence of blue notes and that takes the basic form of a 12-bar chorus consisting of a 3-line stanza, with the second line repeating the first.” In this paper I am going to examine the Chicago Blues. First, I will examine the history of the Blues and where it all started. Second, I will look at the Great Migration and how it affected and impacted the Blues. Third and finally, I will look at the best Chicago blues artist of all time, Muddy Waters and examine his contributions to the Blues. With the examples that I specified before and through my extensive research of the Chicago Blues, I believe that the Great Migration played a pivotal role in popularizing the Blues. As many blues scholars have noted, no one knows precisely where and when the blues began. Certainly, some elements of African-American music can be traced back to Africa. These include verbal traditions of signifying, the blues' musical scale and its microtones and blue notes, and the rhythmic pattern of the music. Other elements, the field hollers, spirituals, and work songs from the era of slavery, supplemented these African traditions. At the same time, European-American elements were also part of the African-American tradition musical tradition. All of these fused to create a distinct African-American musical form called the blues. I think that the Blues date all the way back to the 1890’s and when the slaves worked in the fields, they would holler lines to one another. The field hollers and work songs were where a man would holler out lyrics then the other workers in the field would answer with one lyric sung in unison. The earliest African American folk music was vocal because slaves were not permitted to bring instruments with them, and drumming was forbidden on slave plantations, singing was the only way to fill the long and tiring hours of the day. The playing of string instruments was permitted and slaves used the banjo which was later replaced by the guitar. “With the birth of the Blues, the vernacular realm of American culture acquired a music that had ‘wide appeal because it expressed a toughness of sprit and resilience, a willingness to transcend difficulties which was strikingly familiar to those whites who remembered there own history’” (Baker Jr. 11). The Blues music meant more to people, especially the African-American people because it was proof of their struggle to get where they worked so hard to be. Their “tough spirit and resilience” got them where they wanted to be. In many ways, the blues emerged in reaction to the vast and violent changes in the varied lives and experiences of African-Americans living in the South. The Blues were a consequence of the hard labor, the pain, and the indignities of slavery. The Blues became apparent in the public in the year of 1903, in the town of Tutwiler, Mississippi. A man named W.C. Handy (who is regarded as the founder of the Blues) was resting at a railroad juncture when he heard a sound from an old, raggedy Negro named Charley Patton. Patton was singing in his characteristic deep voice while dancing a knife across the strings to produce an eerie and mournful background music. The noise was that of the Blues and W.C Handy described the sound as “The weirdest music I had ever heard.” Also in 1903, Handy was the first person to write sheet music for the Blues.
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