Music in Sonny
Content
Music in Sonny´s blues
From the title of the story to the closing scene, music plays a central role in defining the characters and culture of
Harlem in “Sonny’s Blues.” At a young age, Sonny decides he wants to grow up to become a musician, a
decision that his brother has difficulty accepting. Sonny lists the great jazz musicians of his era, most notably
Charlie Parker, who had broken out of the traditional conventions of jazz to create a new, freer form of musical
expression. Unlike earlier forms of jazz, which relied heavily on well-developed and thoroughly planned
arrangements, the music of men such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie was created spontaneously as the
men listened and responded to each other. The music relied on instinct rather than on rigid structures. Sonny
contrasts his music idols with those of the previous generation, whose rigid, classical form of musical expression
is no longer valid. For Sonny, the world is an entirely different place from the one his older brother grew up in
and, as a result, needs new artistic forms to convey its reality.
The music that Sonny plays and loves is based less on a strict formal order than on a pure expression of the
soul. Bebop, as it came to be known, was a radical new form of jazz. For musicians like Sonny, the freedom of
expression that came with bebop was a chance to live freely, defy social conventions and norms, and create
something utterly original. For many of the great musicians of that era, drugs were a constant temptation.
Sonny’s stated musical hero, Charlie Parker, was himself addicted to drugs and died a very early death partly as
a result. At the end of the story, the narrator witnesses Sonny’s playing firsthand. The experience is similar to the
religious revival the narrator witnessed earlier, with one major exception: there is a real redemption available
through the music.
A Brief History Of The Blues
When you think of the blues, you think about misfortune, betrayal and regret. You
lose your job, you get the blues. Your mate falls out of love with you, you get the
blues. Your dog dies, you get the blues.
While blues lyrics often deal with personal adversity, the music itself goes far beyond
self-pity. The blues is also about overcoming hard luck, saying what you feel, ridding
yourself of frustration, letting your hair down, and simply having fun. The best blues
is visceral, cathartic, and starkly emotional. From unbridled joy to deep sadness, no
form of music communicates more genuine emotion.
The blues has deep roots in American history, particularly African-American history.
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, field
hollers, 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.
No single person invented the blues, but many people claimed to have discovered the
genre. For instance, minstrel show bandleader W.C. Handy insisted that the blues
were revealed to him in 1903 by an itinerant street guitarist at a train station in
Tutwiler, Mississippi.
During the middle to late 1800s, the Deep South was home to hundreds of seminal
bluesmen who helped to shape the music. Unfortunately, much of this original music
followed these sharecroppers to their graves. But the legacy of these earliest blues
pioneers can still be heard in 1920s and '30s recordings from Mississippi, Louisiana,
Texas, Georgia and other Southern states. This music is not very far removed from
the field hollers and work songs of the slaves and sharecroppers. Many of the earliest
blues musicians incorporated the blues into a wider repertoire that included traditional
folk songs, vaudeville music, and minstrel tunes.
Without getting too technical, most blues music is comprised of 12 bars (or
measures). A specific series of notes is also utilized in the blues. The individual parts
of this scale are known as the blue notes.
Well-known blues pioneers from the 1920s such as Son House, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Leadbelly, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson usually performed solo with
just a guitar. Occasionally they teamed up with one or more fellow bluesmen to
perform in the plantation camps, rural juke joints, and rambling shacks of the Deep
South. Blues bands may have evolved from early jazz bands, gospel choirs and jug
bands. Jug band music was popular in the South until the 1930s. Early jug bands
variously featured jugs, guitars, mandolins, banjos, kazoos, stringed basses,
harmonicas, fiddles, washboards and other everyday appliances converted into crude
instruments.
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, etc. Chicago bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters were the
first to electrify the blues and add drums and piano in the late 1940s.
Today there are many different shades of the blues. Forms include:
Traditional county blues - A general term that describes the rural blues of the
Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont and other rural locales;
Jump blues - A danceable amalgam of swing and blues and a precursor to R&B.
Jump blues was pioneered by Louis Jordan;
Boogie-woogie - A piano-based blues popularized by Meade Lux Lewis, Albert
Ammons and Pete Johnson, and derived from barrelhouse and ragtime;
Chicago blues - Delta blues electrified;
Cool blues- A sophisticated piano-based form that owes much to jazz;
West Coast blues - Popularized mainly by Texas musicians who moved to California.
West Coast blues is heavily influenced by the swing beat.
Blues
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 2008 | Copyright
Blues
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The blues, a term coined by the writer Washington Irving in 1807, is defined by Webster‘s Dictionary as a type of
music ―marked by recurrent minor intervals‖—so-called blue notes —and by ―melancholy lyrics.‖ These lyrics reflect
the oppression experienced by people of African descent in the United States: slavery, prison, chain gangs, and the
indignities of the Jim Crow era.
Blues is a typically American music with its earliest roots in African forms. It originated with the slaves that were
brought over from West Africa. The contemporary Malian musician Ali Farka Touré considers blues to be the type of
music most similar to his own; specifically, Touré hears echoes of Tamascheq music in the music of blues artists such
as John Lee Hooker. Because slaves were forbidden to use drums, they turned to traditional African ―ring shouts‖ and
created rhythms with their hands and feet. Through ring shouts slaves worshipping in ―praise houses‖ connected the
newly imposed Christianity to their African roots. ―Field hollers,‖ produced by slaves as a means of communication,
were another early vocal style that influenced the blues. Work songs sung by prison road gangs also highly influenced
the blues in its early days. The art of storytelling is another important element of the blues. Lyrically, the blues ranges
from forms based on short rhyming verses to songs using only one or two repeated phrases.
Over time, the blues evolved from a parochial folk form to a worldwide language. The influence of the blues can be
found in most forms of popular music, including jazz, country, and rock and roll. The lines between blues and jazz are
often blurred. Kansas City jazz, for example, is known for its bluesy sound. Certain artists, such as Charles Brown,
Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, and Mose Allison—all masters of the keyboard—make music that is hard to categorize
as either purely jazz or purely blues. Likewise, gospel is closely related to the blues. The music of the ―father of
gospel,‖ Thomas A. Dorsey, was a blend of blues and spirituals.
Ashenafi Kebede (1982) assigns the blues to four categories: country blues, city blues, urban blues, and racial blues.
Country blues was traditionally performed by street musicians without any formal training. City blues is a standardized
version of country blues. During the 1940s, as a result of the impact of communication media, city blues evolved into
the more commercialized and formalized urban blues, a style characterized by big band accompaniment, modern
amplification devices, and new instruments like the saxophone and electric guitar. Racial blues are songs based on
racial distinctions between blacks and whites.
The great composer and musician W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was one of the first to bring blues into the popular
culture, around 1911. Instrumental blues was first recorded in 1913. Aaron Thibeaux (T-Bone) Walker—whose
recording debut, ―Wichita Falls Blues,‖ was cut in 1929 for Columbia Records—is believed to be the first bluesman to
use an amplified acoustic guitar.
The first vocal blues was recorded by an African American woman, Mamie Smith, in 1920. Angela Davis (1998)
argues that in the early 1920s African American females were given priority over African American males as recording
artists due to their initial success (p. xii). Bessie Smith is said to be the greatest and the most influential blues singer of
the 1920s. Bessie Smith‘s catalogue of blues recordings still stands as the yardstick by which all other female blues
singers are evaluated. Gertrude ―Ma‖ Rainey is also regarded as one of the best of the classic 1920s blues singers.
She was ―most likely the first woman to incorporate blues into ministerial and vaudeville stage shows, perhaps as
early as 1902‖ (Santelli 2001, pp. 386-387). Alberta Hunter is identified as helping to bridge the gap between classic
blues and cabaret-flavored pop music in the 1920s (Santelli 2001, p. 226).
Artists such as Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam moved the blues guitar into the modern era. Other prominent
figures of the second half of the twentieth century include Son Seals, one of the leading guitar stylists of Chicago‘s
post-1960s blues generation; Muddy Waters, who has been dubbed the ―patriarch of post–World War II (1939-1945)
Chicago blues‖; and Howlin‘ Wolf, who was a singer, a songwriter, a guitarist, and a harmonica player. Sonny Boy
Williamson was responsible for the transformation of the harmonica (or blues ―harp‖) from a simple down-home
instrument into one of the essential parts of the Chicago blues sound. Little Walter is noted for his revolutionary
harmonica technique, and was also a guitarist. Blues guitarist Luther Allison, from the late 1960s, was influenced by
Freddie King, who was considered to be one of the linchpins of modern blues guitar. Albert King, who played lefthanded and holding his guitar upside down, was one of the premier modern electric guitar artists. Jimmy Reed sold
more records in the 1950s and early 1960s than any other blues artist except B. B. King, who is the most successful
blues concert artist ever. Bobby ―Blue‖ Bland is considered one of the creators of the modern soul blues sound. Blues
giant John Lee Hooker is known as the father of the boogie —an incessant one-chord exercise in blues intensity and
powerful rhythm.
While the blues was historically an African American form, in the early 1960s the urban bluesmen were―discovered‖ by
young white American and European musicians. Prior to this discovery, black blues artists had been unable to reach a
white audience. Among the best-known English blues artists are Eric Clapton and John Mayall; celebrated white
American bluesmen include Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. All were
heavily influenced by the great African American blues artists.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the blues is still going strong, as evidenced by the numerous national and
international blues societies, publications, and festivals.
SEE ALSO Bluegrass; Jazz; Music; Music, Psychology of; Popular Music; Rock ‗n‘ Roll; World Music
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Belafonte, Harry. 2001. The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music. Rochester, NY: Riverside Group.
Book accompanying 5-CD set released by BGM/Buddha Records.
Davis, Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude ―Ma‖ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday.
New York: Random House.
Garon, Paul. 1975. Blues and the Poetic Spirit. San Francisco: City Lights.
Kebede, Ashenafi. 1982. Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental, and Dance Heritage of Africa and Black
America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Pareles, Jon, and Patricia Romanowski, eds. 1983. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York:
Rolling Stone Press.
Santelli, Robert. 2001. The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books.
Dorothy Hawkins
Shakuntala Das
The History of Jazz & Blues
Blues and jazz both came out the American South. Blues grew out of the work songs and spiritual music sung by
slaves and their descendents. Jazz came out of blues and other styles of African and European music. Jazz
branched out to many different styles from Dixieland to big bands and Bebop. Both blues and jazz are
characterized by their passionate sound and unique musicality.
Origins of Blues
Blues music was born in the southern United States. Blues were sung on plantations by slaves and the
music was passed down to their descendents. The music started during the 19th century and was
influenced by gospel, traditional African chants and work songs. Blues were rooted in the South until
the 1930s, when the sound began to spread northward. As the music spread, the sound diversified.
What had once been played with a single acoustic guitar or piano became electrified and played in
groups. The blues, while still played traditionally, was a precursor to jazz.
Origins of Jazz
Jazz music originated in the United States in the early 20th century. The city of New Orleans is often
thought of as the birth place of jazz. In the early 1900s, many people from different cultures settled in
the city. Jazz was born out of the combination of European music styles, African-American blues,
marching band music and ragtime. Because jazz was one of the only music styles to originate in the
United States, it became known as "America's classical music."
Blues Pioneers
Many well known blues pioneers emerged during the 1920s. Among them were Son House, Charles
Patton and Robert Johnson. These pioneers were the first to be professionally recorded, with some of
their records being released by Paramount and Aristocrat. During the 1940s, after blues had made its
way north, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf dominated Chicago blues style. Chicago blues
incorporated electric guitars and drum sets, with a much louder and raucous sound than traditional
blues.
Jazz Styles
Jazz music has many different styles. One of the earliest forms of jazz was Dixieland. Dixieland jazz,
sometimes referred to as New Orleans jazz or "traditional" jazz, typically features the cornet, clarinet
and trombone. These instruments created Dixieland's distinguishing polyphonic sound. Big Band
Music became popular in the 1920s and typically consisted of at least a 10-piece ensemble. Big Band
groups primarily played swing music. In the 1940s, Bebop jazz emerged. Bebop used smaller
ensembles, usually of 4 or 5 musicians. The music concentrated more on complex melodies, chord
progressions, improvisation, and rhythm than earlier styles of jazz. In the 1960s, a new style of jazz
called "free jazz," or "avant-garde" spun jazz in a new direction. Free jazz was much more experimental
and unstructured, using atonal chords and squeaks or wails to manipulate tone.
Characteristics
Blues can be characterized by its 3 chord, 12 bar patterns. Blues lyrics are typically very personal and
concern the trials and tribulations of life. Because jazz has so many styles, it is difficult to define jazz as
a whole. Louis Armstrong defined jazz as "music that's never played the same way once." All the styles
of jazz come from the same roots. Underlying it all is blues, the relation of one instrument to another
and improvisation. Those characteristics define jazz and put all the styles under one roof.
Read more : http://www.ehow.com/about_6569565_history-jazz-blues.html
Jazz and Blues Music
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Jazz music symbolizes different things to different characters in this story.
The narrator doesn't know anything about jazz. He associates it with a certain "element" of people,
people he doesn't want his brother hanging out with. He lumps jazz together with drugs and Sonny's
addiction, blaming the jazz lifestyle for turning Sonny into a heroin addict because he knows that some
musicians have to get high in order to play. Jazz music makes the narrator angry and bitter.
But for Sonny, jazz music is like a ray of light. He loves playing it and listening to it. It's the one really
positive thing in his life. Jazz music represents passion and escape for Sonny. The very people the
narrator negatively associates with jazz are the ones who function as a sort of second family for
Sonny. While jazz is alien to the narrator, it's comfortable and comforting for Sonny.
At the end of the story, jazz functions as a bridge between the two brothers. When the narrator goes to
see Sonny play, he learns something about his brother that he's never understood before. When he
hears Sonny play, he finally starts to appreciate the wonder and terror of being a musician.
Analysis of 'Sonny's Blues' by James Baldwin
Redefining Darkness
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin was first published in 1957, which places it at the heart of the civil rights
movement in the United States. For those of you who need to be reminded of the timeline, that's three
years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), two years after Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the
bus (1955), six years before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech (1963), and
seven years before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Plot
The story opens with the first-person narrator reading in the newspaper that his younger brother -- from
whom he is estranged -- has been arrested for selling and using heroin. The brothers grew up in Harlem,
where the narrator still lives. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher, and he is a responsible husband
and father. In contrast, his brother, Sonny, is a musician who has led a much wilder life.
For several months after the arrest, the narrator does not contact Sonny. He disapproves of (and worries
about) his brother's drug use, and he is alienated by his brother's attraction to bebop music. But after the
narrator's daughter dies of polio, he feels compelled to reach out to Sonny.
When Sonny is released from prison, he moves in with his brother's family. After a couple of weeks, Sonny
invites the narrator to come hear him play piano at a nightclub. The narrator accepts because he wants to
understand his brother better. At the club, the narrator begins to appreciate the value of Sonny's music as
a response to suffering, and he sends over a drink to show his respect.
Inescapable Darkness
Throughout the story, darkness is used to symbolize the threats menacing the African-American
community. When the narrator discusses his students, he says:
"All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them,
and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness."
As his students approach adulthood, they realize how limited their opportunities will be. The narrator
laments that many of them may already be using drugs, just as Sonny did, and that perhaps the drugs will
do "more for them than algebra could." The darkness of the movies (echoed later in a comment about
watching TV screens rather than windows) suggests that entertainment has drawn the boys' attention
away from their own lives.
As the narrator and Sonny ride in a cab toward Harlem -- "the vivid, killing streets of our childhood" -- the
streets "darken with dark people." The narrator points out that nothing has really changed since their
childhood. He notes that:
"… houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we
once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air,
and found themselves encircled by disaster."
Though both Sonny and the narrator have traveled the world by enlisting in the military, they have both
ended up back in Harlem. And though the narrator in some ways has escaped the "darkness" of his
childhood by getting a respectable job and starting a family, he realizes that his children are facing all the
same challenges he faced.
His situation doesn't seem much different from that of the older people he remembers from childhood.
"The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what
they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's
happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
The sense of prophecy here -- the certainty of "what's going to happen" -- shows a resignation to the
inevitable. The "old folks" address the imminent darkness with silence because there's nothing they can do
about it.
A Different Kind of Light
The nightclub where Sonny plays is very dark. It's on "a short, dark street," and the narrator tells us that
"the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn't see."
Yet there is a sense that this darkness provides safety for Sonny, rather than menace. The supportive older
musician Creole "erupt[s] out of all that atmospheric lighting" and tells Sonny, "I been sitting right here …
waiting for you." For Sonny, the answer to suffering may lie within the darkness, not in escaping it.
Looking at the light on the bandstand, the narrator tells us that the musicians are "careful not to step into
that circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they
would perish in the flame."
Yet when the musicians start to play, "the lights on the bandstand, on the quartet, turned to a kind of
indigo. Then they all looked different there." Note the phrase "on the quartet": it's important that the
musicians are working as a group. Together they're making something new, and the light changes and
becomes accessible to them. They haven't done this "without thinking." Rather, they've done it with hard
work and "torment."
Though the story is told with music rather than words, the narrator still describes the music as a
conversation among the players, and he talks about Creole and Sonny having a "dialogue." This wordless
conversation among the musicians contrasts with the resigned silence of the "old folks."
As Baldwin writes:
"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it
always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
Instead of trying to find individual escape routes from the darkness, they are improvising together to
create a new kind of (indigo) light.
From the title of the story to the closing scene, music plays a central role in defining the characters and culture of
Harlem in “Sonny’s Blues.” At a young age, Sonny decides he wants to grow up to become a musician, a
decision that his brother has difficulty accepting. Sonny lists the great jazz musicians of his era, most notably
Charlie Parker, who had broken out of the traditional conventions of jazz to create a new, freer form of musical
expression. Unlike earlier forms of jazz, which relied heavily on well-developed and thoroughly planned
arrangements, the music of men such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie was created spontaneously as the
men listened and responded to each other. The music relied on instinct rather than on rigid structures. Sonny
contrasts his music idols with those of the previous generation, whose rigid, classical form of musical expression
is no longer valid. For Sonny, the world is an entirely different place from the one his older brother grew up in
and, as a result, needs new artistic forms to convey its reality.
The music that Sonny plays and loves is based less on a strict formal order than on a pure expression of the
soul. Bebop, as it came to be known, was a radical new form of jazz. For musicians like Sonny, the freedom of
expression that came with bebop was a chance to live freely, defy social conventions and norms, and create
something utterly original. For many of the great musicians of that era, drugs were a constant temptation.
Sonny’s stated musical hero, Charlie Parker, was himself addicted to drugs and died a very early death partly as
a result. At the end of the story, the narrator witnesses Sonny’s playing firsthand. The experience is similar to the
religious revival the narrator witnessed earlier, with one major exception: there is a real redemption available
through the music.
A Brief History Of The Blues
When you think of the blues, you think about misfortune, betrayal and regret. You
lose your job, you get the blues. Your mate falls out of love with you, you get the
blues. Your dog dies, you get the blues.
While blues lyrics often deal with personal adversity, the music itself goes far beyond
self-pity. The blues is also about overcoming hard luck, saying what you feel, ridding
yourself of frustration, letting your hair down, and simply having fun. The best blues
is visceral, cathartic, and starkly emotional. From unbridled joy to deep sadness, no
form of music communicates more genuine emotion.
The blues has deep roots in American history, particularly African-American history.
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, field
hollers, 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.
No single person invented the blues, but many people claimed to have discovered the
genre. For instance, minstrel show bandleader W.C. Handy insisted that the blues
were revealed to him in 1903 by an itinerant street guitarist at a train station in
Tutwiler, Mississippi.
During the middle to late 1800s, the Deep South was home to hundreds of seminal
bluesmen who helped to shape the music. Unfortunately, much of this original music
followed these sharecroppers to their graves. But the legacy of these earliest blues
pioneers can still be heard in 1920s and '30s recordings from Mississippi, Louisiana,
Texas, Georgia and other Southern states. This music is not very far removed from
the field hollers and work songs of the slaves and sharecroppers. Many of the earliest
blues musicians incorporated the blues into a wider repertoire that included traditional
folk songs, vaudeville music, and minstrel tunes.
Without getting too technical, most blues music is comprised of 12 bars (or
measures). A specific series of notes is also utilized in the blues. The individual parts
of this scale are known as the blue notes.
Well-known blues pioneers from the 1920s such as Son House, Blind Lemon
Jefferson, Leadbelly, Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson usually performed solo with
just a guitar. Occasionally they teamed up with one or more fellow bluesmen to
perform in the plantation camps, rural juke joints, and rambling shacks of the Deep
South. Blues bands may have evolved from early jazz bands, gospel choirs and jug
bands. Jug band music was popular in the South until the 1930s. Early jug bands
variously featured jugs, guitars, mandolins, banjos, kazoos, stringed basses,
harmonicas, fiddles, washboards and other everyday appliances converted into crude
instruments.
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, etc. Chicago bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters were the
first to electrify the blues and add drums and piano in the late 1940s.
Today there are many different shades of the blues. Forms include:
Traditional county blues - A general term that describes the rural blues of the
Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont and other rural locales;
Jump blues - A danceable amalgam of swing and blues and a precursor to R&B.
Jump blues was pioneered by Louis Jordan;
Boogie-woogie - A piano-based blues popularized by Meade Lux Lewis, Albert
Ammons and Pete Johnson, and derived from barrelhouse and ragtime;
Chicago blues - Delta blues electrified;
Cool blues- A sophisticated piano-based form that owes much to jazz;
West Coast blues - Popularized mainly by Texas musicians who moved to California.
West Coast blues is heavily influenced by the swing beat.
Blues
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences | 2008 | Copyright
Blues
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The blues, a term coined by the writer Washington Irving in 1807, is defined by Webster‘s Dictionary as a type of
music ―marked by recurrent minor intervals‖—so-called blue notes —and by ―melancholy lyrics.‖ These lyrics reflect
the oppression experienced by people of African descent in the United States: slavery, prison, chain gangs, and the
indignities of the Jim Crow era.
Blues is a typically American music with its earliest roots in African forms. It originated with the slaves that were
brought over from West Africa. The contemporary Malian musician Ali Farka Touré considers blues to be the type of
music most similar to his own; specifically, Touré hears echoes of Tamascheq music in the music of blues artists such
as John Lee Hooker. Because slaves were forbidden to use drums, they turned to traditional African ―ring shouts‖ and
created rhythms with their hands and feet. Through ring shouts slaves worshipping in ―praise houses‖ connected the
newly imposed Christianity to their African roots. ―Field hollers,‖ produced by slaves as a means of communication,
were another early vocal style that influenced the blues. Work songs sung by prison road gangs also highly influenced
the blues in its early days. The art of storytelling is another important element of the blues. Lyrically, the blues ranges
from forms based on short rhyming verses to songs using only one or two repeated phrases.
Over time, the blues evolved from a parochial folk form to a worldwide language. The influence of the blues can be
found in most forms of popular music, including jazz, country, and rock and roll. The lines between blues and jazz are
often blurred. Kansas City jazz, for example, is known for its bluesy sound. Certain artists, such as Charles Brown,
Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, and Mose Allison—all masters of the keyboard—make music that is hard to categorize
as either purely jazz or purely blues. Likewise, gospel is closely related to the blues. The music of the ―father of
gospel,‖ Thomas A. Dorsey, was a blend of blues and spirituals.
Ashenafi Kebede (1982) assigns the blues to four categories: country blues, city blues, urban blues, and racial blues.
Country blues was traditionally performed by street musicians without any formal training. City blues is a standardized
version of country blues. During the 1940s, as a result of the impact of communication media, city blues evolved into
the more commercialized and formalized urban blues, a style characterized by big band accompaniment, modern
amplification devices, and new instruments like the saxophone and electric guitar. Racial blues are songs based on
racial distinctions between blacks and whites.
The great composer and musician W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was one of the first to bring blues into the popular
culture, around 1911. Instrumental blues was first recorded in 1913. Aaron Thibeaux (T-Bone) Walker—whose
recording debut, ―Wichita Falls Blues,‖ was cut in 1929 for Columbia Records—is believed to be the first bluesman to
use an amplified acoustic guitar.
The first vocal blues was recorded by an African American woman, Mamie Smith, in 1920. Angela Davis (1998)
argues that in the early 1920s African American females were given priority over African American males as recording
artists due to their initial success (p. xii). Bessie Smith is said to be the greatest and the most influential blues singer of
the 1920s. Bessie Smith‘s catalogue of blues recordings still stands as the yardstick by which all other female blues
singers are evaluated. Gertrude ―Ma‖ Rainey is also regarded as one of the best of the classic 1920s blues singers.
She was ―most likely the first woman to incorporate blues into ministerial and vaudeville stage shows, perhaps as
early as 1902‖ (Santelli 2001, pp. 386-387). Alberta Hunter is identified as helping to bridge the gap between classic
blues and cabaret-flavored pop music in the 1920s (Santelli 2001, p. 226).
Artists such as Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam moved the blues guitar into the modern era. Other prominent
figures of the second half of the twentieth century include Son Seals, one of the leading guitar stylists of Chicago‘s
post-1960s blues generation; Muddy Waters, who has been dubbed the ―patriarch of post–World War II (1939-1945)
Chicago blues‖; and Howlin‘ Wolf, who was a singer, a songwriter, a guitarist, and a harmonica player. Sonny Boy
Williamson was responsible for the transformation of the harmonica (or blues ―harp‖) from a simple down-home
instrument into one of the essential parts of the Chicago blues sound. Little Walter is noted for his revolutionary
harmonica technique, and was also a guitarist. Blues guitarist Luther Allison, from the late 1960s, was influenced by
Freddie King, who was considered to be one of the linchpins of modern blues guitar. Albert King, who played lefthanded and holding his guitar upside down, was one of the premier modern electric guitar artists. Jimmy Reed sold
more records in the 1950s and early 1960s than any other blues artist except B. B. King, who is the most successful
blues concert artist ever. Bobby ―Blue‖ Bland is considered one of the creators of the modern soul blues sound. Blues
giant John Lee Hooker is known as the father of the boogie —an incessant one-chord exercise in blues intensity and
powerful rhythm.
While the blues was historically an African American form, in the early 1960s the urban bluesmen were―discovered‖ by
young white American and European musicians. Prior to this discovery, black blues artists had been unable to reach a
white audience. Among the best-known English blues artists are Eric Clapton and John Mayall; celebrated white
American bluesmen include Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. All were
heavily influenced by the great African American blues artists.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the blues is still going strong, as evidenced by the numerous national and
international blues societies, publications, and festivals.
SEE ALSO Bluegrass; Jazz; Music; Music, Psychology of; Popular Music; Rock ‗n‘ Roll; World Music
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Belafonte, Harry. 2001. The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music. Rochester, NY: Riverside Group.
Book accompanying 5-CD set released by BGM/Buddha Records.
Davis, Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude ―Ma‖ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday.
New York: Random House.
Garon, Paul. 1975. Blues and the Poetic Spirit. San Francisco: City Lights.
Kebede, Ashenafi. 1982. Roots of Black Music: The Vocal, Instrumental, and Dance Heritage of Africa and Black
America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Pareles, Jon, and Patricia Romanowski, eds. 1983. The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. New York:
Rolling Stone Press.
Santelli, Robert. 2001. The Big Book of Blues: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books.
Dorothy Hawkins
Shakuntala Das
The History of Jazz & Blues
Blues and jazz both came out the American South. Blues grew out of the work songs and spiritual music sung by
slaves and their descendents. Jazz came out of blues and other styles of African and European music. Jazz
branched out to many different styles from Dixieland to big bands and Bebop. Both blues and jazz are
characterized by their passionate sound and unique musicality.
Origins of Blues
Blues music was born in the southern United States. Blues were sung on plantations by slaves and the
music was passed down to their descendents. The music started during the 19th century and was
influenced by gospel, traditional African chants and work songs. Blues were rooted in the South until
the 1930s, when the sound began to spread northward. As the music spread, the sound diversified.
What had once been played with a single acoustic guitar or piano became electrified and played in
groups. The blues, while still played traditionally, was a precursor to jazz.
Origins of Jazz
Jazz music originated in the United States in the early 20th century. The city of New Orleans is often
thought of as the birth place of jazz. In the early 1900s, many people from different cultures settled in
the city. Jazz was born out of the combination of European music styles, African-American blues,
marching band music and ragtime. Because jazz was one of the only music styles to originate in the
United States, it became known as "America's classical music."
Blues Pioneers
Many well known blues pioneers emerged during the 1920s. Among them were Son House, Charles
Patton and Robert Johnson. These pioneers were the first to be professionally recorded, with some of
their records being released by Paramount and Aristocrat. During the 1940s, after blues had made its
way north, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf dominated Chicago blues style. Chicago blues
incorporated electric guitars and drum sets, with a much louder and raucous sound than traditional
blues.
Jazz Styles
Jazz music has many different styles. One of the earliest forms of jazz was Dixieland. Dixieland jazz,
sometimes referred to as New Orleans jazz or "traditional" jazz, typically features the cornet, clarinet
and trombone. These instruments created Dixieland's distinguishing polyphonic sound. Big Band
Music became popular in the 1920s and typically consisted of at least a 10-piece ensemble. Big Band
groups primarily played swing music. In the 1940s, Bebop jazz emerged. Bebop used smaller
ensembles, usually of 4 or 5 musicians. The music concentrated more on complex melodies, chord
progressions, improvisation, and rhythm than earlier styles of jazz. In the 1960s, a new style of jazz
called "free jazz," or "avant-garde" spun jazz in a new direction. Free jazz was much more experimental
and unstructured, using atonal chords and squeaks or wails to manipulate tone.
Characteristics
Blues can be characterized by its 3 chord, 12 bar patterns. Blues lyrics are typically very personal and
concern the trials and tribulations of life. Because jazz has so many styles, it is difficult to define jazz as
a whole. Louis Armstrong defined jazz as "music that's never played the same way once." All the styles
of jazz come from the same roots. Underlying it all is blues, the relation of one instrument to another
and improvisation. Those characteristics define jazz and put all the styles under one roof.
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Jazz and Blues Music
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Jazz music symbolizes different things to different characters in this story.
The narrator doesn't know anything about jazz. He associates it with a certain "element" of people,
people he doesn't want his brother hanging out with. He lumps jazz together with drugs and Sonny's
addiction, blaming the jazz lifestyle for turning Sonny into a heroin addict because he knows that some
musicians have to get high in order to play. Jazz music makes the narrator angry and bitter.
But for Sonny, jazz music is like a ray of light. He loves playing it and listening to it. It's the one really
positive thing in his life. Jazz music represents passion and escape for Sonny. The very people the
narrator negatively associates with jazz are the ones who function as a sort of second family for
Sonny. While jazz is alien to the narrator, it's comfortable and comforting for Sonny.
At the end of the story, jazz functions as a bridge between the two brothers. When the narrator goes to
see Sonny play, he learns something about his brother that he's never understood before. When he
hears Sonny play, he finally starts to appreciate the wonder and terror of being a musician.
Analysis of 'Sonny's Blues' by James Baldwin
Redefining Darkness
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin was first published in 1957, which places it at the heart of the civil rights
movement in the United States. For those of you who need to be reminded of the timeline, that's three
years after Brown v. Board of Education (1954), two years after Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the
bus (1955), six years before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech (1963), and
seven years before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Plot
The story opens with the first-person narrator reading in the newspaper that his younger brother -- from
whom he is estranged -- has been arrested for selling and using heroin. The brothers grew up in Harlem,
where the narrator still lives. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher, and he is a responsible husband
and father. In contrast, his brother, Sonny, is a musician who has led a much wilder life.
For several months after the arrest, the narrator does not contact Sonny. He disapproves of (and worries
about) his brother's drug use, and he is alienated by his brother's attraction to bebop music. But after the
narrator's daughter dies of polio, he feels compelled to reach out to Sonny.
When Sonny is released from prison, he moves in with his brother's family. After a couple of weeks, Sonny
invites the narrator to come hear him play piano at a nightclub. The narrator accepts because he wants to
understand his brother better. At the club, the narrator begins to appreciate the value of Sonny's music as
a response to suffering, and he sends over a drink to show his respect.
Inescapable Darkness
Throughout the story, darkness is used to symbolize the threats menacing the African-American
community. When the narrator discusses his students, he says:
"All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them,
and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness."
As his students approach adulthood, they realize how limited their opportunities will be. The narrator
laments that many of them may already be using drugs, just as Sonny did, and that perhaps the drugs will
do "more for them than algebra could." The darkness of the movies (echoed later in a comment about
watching TV screens rather than windows) suggests that entertainment has drawn the boys' attention
away from their own lives.
As the narrator and Sonny ride in a cab toward Harlem -- "the vivid, killing streets of our childhood" -- the
streets "darken with dark people." The narrator points out that nothing has really changed since their
childhood. He notes that:
"… houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we
once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air,
and found themselves encircled by disaster."
Though both Sonny and the narrator have traveled the world by enlisting in the military, they have both
ended up back in Harlem. And though the narrator in some ways has escaped the "darkness" of his
childhood by getting a respectable job and starting a family, he realizes that his children are facing all the
same challenges he faced.
His situation doesn't seem much different from that of the older people he remembers from childhood.
"The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what
they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's
happened to them, he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him."
The sense of prophecy here -- the certainty of "what's going to happen" -- shows a resignation to the
inevitable. The "old folks" address the imminent darkness with silence because there's nothing they can do
about it.
A Different Kind of Light
The nightclub where Sonny plays is very dark. It's on "a short, dark street," and the narrator tells us that
"the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn't see."
Yet there is a sense that this darkness provides safety for Sonny, rather than menace. The supportive older
musician Creole "erupt[s] out of all that atmospheric lighting" and tells Sonny, "I been sitting right here …
waiting for you." For Sonny, the answer to suffering may lie within the darkness, not in escaping it.
Looking at the light on the bandstand, the narrator tells us that the musicians are "careful not to step into
that circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they
would perish in the flame."
Yet when the musicians start to play, "the lights on the bandstand, on the quartet, turned to a kind of
indigo. Then they all looked different there." Note the phrase "on the quartet": it's important that the
musicians are working as a group. Together they're making something new, and the light changes and
becomes accessible to them. They haven't done this "without thinking." Rather, they've done it with hard
work and "torment."
Though the story is told with music rather than words, the narrator still describes the music as a
conversation among the players, and he talks about Creole and Sonny having a "dialogue." This wordless
conversation among the musicians contrasts with the resigned silence of the "old folks."
As Baldwin writes:
"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it
always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."
Instead of trying to find individual escape routes from the darkness, they are improvising together to
create a new kind of (indigo) light.
