The blues biography

Retrieved October 28, Retrieved March 16, Blind Pig Records. Archived from the original on January 7, Retrieved January 7, All About Jazz. April 3, Retrieved April 4, Austin Chronicle. Retrieved April 27, July Living Blues. Retrieved July 9, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Retrieved February 19, Retrieved September 11, Retrieved December 3, Indy Week.

El Paso Times. Retrieved January 5, Archived from the original on October 6, Retrieved October 6, The acclaim for Johnson's work is based on the 29 songs that he wrote and recorded in Dallas and San Antonio from to Johnson came to the attention of many musicians and won over new fans with a reissue of his work in the s. Another retrospective collection of his recordings released in the s sold millions of copies.

But much of Johnson's life is shrouded in mystery. Part of the lasting mythology around him is a story of how he gained his musical talents by making a bargain with the devil: Son House, a famed blues musician and a contemporary of Johnson, claimed after Johnson achieved fame that the musician had previously been a decent harmonica player, but a terrible guitarist—that is, until Johnson disappeared for a few weeks in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Legend has it that Johnson took his guitar to the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61, where he made a deal with the devil, who retuned his guitar in exchange for his soul. Strangely enough, Johnson returned with an impressive technique and, eventually, gained renown as a master of the blues. While his reported "deal with the devil" may be unlikely, it is true that Johnson died at an early age.

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The blues biography: Label, ‎AAO MUSIC. Number

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The blues biography: The blues emerged from the oppressed,

Perhaps the most compelling African instrument that is a predecessor to an African-American instrument is the " Akonting ", a folk lute of the Jola tribe of Senegambia. It is a clear predecessor to the American banjo in its playing style, the construction of the instrument itself and in its social role as a folk instrument. The Kora is played by a professional caste of praise singers for the rich and aristocracy called griots or jalis and is not considered folk music.

The akonting is perhaps the most important and concrete link that exists between African and African-American music. While the findings of Kubik and others clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression, studies by Willie Ruff and others have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside enslaved peoples' exposure to their masters' Hebridean -originated gospels.

Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might share its origins with the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify Islamic music as an influence on the blues biography music. According to Kubik, "the vocal style of many blues singers using melismawavy intonation, and so forth is a heritage of that large region of West Africa that had been in contact with the Islamic world via the Maghreb since the seventh and eighth centuries.

There was a difference in the music performed by the predominantly Muslim Sahelian slaves and the predominantly non-Muslim slaves from coastal West Africa and Central Africa. The Sahelian Muslim slaves generally favoured wind and string instruments and solo singing, whereas the non-Muslim slaves generally favored drums and group chants.

Plantation owners who feared revolt outlawed drums and group chants, but allowed the Sahelian slaves to continue singing and playing their wind and string instruments, which the plantation owners found less threatening. Some were also allowed to perform at balls for slave-holders, allowing the migration of their music across the Deep South.

Field holler music, also known as Levee Camp Holler music, was an early form of African American musicdescribed in the 19th century. The most important American antecedent of the blues was the spirituala form of religious song with its roots in the camp meetings of the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Spirituals were a passionate song form, that "convey ed to listeners the same feeling of rootlessness and misery" as the blues.

The blues biography: The blues is a form

The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. African American work songs were an important precursor to the modern blues; these included the songs sung by laborers like stevedores and roustaboutsand the field hollers and " shouts " of slaves. Several scholars characterize the early s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style.

They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the slaves. According to Lawrence Levine[ 17 ] "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individualthe popularity of Booker T. Washington 's teachings, and the rise of the blues. An important reason for the lack of certain knowledge about the origins of the blues is the earliest blues musicians' tendency to wander through communities, leaving little or no record of precisely what sort of music they played or where it came from.

Blues was generally regarded as lower-class music, unfit for documentation, study or enjoyment by the upper- and middle-classes [ 18 ]. Blue notes pre-date their use in blues. African American composer W. Handy wrote in his autobiography of the experience of sleeping on a train traveling through or stopping at the station of Tutwiler, Mississippi aroundand being awakened by:.

His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes.