The blues as well as everything, which has amazing success, has been an underground musical direction for decades. It is understandable, because the society of whites could not accept the music of African Americans working on plantations, and even listen to them it was shameful.
Such music was considered radical and even calling for violence. Social hypocrisy passed only in the 20s of the last century. The history of the blues, like its creators, is characterized by a negative and depressive character. And, as well as longing, the blues is simple to genius.
Many performers were engaged in heavy physical labor until their death, they were vagrants, and had an occasional income. That is how most of the black population of the United States lived in the early twentieth century. Haddy "Ledbelly" Ledbetter and Blind Lemon Jefferson can be counted among such free musicians who left the brightest track in the history of blues.
Musical and technical features of the blues
On a par with the simplicity of character of improvisers who created this trend, the blues and in musical terms is not complicated. This music is a skeleton on which solo parts of other instruments are strung together. In the latter, you can hear the "dialogue": the sounds seem to overlap with each other. A similar technique is usually seen in the blues lyrics - verses are structured according to the structure of "question-answer".
No matter how simple and impromptu the blues does not seem, it has its own theory. The most common form of the composition is 12 cycles, this is the so-called blues net:
- Four bars in tonic harmony;
- Two bars in the subdominant;
- Two measures in tonic;
- Two bars in the dominant;
- Two measures in tonic.
The instrument used to express the depressed mood of the blues is traditionally an acoustic guitar. Naturally, over time, the ensemble began to be supplemented by drums and keyboards. It is such a sound that becomes customary for our contemporaries.
Note that the African-American workers at times did not interfere with the absence of musical instruments (the conditions of the plantations), and the blues just sang. Instead of a game, only rhythmic cries, similar to those produced by workers on the field, are issued.
Blues in the modern world
The history of the blues experienced its apogee in the middle of the twentieth century, when the tired world was waiting for something new and unusual. It was then that he broke into the recording studio. The blues had a serious impact on the main pop trends of the 70s: rock and roll, metal, jazz, reggae and pop.
But much earlier, the blues was appreciated by academic composers who composed classical music. For example, echoes of blues are heard in the piano concerto by Maurice Ravel, and George Gershwin called one of his works for piano and orchestra “Rhapsody in blues tones”.
To this day, the blues has come as an already unchanged, perfect and perfect pattern. Nevertheless, he is still quite relevant and has many followers. He still carries a serious spiritual burden: in the notes of even the freshest compositions one can hear the weight of fate and endless sadness, even if the language of the poems is not clear. This is an amazing feature of blues music - to talk with the listener.
The author - Gleb Safarov
Leave Your Comment