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The Blues
It
is said that the blues is a native American musical and verse
form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we
know. In other words, it is a blending of both traditions. Something
special and entirely different from either of its parent traditions.
Alan Lomax cites some examples of very similar songs having been
found in Northwest Africa, particularly among the Wolof and Watusi.
The word 'blue' has been associated with the idea of melancholia or
depression since the Elizabethan era. The American writer Washington
Irving is credited with coining the term 'the blues', as it is now
defined, in 1807. The earlier (almost entirely Negro) history of the
blues musical tradition is traced through oral tradition as far back
as the 1860s when African and European music began to merge
to create what became the blues. The slaves sang songs
filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation.
One of the many responses to their oppressive environment resulted
in the field holler. The field holler gave rise to the spiritual,
and the blues, notable among all human works of art for their
profound despair . . .
The blues form was first popularized about 1911-14 by the black
composer W.C. Handy . However, the poetic and musical form of the
blues first crystallized around 1910 and gained popularity through
the publication of Handy's "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues".
Instrumental blues was recorded as early as 1913. Mamie Smith
recorded the first vocal blues song, 'Crazy Blues' in 1920.
American troops brought the blues home with them following the
First World War. They did not, of course, learn them from Europeans,
but from Southern whites who had been exposed to the blues.
During the decades of the thirties and forties,
the blues spread northward with the migration of many blacks from
the South. The blues also became electrified with the introduction
of the amplified guitar. In some Northern cities like Chicago and
Detroit, during the later forties and early fifties, Muddy Waters,
Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Elmore James,
played Mississippi Delta blues, backed by bass, drums, piano and
occasionally a harmonica, and began scoring national hits with blues
songs. At about the same time, T-Bone Walker in Houston and B.B.
King in Memphis were pioneering a style of guitar playing that
combined jazz technique with the blues tonality and repertoire.
The
Lyrics
Blues lyrics contain some of the most fantastically
penetrating autobiographical and revealing statements in
musical. The complexity of ideas in Robert Johnson's 'Come On
In My Kitchen,' such as a barely concealed desire, loneliness, and
tenderness, and much more:
You better come in my kitchen, It's gonna be
rainin' outdoors.
Blues lyrics are often intensely personal, often
deal with the pain of betrayal, desertion, and unrequited love or
with unhappy situations such as being jobless, hungry, broke, away
from home, lonely, or downhearted because of an unfaithful lover.
The early blues were very irregular rhythmically and
usually followed speech patterns, as can be heard in the recordings
made in the twenties and thirties. The meter of the blues is usually
written in iambic pentameter. The first line is generally repeated
and third line is different from the first two. The repetition of
the first line serves a purpose as it gives the singer some time to
come up with a third line. Often the lyrics of a blues song do not
seem to fit the music, but a good blues singer will accent certain
syllables and eliminate others so that everything falls nicely into
place.
The structure of blues lyrics usually consists of
several three-line verses. The first line is sung and then repeated
to roughly the same melodic phrase while the third line has a
different melodic phrase:
I'm going to leave baby, ain't going to say
goodbye
I'm going to leave baby, ain't going to say goodbye
But I'll write you and tell you the reason why |
