Posted by manualblock [ 69.112.69.86 ] on October 10, 2005 at 20:39:51:
In Reply to: Re: Starbucks posted by lon on October 10, 2005 at 19:14:38:
Blues by virtue of it's composition and ethnography is more than music it is a testimony to a set of circumstances surrounding a group of people unique to the common sense of what music means.
Happy or sad or just Blue has no bearing on the ultimate effect of the music on the hearers.
I mean first of all it was not a music written to evoke any mood it was written originally as a form of communication. The call and response form had a use in describing what and how the work of the laborers was accomplished. Think of where this music originated; mostly from east African slaves predominately from the Yoruba tribes. They used a similar system of meter and tone to tell the news from village to village. That style is rooted in the same Blues you hear done to this day. Including the Pentatonic scale and the Tonic/Dominent /Sub-dominent construction.
Then after the civil war the retreating armies left instruments by the roads picked up by locals to make music with. Mostly Fife and Drum with the occassional horn or crude stringed banjo. Most of the best of the Bluesmen started with cigar boxes and broomsticks tied with a cat gut string and fretted with a pocket knife.
They would use this equipment to play after work in the fields and on Sundays. Since the preachers and overseers would allow only religous music to be played; they learned the european chord structures except they would flat the thirds and fifths when the preacher wasn't listening. They would sing to tell stories of local gossip that could not be said out loud. Soon Gospel music evolved from the mix of African rythyms and European harmony and that was allowed on Sunday's.
My point is the music has a depth of experience that makes it a cultural iconagraphic art.
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