The Blues

[Soma-Guy]

I was at the Smithsonian for their 150th Birthday celebration and one of the acts was these African dancers and their energy and quite of few of their moves looked just like early charleston and jazz steps.

Oh damn! We're going back to Africa now! I guess that was inevitable if we're talking about tracing a lineage that runs through to today. Stearns book, "Jazz Dance" talks about some cool stuff along these lines. He points out many influences where African dances are repeated almost exactly in early American Vernacular dancing.

Okay now here's a question that's just blown my mind. Does this mean the blues come from Arfrica? I'm not sure how I feel about this question. I think I could go either way on this one. . .

p.s- Check out some footage of James Brown, especially the early stuff. You can't tell me that brother doesn't got alittle bit of Charleston, tap AND some early break dancing in his book of moves! THAT BROTHA HAS SOUL!

[Lawrence]

I recognize that's it's more elegant to have a simple definition, but defining the blues seems to be an ongoing issue.

I'm not advocating for a simple definition of the Blues, just an accurate, musical one that does not speak in emotional or historical terms that misguide the inquiry. That accurate definition might include musical terms that I don't fully understand, but it needs to be musical because it is defining a musical term.

I'm also not advocating banning loose talk about what "Da Bluuuuess" makes you feel or what it inspires or any of that. But when talking about how to DEFINE the Blues, we should avoid confusing the issue through historical anecdotes, emotional responses, inspirational messages, and other funky talk... none of which I disagree with, but all of which I submit confuses the issue of how to DEFINE the Blues.

I definitely share those emotional reactions, myself, and talk about them them with people I try to inpsire to learn more about Blues music. But definition is another matter.

[CafeSavoy]

Oh damn! We're going back to Africa now! I guess that was inevitable if we're talking about tracing a lineage that runs through to today. Stearns book, "Jazz Dance" talks about some cool stuff along these lines. He points out many influences where African dances are repeated almost exactly in early American Vernacular dancing.

Okay now here's a question that's just blown my mind. Does this mean the blues come from Arfrica? I'm not sure how I feel about this question. I think I could go either way on this one. . .

p.s- Check out some footage of James Brown, especially the early stuff. You can't tell me that brother doesn't got alittle bit of Charleston, tap AND some early break dancing in his book of moves! THAT BROTHA HAS SOUL!

James Brown is awesome. And so dynamic, with the splits, the slides, the spins, and totally working the microphone stand.

A book that i found interesting was Emery, Lynne Fauley. Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. Palo Alto, Calif., 1972. Rev. ed. Princeton, 1988. It gives a good general sense of the characteristics and some idea of the changes over time.

The relation of Africa to the Blues and jazz is normally discussed in terms of blue notes , the primacy of rhythm, call and response, polyrhythms, syncopations, bending notes (tambral effects), improvisation, etc.. Although some point out that there are multiple sources for some of these characteristics, for example, Mark Gridley in Jazz Styles.

[Soma-Guy]

A book that i found interesting was Emery, Lynne Fauley. Black Dance in the United States from 1619 to 1970. Palo Alto, Calif., 1972. Rev. ed. Princeton, 1988. It gives a good general sense of the characteristics and some idea of the changes over time.

Nope haven't made it to that book yet. I've just got too many books I need to read! I mean seeing as how I've been trying to piece together some sence of history or lineage in the last 100 years it takes ALONG time to get around to reading everything!

I'm not advocating for a simple definition of the Blues, just an accurate, musical one that does not speak in emotional or historical terms that misguide the inquiry. That accurate definition might include musical terms that I don't fully understand, but it needs to be musical because it is defining a musical term.

I don't know if I agree that a defintion of the blues is simply musical. There's alot more to it than simply the music. I think if you don't include the emotional part in your defintion then you're missing out on the heart of what it is. It sounds like the definition you're looking for is purely scientific. I'm sure what your proposing could be done but it would be missing many of the other important elements that make the blues what it is.

[Lawrence]

I don't know if I agree that a defintion of the blues is simply musical. There's alot more to it than simply the music. I think if you don't include the emotional part in your defintion then you're missing out on the heart of what it is. It sounds like the definition you're looking for is purely scientific. I'm sure what your proposing could be done but it would be missing many of the other important elements that make the blues what it is.

If you consider "musical" to mean "devoid of emotion," then you are correct. However, music theory incorporates the emotional responses that music elicits without using vague, overly-broad, ooshie-wooshie, bold, poeticly-grand statements that literally could apply to any music from the Caveman era onward.

I know enough music theory to know that certain chords sound "sadder" than others: minor chords are a bit more dissonent and sadder than major chords. Seventh chords are "bluer" than major chords. Certain Blues chord progressions move from major to seventh chords--combining "neutral" or "happy" chords with "sad" chords--whereas others stay with seventh chords. There are also musical descriptions for playing with a certain inflection that elicits the same reaction.

If you do not start there with the music, you're just playing Ornette Coleman. You're writing words without punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Just because laypeople don't know all the musical terms in a musical definition, that does not mean that the musical definition is not the most accurate.

[Shorty Dave]

Just curious, Lawrence (or anyone). Are there any swing songs that follow the 12-bar format that you would *not* consider blues?

[Yakov]

i wouldn't. but blues is more than that too. listen to some of the songs called "----- blues" on the hot five discs, for example.

[falty411]

Just curious, Lawrence (or anyone). Are there any swing songs that follow the 12-bar format that you would *not* consider blues?

it all depends on your personal definition of "swing" and "blues"

Just because something is in a 12 bar blues format I would personally NOT automatically call it blues. Blues can be referred to as a format or a genre. I have heard punk rock, hip hop, and techno songs that have used a 12 bar format, bt I would hardly consider them "Blues". Just as I have heard hundreds of swing songs use the format, again, I personally wouldnt call it blues.

[Shorty Dave]

Just as I have heard hundreds of swing songs use the format, again, I personally wouldnt call it blues.

For example?

[falty411]

For example?

well, that also depends on a number of things. I also believe that it is possible to play a song that isnt in 12 bar and play it as a "blues". And then take that same song and play it as a "rock" song.

So it would depend on not only the artist, the feeling, the way its being played.

How many different versions of "The C Jam Blues" are there? Some (to me) fall a lot more heavily to a blues feel, some more to a swing feel, and even a version I once heard towards a techno feel. There is no black and white, its more of a sliding scale....to me at least.

[Shorty Dave]

Mike, you still haven't answered my question. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, so I apologize.

Can you - or anyone else - give me a specific example of a 12 bar format song that you feel swings that you wouldn't consider to be blues. Is there a specific swinging version of c-jam blues (not a rock or techno version, but one that in your opinion swings) that you wouldn't call blues?

Basically, I'm wondering if a song that has a 12 bar format and swings is automatically blues no matter what the feeling. I don't pretend for one moment that this is a definition of blues, but while I was thinking of this thread and thinking of songs, I couldn't come up with a 12 bar song that I DJ that I don't consider blues. So just wondering if they're out there.

[Ryan]

I once heard a bad Casio keyboard version of Woodchoppers ball with a drum machine backing it. It souded like a horribly disfigured accordian pounding out staccato polka notes for someones bar mitzvah in 1973.

What it didn't sound like, was blues.

[Mr Awesomer]

give me a specific example of a 12 bar format song that you feel swings that you wouldn't consider to be blues. Is there a specific swinging version of c-jam blues (not a rock or techno version, but one that in your opinion swings) that you wouldn't call blues?

As you've said, 12 bar blues is a format, more often looked at as a standard chord progression.

Thus music can be played in that format of most any style.

Also, Blues the style is not Blues the 12 bar format, though they usually go hand in hand.

Thus, Ellington's 1942 cut of "C Jam Blues" is in the Swing style, and therefore I wouldn't call it a Blues tune even though its in the 12 bar blues format.

It was also common during jam sessions to just call out "Blues" and the musicians would go at it. The results were tunes the swung like mad, in the style of Swing, nothing remotely sounding like what most people would call "Blues," yet in the 12 bar blues format. I've got a recording of the "Esquire's All American Jazz Concert" from '44 with a song called out and listed as "Blues" that is a perfect example of this.

Another example I have is from an Armstrong concert some time in the 50's. Same "Blues" title, same Blues format... two completely different songs that are Swing through and through.

[falty411]

i did list a song for you, as that was all you asked for ....... and reuben just further answered for me.

[julius]

For any purely music-theory criteria that you apply to a song to see if it is blues, there is a blues song that does not conform to that criteria. You CANNOT lay out, in exact terms, what a blues song is. You can say it shuffles or swings, and follows a 12 bar format, and has an AAB lyric structure, and includes call and response, but all that describes any number of rock and roll songs too.

John Lee Hooker plays blues. Sometimes it's a 14 bar, one chord boogie. "Blues in the Night" is a bluesy song, but it's a 32 bar song.

In order to define blues music, you need to delve into non-objective terminology, just like when you try to define swing music, or rock, or any other sufficiently large genre of music. This makes Dave's question is unanswerable because then you must first qualify what "swings" means. But I'll take a stab at it:

Kind of Blue, Miles Davis. "All Blues" and "So What" (I think) have a distinctly blues feeling and song structure, but because the melodies and solos are played modally, they don't sound like traditional blues (with the exception of Cannonball Adderly's playing, because he can't quite wrap his head around Miles' conception for the album). I want to call those songs blues, but I can't wholeheartedly do so. See, here's the problem; blues is so inclusive, once you find something that lies in the gray zone, it almost automatically becomes blues.