It's amazing how many people don't know that basically all modern popular music - including all forms of music descended from rock, go back to blues, which go back to slave songs and hollers, which in major part go back to west African traditional music. Plastic pop, Viking metal, gabber, progressive trance... all of it carries the musical DNA of African traditional music in it, even if deeply buried under many layers of subsequent diversification and experimentation.
It does not go back to Africa. The blues is distinct As black american. Who are also indigenous to America's. This is a unique form of black culture. No these are black anericans. And their culture. No where else in the world generated the conditions apon this music coming to be
Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming.
@@Mocha69AThe only contribution to blues music that blacks brought was the call and response vocal technique and the blue note. The 4/4 beat comes from Native pow-wows and the chords and structure came from Europe. It's a melting pot genre and the media has just assigned blacks as the progenitors as a form of propaganda. They use it to pander to you but it's not real history.
Very concise and informative, i enjoyed all the original audio clips . Blues music is a living testament to the difficulties the ex slaves faced when trying to assimilate into a culture with no education and only homemade instruments, music, cooking, singing and dancing as a means to bridge cultural gaps, profit, and survive in an (at best) indifferent capitalist society, and at worst open hatred and violence at the hands of the kkk and other conservative groups. LBJ's later signing the civil rights act drove most of the overt white racists to the conservative movement which was embraced with "southern strategy" politics, in the 60's and since have been well received and their signal boosted in the trump era. This is important context for anyone wishing to understand how power, privilege, and prestige reinforce themselves amongst the owning class in society, and an intro into the major political realignment the parties underwent from the civil war.
Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming. The only contribution to blues music that blacks brought was the call and response vocal technique and the blue note. The 4/4 beat comes from Native pow-wows and the chords and structure came from Europe. It's a melting pot genre and the media has just assigned blacks as the progenitors as a form of propaganda. They use it to pander to you but it's not true history, it's a biased selective history, like most things
Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming.
This perpetuates many of the myths about the blues. The myth that the blues originated in the Mississippi delta has resulted in a distortion of the understanding of black music culture in general and of the female blues singers’ contribution to this culture in particular. Starting from the previous century’s ideological discussion about what is good and bad music - and from the schism between the concepts of popular music/folk music - a white vision of the blues was constructed, a vision that is still very much alive and kicking up until today. This vision, however, reveals a blindness towards black culture, a patronisation of black voices, and implicitly a discrimination of female blues artists.
Coming out of WWI and then a pandemic (reverse order repeated 2024) everybody was fed up to their necks with GAD (general anxiety disorders) and in that double-bind turned to jazz, blues and dance. The dancing was copied from an african "happy step forward, then backwards arms flailing" popularized in a hub city of slavery in South Carolina. Yes yes, the city is Charleston, naming the step everyone soon adopted! Issuing in big band and jazz and couples dancing with none other than Frankie Manning with his (jitterbug) Lindy Hop.
The only contribution to blues music that blacks brought was the call and response vocal technique and the blue note. The 4/4 beat comes from Native pow-wows and the chords and structure came from Europe. It's a melting pot genre and the media has just assigned blacks as the progenitors as a form of propaganda that goes back decades. They use it to pander to you but it's not real history.
@@flora-3603 "No one with a brain".. I think you mean "most people"... Most people take things at face value. They just read the first thing on Google. People with an active brain continually research things for their entire lives and never take anything at face value
@@flora-3603 What I said isn't even controversial, it's just lesser known. You can find most of what I said on the "Blues" Wikipedia page with sources referenced at the bottom. You can also find this info in the library, where we found it before Wikipedia... 🧠
@@flora-3603 Also Charley Patton's race is uncertain and Muddy thought he was either Cherokee or Mexican. "Blues is uniquely North American and attributed to Afro-Americans, but as we’ll see, [it] wasn’t born from those roots alone. The music began as a unique merger of European and African traditions around 1860 in the Mississippi Delta, but what historians seem to overlook is the integral role the Natives of this region played in the birth of a virtual religion." -Douglas Proulx, BEYOND WORDS
@@flora-3603 "New Orleans is at the heart of the Mississippi Delta Blues. It’s also home to Cajun, Zydeco and Creole music. A lot of these rhythmic styles are worlds away from the token Indian beat. [Proulx demonstrates the “token” beat on a hand drum.] "For instance, the swing cadence so prevalent in the blues is 100% Native American and is a homage to the heartbeat [illustrating it on the drum]." "People like Charlie Patton, Redbone and the Neville brothers all have a connection to this diverse legacy, and […] the land it was born from." -Douglas Proulx, BEYOND WORDS
Regardless of slavery, which was and is still terrible, blues music in my eyes isn’t rooted in the idea of slavery, it’s rooted in the idea of oppression and struggle. These two factors exist regardless of slavery.
Also, a lot of things we today think is extremely magnificent and such an accomplishment of man, is actually due to slavery. The Egyptian pyramids for example. It’s not bad to admire these structures, or in this case, the blues, it’s good to admire the structures and other resulting things because of the fact that people still built or made them despite their status at the time. We can still respect the feats of people who accomplished some otherwise impossible feats outside of slavery. Can you imagine the cost of building the pyramids today and likely the lack of quality if it was done today in a standard payroll corporation? Slavery was and is terrible treatment of people, but the results from such things is beautiful due to the people’s innate ability to thrive and act even in dire circumstances. I feel that’s the lack of education or observation of some. Blues may have originated from slavery as we know it, but it doesn’t mean that we as a people would have lacked the ability to create such a beautiful genre of music outside of slavery.
