Do the blues mean alot to you?

[A Lark Ascending]

My thoughts exactly, John.

a) 'The blues' can mean deep feeling.

b.) 'The blues' can mean a particular musical means of expression, a code of notes, harmonies etc.

Black music in the 19th and early 20th Cs found an incredibly powerful way of doing a) by evolving b.).

But a) can be achieved without b.) - John's Beethoven example fits perfectly.

And if it could work in the past, it can work in the future.

The recording that is having the most powerful effect on me at the moment is a CD by an Italian group called the Simone Guiducci Gramelot Ensemble - very little blues (as in b.) influence, acres of deep feeling drawn off Italian, Spanish, Eastern European folk music.

Schoenberg once commented words to the effect that there was still plenty of good music to be made in C Major. I'm sure there's plenty of good music to be made within b.), expanding, developing but keeping its essence. But some musical will inevitably move beyond.

Now whether it should be called jazz or not is another matter. And that depends on who has the power to do the labelling.

The blues-less (and often swing-less) improvised music that I hear still sounds like jazz to me!

(Beware - putting a b followed by a ) produces a smiley face - B) - rather than the b ) I'd intended!

Edited March 17, 2003 by Bev Stapleton

[desertblues]

To me it's pretty basic, blues is "a feeling" and when it's genuine I dig it. I've been into all types of blues for 40+ years and have listened to and known many great bluesmen famous & obscure. There's black blues and there's white blues and sometimes they merge. There is also a lot of stuff that tries to masquerade as the blues but ain't. What blues is really about is self-expression; when you think of blues as a structured style of playing you are missing the point!

[Simon Weil]

...Django Reinhardt, doesn't really strike me as a blues player. I mean he was, I guess, coming out of the tradition of gypsy improvising.

...If "the blues" are ceasing to have relevancy as a STYLE to many people, that's one thing. The reason so much of what passes for "blues" these days sounds outright STUPID is because its NOT about the meaning anymore, it's about the style above all else.

....But style so very often has nothing to do with substance, and that's where proclaiming the lack of relevancy of the blues starts down a slippery slope. Seriously. Ellington figured that one out, didn't he? The Blues ain't nothin' but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

...The blues - not the temporal style, but the eternally relevant fundamental dynamics that create them - will die only when humanity does. I just hope that that death is by natural causes, not the mass suicide of a Faustian bargain with a self-congratulatory delusion. But, the blues being what they are, it probably will be.

Well, how about a test for playing the blues - that even when you're not trying to do it, it comes out. I mean the blues mean a lot to me, and in some respect feel like home. So, like sooner or later, everyone comes home...

Isn't that stuff about illusion the new reality? Like white is the new black.

I woke up this morning and I was in the Matrix....

Simon Weil

[A Lark Ascending]

What blues is really about is self-expression; when you think of blues as a structured style of playing you are missing the point!

I think you are oversimplifying.

'The blues' IS a particular style of playing in the same way that baroque is a style.

To play the style without the feeling does miss the point. I can play a rudimentary blues with even my limited guitar abilities (and believe me, they are limited!) but they come nowhere near hitting the point.

But self-expression is not the blues (even though the blues requires self-expression). The last movement of Mahler 9, the third movement of Vaughan Williams 5, Liam O'Flynn playing a lament on the uillean pipes, Emmylou Harris singing Boulder to Birmingham - they all access exactly the same emotional spot that a deeply felt blues song hits. But they are not the blues.

The blues is that power within a particular style (though the great players are able to manipulate the structure with grace and audacity).

I think what Harris has decided is that if he tries to reach that core of feeling via the 'style' of the blues he is only going to be able to produce second hand music - it's not an idiom that is natural to him. So he's going to go for it through other styles or means.

[JSngry]

Jim:  I hear where you are coming from.    But the way that I think of the blues is a bit different.  Certainly, it goes far beyond style.   I nevertheless consider the blues to be a specific language, a medium, a way of communication, that is of time and place.  You speak the language or you don't.   Even if you do speak the language, there is often a noticable difference between a native speaker and a Johnny-come-lately. 

Agreed, and absolutely. My point is merely that, at this point in time, more and more people are becoming multi-lingual, and the result may very well be a morphing of the mother tongue into a whole 'nother thing. And perhaps, eventually, the organic creation of an Esperanto-like universal tongue, musical or otherwise. But that's a looooooong way off, if it is indeed even possible. But trends seem to point that way to at least some minor degree, I think.

Me myself, I'm comfortable being a blues-based (in the traditional sense) person. The depth to with the language has penetrated, resonated, and perpetrated me is more than I can express. But I'm comfortable, not complacent, and I can see, as we all can, that there's "blues" everywhere in the world, and that as the world becomes smaller, it's probably both wise and inevitable to start to look at the meanings of the words rather than the grammatical specifics of the language itself. I'm probably too set in my ways by now to do TOO much in that regard, but a cat of Stefon Harris' generation isn't.

I still have this nagging doubt, though, that this isn't really what he's talking about. It's one thing to look towards tomorrow, but it's quite another thing to attempt to go from Point B to Point C without having first been at Point A. Point "a little less than B" doesn't count, not as much anyway. Harris is an American jazz musician, but was originally trained as an orchestral percussionist, and he continued that line of study, completing his bachelor's degree in classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. Certainly a good thing, and nothing that should discredit ANYBODY'S jazz "credentials", not at all.

However, it seems to me like if he's looking to lose, fuse, or refuse his blues, he should at least have them in the first place. America is SO blues-saturated at so many levels that you'd almost have to be a recluse not to have it in you in some form or fashion, even subliminally. Part of me says "take the music, any music, at face value, for what it is." "Another part of me says, "if it's lacking in some common root, some common experience, don't bother to make the effort." One keeps me open, the other grounded, and sometimes the attempt to balance is lost in either direction. When I hear an American jazz musician with an intensive classical background talk about how blues aren't THAT important to him/her, a red flag goes up, rightly or not. There's a place for academic objectivity/detatchment in any music, including jazz, but I don't know that that place should be at the table of honor. "America's Classical Music"? The phrase becomes more horrifying every day!

However, I went back and carefully reread the quote that Bev posted, and I think I know where he's coming from, and if it strikes me as vaguely indicitive of what seems to me to be the "broad but shallow" mindset that is seemingly everywhere today, that's no doubt my problem. Broad, narrow, deep, and shallow are probably pretty non-specific terms, so it's probably best for me to chill out, retreat to a bit of Lowell Fulsom and look into a burial plan. :D

Edited March 17, 2003 by JSngry

[Jad]

The best examples of blues players don't sound as good through the digital format.

Huh?

Sorry, it was late (or early, I can't tell anymore). On CD.

[Alexander]

There's NO blues in today's R&B or Rap songs. Much less pop material.

That's an excellent point. Hip-hop does *not* derive from the blues, even though there are some superficial connections (the tradition of boasting). What is known as "R&B" or "Urban" music today has little to do with the blues as well. The odd thing is that both hip-hip and R&B are based on sixties and seventies soul and funk, both of which had their origins in rhythm and blues and gospel. You have to wonder: How did the bles get lost in that particular translation? Every contemporary hip-hopper owes a debt to James Brown. James Brown definately had his roots in the blues. Where did the blues go over the years?

As for Stefon, I respect his opinion. He's a great musician, and his music epitomises contemporary jazz.

[John L]

Jim: I know what you mean. I love the blues so much that I am often torn between wanting younger musicians to immerse themselves more in the blues and the nagging thought that their most successful path for artistic development probably lies elsewhere.

Alexander: I find your statement a bit too strong. I don't agree that hip hop has only a superficial connection to the blues. In some hip hop, you hear quite a strong connection, in fact. "Arrested Development" is one example. Even some of Dr. Dre's mixes, like "No Diggity, No Doubt" for Blackstreet, have quite a strong blues feeling But I agree with the qualitative point that R&B appears to be in the process of dropping the "B." The connection between popular African American music and the blues is weakening progressively.

It is interesting that this phenomenon has also opened up the first really strong generation gap in African American popular music. In general, middle-aged African Americans still have a much stronger attachment to blues-based music.

Edited March 18, 2003 by John L

[Noj]

There's NO blues in today's R&B or Rap songs.  Much less pop material.

That's an excellent point. Hip-hop does *not* derive from the blues, even though there are some superficial connections (the tradition of boasting). What is known as "R&B" or "Urban" music today has little to do with the blues as well. The odd thing is that both hip-hip and R&B are based on sixties and seventies soul and funk, both of which had their origins in rhythm and blues and gospel. You have to wonder: How did the bles get lost in that particular translation? Every contemporary hip-hopper owes a debt to James Brown. James Brown definately had his roots in the blues. Where did the blues go over the years?

As for Stefon, I respect his opinion. He's a great musician, and his music epitomises contemporary jazz.

One could argue that hip-hop also incorporates the blues tradition of irony though on a verse to verse and even grammatical basis as opposed to building up a story to a final "I know her sister will."

Hip-hop incorporates battling, which appears to have a tradition in jazz as I have been reading about these tenor sax battles; music as sport. Were there ever blues battles? Crossroads?

Those are some real stretches, I know.

Hip hop is a patchwork, a collage. It is comic books and comedy, real stories and slang; it has an ongoing dialogue and its own set of aesthetics. It is rejected by the music establishment in the same way the painting establishment at first rejected collage. It is rejected for similar reasons--a sample is not created, it is a found object. Just like with collage, quality is determined by the amount of thought put into the selection of the found object. Just like collage, it is a tremendous departure from the root aesthetics from which it was derived.

[JSngry]

Where did the blues go over the years?

When you say "blues" to non-hip-hop-centric African-Americans in the Dallas area, odds are that their first thoughts will be of so-called "Deep Soul" like Johnny Taylor, Denise LaSalle, etc. In other words, the sound that keeps Malaco Records in business. These folks don't care too much about Muddy Waters, never mind Robert Johnson.

Anybody heard of Marvin Sease? He's considered "blues" by much of this same demographic, and so are a lot of the more recent Jewel/Paula acts like Vickie Baker, Peggy Scott, etc. There's still QUITE a market for this music in the deep South, and if some of us find it over-produced, cheaply manipulative, and under-emotional, it's worth remembering that we might not be the target market! :D

But the blues ain't gone anywhere. They've bought a new wardrobe and had a ton of cosmetic surgery, but they still live.

Another thing, about the universiality of emotions vs the specificity of the stylistic language. How many times has C&W been called "The White Man's Blues"? How many times has the similarities between blues and certain cantorial works been noted? Same for many Eastern European folk musics. Even though I, personally, can DEEPLY relate to the issue of language-specificity, I can also dig the issue of universiality, quite apart from geo-/chrono- considerations, and I think that that's what the world is coming to, whether we like it or not. The Marsalis/Crouch/Murray school of demanding literal exactness is ill-fated to me for precisely that reason. There ain't too may illiterate, itenerant sharecroppers or Creole musicians forced into ghetto life by Jim Crow laws left in the USA today. Not TOO many, anyway - you'd be surprised at what you can find if you look in the right places, though (Anybody heard Henry Qualls from Elmo, Texas?). But the psychological legacy lives on...

That's also the point that I'd like to hear Harris (and others of his generation and background) elaborate on - are they in fact "going beyond" the demands for stylistic specifity and embracing the universalist esthetic, or are they ignoring it altogether and attempting to create a music that denies what some of us see as inescapable facts of life, regardless of one's place (in many ways) in the world? If it's the former, well, then, cool. Go for it - that makes perfect sense to me. But if it's the latter, I still say that they're kidding themselves, and that they're setting themselve up for some REAL blues (sooner or) later on in life.

El tiempo lo dira, no?

Edited March 18, 2003 by JSngry

[Jazzmoose]

Excellent post, Jim! Naturally, when someone mentions the blues, I hear more than just Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. I mean hell, if Jimmie Rodgers, Bill Monroe and Hank Williams weren't singing blues, then I'm in the wrong spot in this conversation. The influence of blues is what makes American music American. And while Hip Hop and such may not have jack shit to do with the 12 bar blues format, to say they aren't influenced by the blues and the American music tradition leaves me puzzled...

[chris olivarez]

At least one rapper,Chuck D,apparently feels some connection to the blues as he performed at a recent year of the blues tribute.The connection between blues and hip hop is closer than most realize who follow hip hop.As for Stefon Harris he may not be wrong at this point and time but it sounds like a situation where he might change his mind somewhere down the road.

[RonF]

I agree. Good post Jim.

I'm not sure where Stefon is coming from in that quote. I heard him play one of his compositions - a tribute to Milt Jackson - at a festival a couple of years ago and it was as moving, full of feeling and bluesy as anything I've ever heard. Maybe he's affected by the blues more than he realizes.

[JSngry]

Maybe he's affected by the blues more than he realizes.

I hope that is true, in many different ways, on many different levels.

[Simon Weil]

Just to be clear, I didn't really like what Harris said - It sounded to me like clever self-justification. But, then, on the other hand, I also hear the dead hand of Wynton and his mates percolating through, albeit unknowingly, in the "if it doesn't have blues in it, it can't be Jazz".

Basically, what I was doing was reactive.

Simon Weil

[Sica]

Hey, this is a great thought-provoking discussion. But I just wanted to pop in real quick and speak up for us younguns! Sure, most kids arent like me, but my friend and I both love the blues and we're only 18. There IS a crowd of kids who listen when something honey-sweet and soulful comes out of the radio every once and awhile--there ARE kids like me who dont listen to MTV top 40, or watch J-Lo and her pathetic excuse for "music". It's just that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You know? Those who are out there being all disgruntled and angsty, are making the most noise and therefore getting the most attention. Meanwhile, I bet there are a LOT more people just DYING to get some good soulful music back on the radio. If I could only have more jazz and blues getting played around where young people are, I think there would be a surge of new interest. I mean, I think people are getting mighty sick of studio bands and cheap imitation music. I think that pretty soon, people are going to wise up and start demanding bands that can actually play Live and jam like John Lee Hooker and Marvin Gaye and all the old greats used to! I heard Ben Folds (alternative band for those who dont know) on Saturday Night Live the other day, and the lead singer couldnt even sing on key!! It was depressing!

So, that's my two cents, as a newby out here. I'm just bursting with pride that my brother is making music that's worthwhile, and that he has this forum where REAL musicians can come together. Maybe there will be a surge of good music again. We're starving for it.

Sica

[chris olivarez]

Sica- Welcome and it's good to know that younger people are into this music.

[Alexander]

I heard Ben Folds (alternative band for those who dont know) on Saturday Night Live the other day, and the lead singer couldnt even sing on key!! It was depressing!

I'm *not* a youngster, I love good music, and I actually like Ben Folds! His vocal style takes some getting used to, but he's very witty. He's kind of a Gen-Y Randy Newman...

Then again, I kind of like Eminem too...