Book report on Blues People-Negor Music in White America by LeRoi Jones - Essay Example

Book report on Blues People-Negor Music in White America by LeRoi Jones Published in 1963 by Amiri Baraka as LeRoi Jones, Blues People is a seminal study of Afro-American music and culture and it considers the possibility that the history of black American can be traced through the evolution of their music. Black music had a profound impact on the American music (Floyd, 1996). LeRoi argues that“Negro music and melody” appealed to and greatly influenced the new America by bridging the gap between American culture and African-American culture while helping to spread values and culture. Chapter 4, The Afro-Christian Music and Religion, highlights that the Negro people adopted Christianity before the efforts of missionaries and evangelists and it was particularly attractive to the Negroes as a point of commonality between the white and black men (Leroi, 1963). The early Christian churches greatly valued music, particularly the call-and-response songs, which were typical of the African services, as an expression of pent up emotions; some music and the playing of the banjos and violins were banished from the church by African church leaders who considered them secular. The church started disintegrating shortly after emancipation as many Negro leaders fancied the freedom outside the church and began listening to the sort of music that had been banned in the church, thus secular music became progressively prevalent. The fifth chapter, Slave and Post-Slave discusses the cultural changes that swept across the Negro American’s community through their emancipation process as well as the emergence and development of blues. The Negroes had no place in the post-slave white society and had to establish their own space both physically and psychologically, by reconstructing their self-identities and social structure (Leroi, 1963). In the succeeding period immediately after emancipation, songs that emerged from the suppression conditions of slavery inspired the creation of blues, which entailed shouts and yells, spirituals among other distinctive elements. The sixth chapter, Primitive Blues and Primitive Jazz, traces the development of blues and jazz as its instrumental progression, as the Negroes musical culture not only through the slave period, but also through post-slave period. Following emancipation, the Negroes started encountering new sociocultural challenges that they were not accustomed to in their slavery era, which were consequently reflected in the music they sang (Leroi, 1963). Primitive blues were greatly influenced by instruments such as the guitar and the appropriation of the same instruments and their divergent use by blacks with elements such as rifts led to the emergence of jazz, with a distinctive blues or Negro sound (Lock & Murray, 2009). European musical instruments, particularly brass instruments and marching band music, greatly influenced blues in New Orleans; Creoles added a more primitive jass sound to their music, giving blues and jazz a more distinctive sound. The seventh chapter, classic blues, chronicles the popularity of classic blues and ragtime in America following the transformation of traditional blues to classic, which gave rise to the new entertainment platform for African-American art. Unlike traditional blues, which had no explicit rules, classic blues had a structure and became very famous following the shift in minstrel shows and circuses, which recognized the Negro as part of the American popular culture. Classic blues incorporated more dancing than traditional blues and had more opportunities for the African Americans to incorporate more instruments but the piano was among the last instruments to be incorporated with its more free spirited melody compared to other instruments. The eighth chapter, The City, documents the human movement of the Negroes from the south to the city in search of jobs and freedom, and a chance to begin again, which made jazz and classical blues possible. The ‘jazz age’ or ‘age of recorded blues’ led to the signing of many African-American musicians into recording deals that saw blues transform from a work sound to a nationwide phenomenon. Music in New York differed greatly from that in Chicago, Texas and New Orleans; musicians in the east had a ragtime style and were not original but soon they adopted the real blues. The ninth chapter, Enter the Middle Class, highlights the cause and effects of the emergence of a growing black middle class in the north; the black middle class society in the north attempted to disown their culture to fit in the white society, thereby enforcing both physical and mental divisions among the Negroes (Baraka, Amiri1999). In their desperate attempt to fit into the white societies, the black middle class conformed to the white culture around them by attempting to change their music and media such as paintings, drama and literature. The tenth chapter, Swing—from Verb to Noun, highlights the importance of the Negro artist to be an authentic black man rather than an ordinary nigger, and the emergence of the new nigger as the country became more liberal as the Negroes became the predominant urban population in the north. LeRoiplayed a great role in the Negro Renaissance era (Chandler, 2014), as expressed in his sardonic critique that Afro-American music only became recognized as an American expression when the whites could play it and focuses on the rise of the solo jazz artist and the influence of one particular artist, Armstrong, on the tendencies and styles of jazz bands. Chapter eleven, The Blues continuum, details the rise of the large jazz bands, which replaced the traditional blues, as the white middle class culture adopted a taste for the new big band music that carried the attitude and authenticity of the modified older black music. Overall, this classic work documents the effects of the jazz and blues music in the American culture on the American socioeconomic and musical dimensions and chronicles all the types of music in America going back to the slavery period up until the 1960s. References Leroi, J. (1963). Blues People: Negro Music in White America. NY: William Morrow & Company Inc. Floyd, S.A. (1996). The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States. NY: Oxford University Press. Lock, G., & Murray D. (2009). Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chandler, D.L. (2014). Amiri Baraka & His Impact On Black America. Retrieved from: http://newsone.com/2831540/amiri-baraka-father-black-arts-movement/ Read More