African American Music - Research Paper Example

African American Music Jazz and Blues are both American music styles born in the South and largely invented and usedby African Americans. Their roots become so tangled together making it hard to distinguish one form from the other. Their musical forms are due to the combination of musical techniques with traditional African rhythms together with the European folk and classical music. Both Jazz and Blues have distinct differences, both musically and culturally. Even though, some performers cross over from one genre to the other, both blue and jazz performers are different from each other in one way or the other (Kallie 11).

Both forms of music got welcomed in the larger society in similar methods and reasons. Both genres of music became considered dangerous and commonly associated with the teenagers’ rebellion. This was due to the nontraditional sounds of both together with their association with the black community, which gets denigrated and looked down upon during the era. Both genres later came to become popular and unique representatives of the American culture. Both genres of music also comprise of fusions of various common elements.

They both introduced elements of rhythm and improvisation in the American music. A number of jazz musicians, like Duke Ellington, borrowed a lot of elements from blues and introduced them in their own versions of jazz (Quilty 13). With their immense popularity, both genres spread in different ways. Jazz had a more interracial component and, therefore, the artists from the South easily translated for the audiences in the North. The immense popularity of Dixieland jazz boomed Chicago as the style travelled northward.

The drop of record prices and rise in radio facilitated the movement of jazz. In contrast, blues spread in a parochial way. Blue did not have the national popularity like jazz, but it had a number of supporters in cities like Chicago and Texas. Blues were majorly an urban style till the 1950’s when it got electrified, and white session players got added in the mix (Quilty 32). Jazz was primarily an instrumental style while blues were vocal in the beginning. Jazz contains heavy syncopation, which became derived from ragtime music.

Blues became characterized by a 1, 4 and 5 chord sequence that had a 12 bar motif. It also gets defined by repeating verses that contain 3 lined rhymes. The strong and deep emotional tone of the blues became found in the work and spiritual songs sung by the slaves (African Americans) early in the 1800’s. It first began with the call and response vocal style before finding harmonic and instrumental design in the years after the invention. The call and response format became derived from the West African music.

Lyrics of blue music’s are conversational telling a story with repeated phrases. They describe the brutality of life that was never found in other forms of music at the time. In contemporary blues, happier subjects like romance get explored (Lincoln 42). The melodies in blues have a unique sound with blue notes. These notes get played using a lower tone, mostly third, fifth or the seventh note. This use of blue notes has led to the introduction of blues scale. The blues artists add their flavors to each song.

As the chord progression remains steady and normal melody becomes followed, licks get introduced in the melody to fit in the mood allowing the musician to play what he desires and feel (Palmer 45). Jazz is mostly improvisational. The song gets a loose framework, allowing each instrument wander and return before introducing it back to the basic frame of the music. The progressions of the chord get loser with the progressive chords and a variety of passing tones occupying the place of the more used blues sound.

Jazz music has a number of many subgenres like swing, Dixieland and hot jazz. A number of jazz fusions comprise of other musical styles, like rock or Latin with the number of traditional forms of jazz music. Jazz’s nature of improvisation blurs its line, making it difficult to define music as a form of jazz. Its singing borrows the instrumentation as the scat singing. This is a mainstay of the vocals (Ward 20). In conclusion, both blues and jazz are types of music that embrace and use the emotion of music.

Both jazz and blues are forms of music created of emotion and sang from the heart with the theory of the music applied after the fact. Works Cited Lincoln, Peter. The Making of Jazz. Chicago: Dell Publishing Co, 2007. Palmer, Robert. Deep Rhythm and Blues. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Quilty, Susan. "Comparing jazz and blues music." The Entertainment Journal (2007): 13- 14. Szczepanski, Kallie. "Difference between Blues and Jazz." The Entertainment Journal (2003): 10-12. Ward, Geoffrey C. Jazz.

New York: John & Wiley, 2000.