Re: Blues & Jazz (and punk!)

[zodiac <zodiac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou writes:

>The deep Blues as a living art form began to die out when the rural
>conditions of life in places like Mississippi, which were deeply
>oppressive, began to become transformed.
>
>Sharecroppers became urban factory workers and the music began
>to change to reflect new concerns and influences. Robert Johnson evolved
>into Muddy Waters. However, in the 1960s Chicago-styled blues began to
>lose its connections to the urban working-class as urban contemporary
>sounds like Aretha Franklin and Al Green became more popular. Today this
>type of music descended from R&B is more like muzak.

I agree on the direct lineage, yes, the tracing of a thing by its overt
form. That was it's sad end.

However, "blues" transformed into something else all together. It erupted
>from black slaves, mixing West African sounds with instruments at hand.
And it did that again when the "living sound" was carried into a
electric-industrial setting -- like with Master Wolf. Here it split into
two paths, one obvious, the other less so.

One path was the traditional set of blues artists who honk around town in
spaghetti houses and rural watering holes playing standards. Zzzz. The real
electric blues tradition was absorbed into the nervous systems of various
English working class kids in the early 1960s, and they kept the tradition
alive. And then that beast was injected into North America and transformed
into metal and thrash and industrial and punk, which continues to
percolate just under the music industry scene.

BTW -- As to my earlier comments about jazz... I hope I didn't offend
anyone. I received one kinda defensive piece of email about jazz. Please
be loose about at least this topic, huh? Please?

I imagine the sax jazz stuff is probably about the same as what Hendrix
did to rock/blues. Some people swear to me Hendrix makes them climb the
walls. I don't hear it. I love Hendrix. Sax, on the other hand, usually
makes me climb the walls. You can purge me after the revolution.

>The most interesting music being made today is in Africa and Latin America
>where popular artists continue to explore and improvise on the dance
>style of the working-class: Zairean soukous, Brazilian samba, Cuban rumba,
>etc. The minute popular music starts to lose this connection, it starts to
>lose its vitality.

Rumba??

Err ... Gimme crypto-feminist Kurt Cobain anyday.

Ken.


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