2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 18: The Blues

Appendix 18

The Blues

Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call and response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

One of the first wholly American styles of music to gain traction and recognition across the world was blues music, developed in the American South by African slaves, many of whom were Muslim.  An estimated thirty percent (30%) of African slaves brought to America were Muslim. Blues music is heavily influenced by "field holler" songs, songs sung by the slaves as they worked in the fields. The Muslim slaves added their own flair to their field holler songs with the way they sang words that seem to quiver and shake being very reminiscent of the Adhan, or the Islamic call to prayer.

Blues, as a genre, is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation.  Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars. Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African Americans.

Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa.  The origins of the blues are also closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community, the spirituals. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later, the development of juke joints -- African American drinking, dancing and gambling establishments.  Blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century. The first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues and West Coast blues.  World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock developed, which blended blues styles with rock music. 

The term 'Blues' may have originated from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness. An early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase 'blue devils' may also have been derived from a British usage of the 1600s referring to the "intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal". As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils and came to mean a state of agitation or depression. By the 1800s, in the United States, the term "blues" was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase "blue law", which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday.

In 1827, it was in the sense of a sad state of mind that John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues". The phrase "the blues" was written by Charlotte Forten, then aged 25, in her diary on December 14, 1862. She was a free-born black woman from Pennsylvania who was working as a schoolteacher in South Carolina, instructing both slaves and freedmen, and wrote that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome and pitied herself. She overcame her depression and later noted a number of songs, such as "Poor Rosy", that were popular among the slaves. Although she admitted being unable to describe the manner of singing she heard, Forten wrote that the songs "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit", conditions that have inspired countless blues songs.

Though the use of the phrase in African American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, when Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues" became the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 17: Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Appendix 17

Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Black Rednecks and White Liberals is a collection of six essays by Thomas Sowell.  The collection, published in 2005, explores various aspects of race and culture, both in the United States and abroad. The first essay, the book's namesake, traces the origins of the "ghetto" African-American culture to the culture of Scotch-Irish Americans in the Antebellum South.  The second essay, "Are Jews Generic?", discusses middleman minorities.  The third essay, "The Real History of Slavery," discusses the timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom. The last three essays discuss the history of Germany, African American education, and a criticism of multiculturalism. 

First Essay: "Black Rednecks and White Liberals"

The title essay states Sowell's thesis about the origins of the "black ghetto" culture.

Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture originates in the dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which was prominent in the antebellum South. That culture came, in turn, from the "Cracker culture" of Welsh, Highland Scots, Ulster Scots, and border English or "North Britons," who emigrated from the more lawless border regions of Britain in the eighteenth century.

Second Essay: "Are Jews Generic?"

In the collection's second essay, Sowell explores the origins of anti-Semitism among those harboring jealousy toward Jews for their financial and entrepreneurial successes. According to Sowell, among other historically-persecuted "middlemen minorities" were Lebanese and Chinese immigrant merchants.  Sowell posits that the resentment against such "middlemen minorities" is from a perceived "lack of added value" that the middlemen provide, as such added value is not easily observable.

Third Essay: "The Real History of Slavery"

In the collection's third essay, Sowell reviews the history of slavery. Contrary to popular impression, which blames Western society and white people as the culprits, Sowell argues that slavery was a universal institution accepted and embraced by nearly all human societies. The world's trade in slaves and then slavery itself, was abolished by the British in the 19th century, against opposition in Africa and Asia, where it was considered normal. The economic effects of slavery are also misunderstood since slaves were often a luxury item whose upkeep was a drain on the rich, and the availability of cheap slave labor nowhere resulted in wealthy societies.

Fourth Essay: "Germans and History"

The fourth essay features Sowell's argument that Germany should not be defined solely by the 12-year (1933 to 1945) regime of Adolf Hitler. Sowell further argues that Hitler was highly inconsistent in his views on a unified Germany since he strenuously argued for the annexation of the German-dominated Sudetenland, but German-dominated portions of Italy such as Tyrol were ignored in preference for an alliance with Benito Mussolini. 

Fifth Essay: "Black Education: Achievements, Myths, and Tragedies"

The fifth essay features Sowell's discussion of the early days of Dunbar High School in Washington, DC, and its eventual deterioration from its place of prominence in early black education, which Sowell argues to be a direct consequence of the famed Brown v. Board of Education decision of the United States Supreme Court.  Sowell also argues that although W. E. B. Du Bois was more activist in his attempts to end Jim Crow laws and other forms of legal discrimination, Booker T. Washington, despite holding a more accommodating position, at times secretly funded and supported efforts to end Jim Crow laws.

Sixth Essay: "History Versus Visions"

The final essay features Sowell's criticism of the advantages that multiculturalism is supposed to confer to the society in which it is present.

2023: 1930 Chronology: Appendix 16: Samba

APPENDIX 16

SAMBA

Samba, is a name or prefix used for several rhythmic variants, such as samba urbano carioca (urban Carioca samba) and samba de roda (sometimes also called rural samba).  Samba is recognized as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Samba is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, having continued its development on the communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century.  Having its roots in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble, as well as other Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous folk traditions, such as the traditional Samba de Caboclo, Samba is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country's symbols.  Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "batuque-like circle dance", a dance style, and also to a "music genre". This process of establishing itself as a musical genre began in the 1910s and it had its inaugural landmark in the song "Pelo Telefone", launched in 1917.  Despite being identified by its creators, the public, and the Brazilian music industry as "samba", this pioneering style was much more connected from the rhythmic and instrumental point of view to the maxixe than to the samba itself.

The maxixe, occasionally known as the Brazilian tango, is a dance, with its accompanying music (often played as a subgenre of choro), that originated in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro in 1868, at about the same time as the tango was developing in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay. It is a dance developed from Afro-Brazilian dances (mainly the lundu) and from European dances (mainly the polka).

Choro (Portuguese for "cry" or "lament"), also popularly called chorinho ("little cry" or "little lament"), is an instrumental Brazilian popular music genre which originated in 19th century Rio de Janeiro. Despite its name, the music often has a fast and happy rhythm. It is characterized by virtuosity, improvisation and subtle modulations, and is full of syncopation and counterpoint. Choro is considered the first characteristically Brazilian genre of urban popular music. The serenaders who play choros are known as chorões.

Samba was modernly structured as a musical genre only in the late 1920s from the neighborhood of Estacio and soon extended to Oswaldo Cruz and other parts of Rio through its commuter rail. Today synonymous with the rhythm of samba, this new samba brought innovations in rhythm, melody and also in thematic aspects. Its rhythmic change based on a new percussive instrumental pattern resulted in a more "batucado" and syncopated style – as opposed to the inaugural "samba-maxixe" – notably characterized by a faster tempo, longer notes and a characterized cadence far beyond the simple ones palms used so far. Also the "Estácio paradigm" innovated in the formatting of samba as a song, with its musical organization in first and second parts in both melody and lyrics.  In this way, the sambistas of Estácio created, structured and redefined the urban Carioca samba as a genre in a modern and finished way.

In this process of establishment as an urban and modern musical expression, the Carioca samba had the decisive role in the creation of samba schools, responsible for defining and legitimizing definitively the aesthetic bases of rhythm, and radio broadcasting, which greatly contributed to the diffusion and popularization of the samba genre and the samba song singers. Thus, samba achieved major projection throughout Brazil and became one of the main symbols of Brazilian national identity.  Once criminalized and rejected for its Afro-Brazilian origins, and definitely working-class music in its mythic origins, the genre has also received support from members of Brazil's upper classes and the country's cultural elite.

At the same time that it established itself as the genesis of samba, the "Estácio paradigm" paved the way for its fragmentation into new sub-genres and styles of composition and interpretation throughout the 20th century. Mainly from the so-called "golden age" of Brazilian music, samba received abundant categorizations, some of which denote solid and well-accepted derivative strands – such as bossa nova, pagode, partido alto, samba de breque, samba-cancao, samba de enredo and samba de terreiro – while other nomenclatures were somewhat more imprecise – such as samba do barulho (literally "noise samba"), samba epistolar ("epistolary samba") ou samba fonético ("phonetic samba") – and some merely derogatory – such as sambalada, sambolero or sambão joia.

In 2005, UNESCO declared Samba de Roda part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and in 2007, the Brazilian National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage declared Carioca samba and three of its matrices – samba de terreiro, partido-alto and samba de enredo – as cultural heritage in Brazil. Also, in 2018, the prefecture of Salvador proclaimed Samba Junino, also known as Samba Duro, an urban variation of Samba to be another part of Brazil's Cultural Heritage.