Blues And Jazz Brief History

 

Nowadays there is a great a variety of music so everybody can choose anything he likes. Of course, tastes are different as well as genres of music. Somebody may like rock music somebody jazz or blues. Want to know more about music or any other things? Join reliable online classes and make sure that studying can be easy. We can make a parallel between music and people. As well as person, music can be of different mood and origin. Different nations make music different from what it was before. As well as nations, some music genres mix up and as a result, new genre appears.

Nowadays we can enumerate some different kinds of jazz and blues, however there was a time when everything just began with so - called jazz epoch as well as there were great times of blues. So let’s go into a tour in times when jazz and blues just started their existence. If you want to be successful in hiking tour, you should know some features: https://onlineclassmentor.com/blog/how-to-make-your-hiking-tour-successful. Firstly, we will look at jazz and how and when and where it was born, what preceded to it and what place it has nowadays. Then we will do the same with blues. We will also point out some outstanding musicians in each style, so be ready to know some new names and some great music.

Jazz – relative of blues or not?

Nowadays difference between jazz and blues can be heard; however, they still have something similar. So, maybe jazz and blues were relatives many years ago? The answer is yes, because slaves brought both jazz and blues in 18th century into Europe and USA. Although all those slaves were from different places, they were later called Afro-American people.

Afro-American population had specific kind of music with difficult rhythms and with texts sang by low voices. This new tendency and flow of music mixed with some European music and as a result appeared something as prototype of modern jazz. However, everything has difference no matter if we are talking about difference between ATP and WTA or between jazz and blues. Moreover, jazz had some features different from blues. We will look at them later.

City where jazz was born

We mentioned above that some parallels could be made between music and person. As well as person, jazz music also has definite place of birth. This was New Orleans. This kind of jazz also called traditional and was performed from 1900s till 1920s. As city situated in the delta of the Mississippi River and was important seaport it united great amount of nations and Afro-American people didn’t feel as much dependence as in other cities. After ending of the civil war in the USA many military orchestras disbanded and as a result great amount of musical instruments appeared on the fairs and prices of them were quite low. That’s why black people bought these instruments and played them. Read about instruments that are worth playing: https://onlineclassmentor.com/blog/top-15-worth-playing-musical-instruments.

Later these people united into music bands and performed first music – mostly folk music and country. Appearance of bands that consisted of only winds and drums was first stage in development of jazz music.

First jazz bands took many from previous musicians; however, they also changed some things. First of all they changed rhythm: instead of marching one they chose usual rhythm for four counts. However if in usual music we can count it as one two three four, with strengthening one and three, in jazz music second and fourth positions were strengthened.

By the end of 19th century this music became quite popular and wide spread, there were many bands in different cities, however New Orleans rested one of the cradles of jazz. With opening of new region of fun - Storyville ways of folk and jazz were completely divided: many jazz bands began to play there, mostly in theaters and at the streets. So from this period we can already see how jazz received status of “intelligent music” which it still has in modern world.

Jazz as popular music

Later as many musicians who played jazz travelled through the country to some other cities where jazz was quite popular, it gradually became popular in the whole country.

Of course this is not the whole story of jazz but exactly those actions mentioned above lead to appearance of more and more jazz bands, later, jazz music was played in many places: in clubs, pubs and even on the steamships. If you want to see some moments of jazz and in you may also look movie called “Back to the Future”. In one of its parts, you will be able to see jazz orchestra and listen to their song.

Later there were many other stages of jazz development such as appearance of big bands where there were a lot of instruments and musicians. We can also say that although New Orleans was the city where jazz began its existence there were some flows of it especially in Chicago, where it became extremely popular and developed. Talking about musicians, we should mention Louis Armstrong, of course. He was a talented musician and he started the tendency of migration to Chicago, New York and some other cities to create new jazz there. Read about Chicago Cubs interesting facts to be sure that this city is full of talents in different areas.

Kansas City also became popular city of jazz in 1930s and there jazz was mixed with some elements of blues. Now it’s time to talk about blues and get acquainted with its origin and conditions of its development. Of course, theme of jazz can’t be closed and can’t be covered by information above, because jazz after the actions we have described underwent long way of development, when many new mixtures and style appeared. However, we wanted to pay attention exactly on birth of this style of music and some its features. So now, it’s time to talk about blues.

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Home of blues and its founders

History of blues is not as complicated as those of jazz. As well as jazz blues was created by Afro-American slaves or workers. We should remember that their situation was quite serious: they worked at the worst places and did the hardest job. They didn’t receive money at all or received just small amount of them.

As one person said, “Blues is when a good man feels bad”. It is true, because many of workers had bad mood all the time and were extremely bored by hard job. That’s why blues in its first origin is song about hard job and life of black man, written by this black man. First blues or at least backgrounds of it are songs which Afro-American men and women sang while working.

Place where blues was born is as well as jazz, the delta of the Mississippi River. Blues unlike jazz was played mostly by one person. As there are doubts about how typical American looks like there are no doubts about image of typical bluesman. As usual, typical bluesman of those times works somewhere in and conditions, for example picked cotton. Then he escaped from this job having only guitar with him. Bluesman is a person who travelled to different cities in order to find better life and who wrote his songs during such travelling. Typical instruments for blues musicians were guitar, harmonica and low, usually raspy voice, of course.

As usual, guitar was scratched and battered, but not because bluesmen didn’t take care of instrument – they carried guitar without any case as usual it was just slung over the shoulder. Guitar of bluesman travelled with him and was with him everywhere so that if he got some thoughts he could always take it and wrote new song. Our service allows you to take our help with passing exam good. Feel free to do it.

In 1920s appeared first blues bands and blues began to be not as it was before. It turned into something like show and popular trend. Many people felt that they could earn money both on blues music and musicians who played it. So they became popular and many recording studios want to see these blues musicians writing some songs.

However unlike jazz blues was music of black people and the situation was so for many years. There existed pubs for black people where blues was played. Many black people though that white population can’t play blues and it is really so. Afro-American people have all right to say that blues is their music, as it describes their hard life and conditions in which they were. Their situation was harder that Austerity. You may get to know what austerity is and compare this policy with policy towards Afro-American people.

This is illustrated brightly in movie “Crossroads”. This is a story about one of the founders and brightest representatives of blues – Robert Johnson. He died in the age of 27 but left priceless records of his songs. Many musicians after him player these songs as a tribute to musician. There is a legend that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in order to became good in blues. This legend is quite popular and shown in the movie mentioned above.

At this stage, blues didn’t stop its development of course and gradually, new genre rhythm and blues and other ones appeared. Among popular and relatively modern bands and musicians, who played in this style Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan can be named. They are the brightest representatives of modern blues.

Nowadays we can observe, with pleasure, that blues is popular and played by many people in the world. Many black people still perform blues and nowadays such things as blues jams became more and more popular and normal. Sometimes some blues singers travel through different countries and sing blues with local blues bands. So we can see that blues is as popular as other genres of music. Want to know more about our online classes? You can do it, because we have interesting offers and good prices.

To sum up we can say that both these genres are worth listening and history gave us a lot of talented blues and jazz musicians. Even if you don’t like classical jazz or blues, you should try to listen to modern bands. It is quite popular nowadays to remake some well-known songs into a jazz style and play them. So don’t hesitate and go into a trip to the magic and long way of jazz and blues: listen to some music, watch films or maybe even try to learn how to play harmonica, for example. Have a great feelings and emotions and be in jazz and blues!

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