>>> <lbo-talk-request at lbo-talk.org> 11/19/07 9:52 PM >>>
From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
I guess when white folk took up fiddles and banjos to play English-Irish-Scots jigs, reels, and ballads, black folk just shut their ears.
Which is nonsense, musicologists who trace influence have observed that lots of blues songs are basically taken over from the Child Ballads, something recognized by Harry Smith, whose Anthology of American Folk Music discriminately mixes blues, gospel, zydeco, folk, country -- to show that it is a seamless whole.
Well, yeah. What an extraordinary debate. Haven't you people settled the 'national question' there yet? Something on the music part that has not been observed here so far is that the blues resembles African music hardly at all. I remember reading one of those blind jukebox articles some years ago and someone played a Lightnin' Hopkins (TX's finest in my opinion) track to Jack Bruce. After having correctly identified the artist he went on to say something like, "I can imagine this music being played all over Africa in the old days". Dead wrong. There is no African music that sounds vaguely like that, with the partial exception of Ali Farka Toure, who was influenced by the blues anyway. Also blues is even less popular amongst Africans than it is today amongst black Americans. The fact is that it is American music not African; it is a product of the American cultural melting pot. Neither the harmonies (the characteristically flattened thirds, fifths and sevenths) nor the rhythms (e.g. the shuffle) of blues are at all common in African music. In South Africa it is only whites among whom blues is popular; black South Africans regard it with utter lack of interest, if not contempt. Tahir -------------- next part -------------- All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/public/portal_services/disclaimer.htm