Music is a reflection of the soul. When we are sad, we turn on some ballad and it seems that music empathizes and supports us, makes it possible to throw out all our emotions and make the right decision. Music relieves loneliness and adds confidence. It fills us with energy and sets the rhythm of life. Music is always with us. Each event is reflected in the music: with music, people confess their love and celebrate holidays. Heartfelt music is folk. It transmits all joy and tears of people. We understand everything it wants to tell us, regardless of age and nationality of artists. Fields of music, in which there are very accurately and expressively transmitted pain, sorrow and joy of African people, are blues and jazz.
Jazz is a dance music. It is fun, it inspires, adds cheerfulness and good humor. The emergence of jazz was due to Christopher Columbus. It was he, opening the Americas, who influenced the importation of black slaves there, with whom spread the African rhythms. The name "blues" is derived from the word “blue”, which means grief, sadness, melancholy (Johnson 12). This trend in music - blues - comparable to romances, as it is also a sad song that tells of the various vicissitudes of life. Blues songs are simple, colorful and full of emotions. They tell us about unrequited love, injustice in respect to black people, captives and human dignity, difficulties of exhausting labor, longing for homeland and of poverty.
Jazz is characterized by:
- complex rhythmic structure,
- improvisation, more common at the beginning of the work,
- extract specific sound on the instrument,
- emotional fulfillment.
Blues differs by:
- length
- emotional text
- availability dialogue between performer and instrument
Blues is the genre of music that emerged at the intersection of the nineteenth and the twentieth century. Birthplace of the blues are the United States (Spry 273). The basis of blues rhythm involves lyrical melodies that came from the African countries. The term blues first became known in 1895. The very origin of the term of an English blues is the phrase “blue devils”, which means longing or depression, or sadness.
In blues melodies are woven together in some amazing musical directions, which together are successfully intertwined, they are very popular among African Americans living on the Mississippi River in the cotton belt (Jackson 56). The base of tunes became the most simple ritual songs that were included in certain religious cults, they also came from Africa. After some time, the blues will be considered almost the most important in the 20th century heritage of African-American culture, which greatly influenced the world of music life.
Referring to the sources, they need to be searched for in the period of the slave system. Just at the time Christopher Columbus discovered a new continent, which eventually began to import African labor. Africans are true ancestors of the present-day African Americans, which in most cases were servants or worked hard in agriculture and were hired servants; they were working exclusively in the homes of wealthy Americans whites. Blacks were often harassed and even humiliated, which lasted until the abolition of the slavery period that occurred in 1863.
Initially, the songs were performed by percussion instruments, and vocals were filled with vocal religious load. The first semi-professional performers of blues were simply vagabonds who roamed the country in search of work (Schneider 8). Most often, they were employed on heavy poorly paid jobs. At their performances, they earned little, often they could be met at a party, where for playing and singing they were given food and drink.
First African-American blues singer is William Handy, who wrote “The Memphis Blues”. Thanks to him, the blues became a separate musical genre. In its classic sense and the usual form, blues was formed only in the twenties of the twentieth century. While the music that was played earlier in the doorways of African-American, came to the big stage. The most outstanding representatives of the blues can be called Mamie and Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
The story of jazz is not so clear. There are three theories of this musical direction. In one version, jazz appeared in the fusion of religious chants of African Americans, African folk, blues and songs of wandering street musicians (Hobson 18). The second view is related to the circulation of blacks in the Christian faith. Among the African nation, there is emerging a new style - sacred music, characterized by strong expression. They formed the basis of jazz. By the third version, jazz is based on original African culture that has managed to keep the United States, as the locals ignored blacks, and they were forced to stay independent.
Blues is generally performed using piano, guitar, banjo. First black slaves sang a sad song without accompaniment, and then began to play along what they could get. Jazz was played mainly by small ensembles, which always involved piano, wind instruments, drums, bass. Among the wind instruments, there are primarily used saxophone, trombone and trumpet.
Additional differences between jazz and blues are as follows:
- Blues is a precursor of jazz and may be part of jazz composition.
- Blues is more melodic, while jazz - entertainment, dance music.
- Jazz includes many improvisations.
- Blues is a dialogue of vocalist and musician.
- Blues is often played on guitar or banjo, jazz – on typical wind instruments.
Works Cited
Hobson, Vic. Creating Jazz Counterpoint: New Orleans, Barbershop Harmony, and the Blues. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2014.
Jackson, Travis A. Blowin’the Blues Away: Performance and Meaning on the New York Jazz Scene. Vol. 16. Univ of California Press, 2012.
Johnson, Bruce. "Deportation blues: Black jazz and white Australia in the 1920s." IASPM: Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 1.1 (2011): 1-13.
Schneider, Ricky. MODERN HARMONY STEP BY STEP: Chords, scales, improvisation and composition in modern music: Jazz, Blues, Rock, Funk, Pop and more. Rodolfo Schneider, 2014.
Spry, Tami. "Call it swing: A jazz blues autoethnography." Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies 10.4 (2010): 271-282.
