Skip to main content

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) - Stare

Thus, as cultures develop and change, specific dances, folk art, songs, or history are sometimes lost to progress. Efforts to preserve cultural artifacts are often difficult, if not impossible. Information about blues singers’ lives is often unavailable or lost because many of the blues singers were mostly rambling sorts who didn’t leave behind much in the way of estates, memoirs, letters, or other personal papers or belongings. Fortunately, performances are a means to preserve specific songs, dances, and history... the emergence of a tourist market frequently facilitates the preservation of a cultural tradition which would otherwise perish. The performance of native dances in Hawaii, for example, allows that community to retain an important aesthetic component of its culture. In the same way, blues festivals preserve one of the Delta’s best known cultural artifacts.

Interviews with festival spectators seem to support the theme of preservation... Festival promoters create themes or slogans to stress the importance of preserving one of America’s oldest musical genres. For example, the theme for the 24th Annual Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival was Taking It Back to Where We Started. The front cover of the festival program underscores this preservation theme, sporting a drawing of a transient 1920s blues family in motion. In the foreground, a family of three is pictured walking down a dirt road. On the left, the father is dressed in overalls with a guitar strapped to his back. On the right, the mother is carrying a basket, presumably filled with food and water. In the middle, a young boy is holding the hands of both parents. In the background, many of the images found in Delta blues songs are present, a large green field, a barn, and a fast moving train. The festival theme is positioned underneath the drawing, thus accentuating the relationship between preservation and a Delta that no longer exists.
Source: *Blues Tourism in the Mississippi Delta: The Functions of Blues Festivals by Stephen A. King


Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) - Stare
  • Released on: Elogram album
  • Released in: April 2016
  • Genre: Electronic

"In 1968, Roy Wood, guitarist, vocalist and songwriter had an idea to form a new band that would use violins, cellos, string basses, horns and woodwinds to give their music a classical sound, allowing rock music to pick up in a new direction. The orchestral instruments would be the main focus, rather than the guitars."


*PDF Link to Blues Tourism in the Mississippi Delta: The Functions of Blues Festivals by Stephen A. King

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...
Post a Comment
Read more