Nina Simone - Backlash Blues

The personalized, solo elements of the blues may indicate a decisive move into the twentieth century American consciousness, but the musical style of the blues indicates a holding on to the old roots at the very time when the dispersion of Negroes throughout the country and the rise of the radio and the phonograph could have spelled the demise of a distinctive Afro American musical style. While it is undoubtedly true that work songs and field hollers were close to the West African musical archetype, so much of which had survived the centuries of slavery, blues with its emphasis upon improvisation, its retention to call and response pattern, its polyrhythmic effects, and its methods of vocal production which included slides, slurs, vocal leaps, and the use of falsetto, was a definite assertion of central elements of the traditional communal musical style.

The fact that the blues remained wholly traditional, yet forward looking at the same time is reflective of the collective African American identity.

The downhome blues may have appeared old fashioned to the older generation, but the unfamiliar sense of homesickness drew the new arrivals to the bluesman because, as Titon suggests, the familiarity of the southern music steadied them. The sound of strings moaning under the pressure of a bottleneck and the locomotive rhythm of the harp invoked an image of the South tinted with nostalgia. A number of popular blues tunes during this period revolved around returning to the South. I Can’t Be Satisfied, his 1948 version of I Be’s Troubled, resolves to return to the South, the oppressive setting that drove him and thousands of other African Americans to the North.

Source: From the Delta to Chicago: Muddy Waters’ Downhome Blues and the Shaping of African American Urban Identity in Post World War II Chicago by Jennifer Goven

Nina Simone - Backlash Blues

• Released in: 1967
• Genre: Jazz, Soul, Blues
• Recorded in: December 19, 1966 - August 26, 1969

"Nina Simone's vocal career began in 1954 in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, nightclub when the club owner threatened to fire her unless she sang too. In the 60s, she added protest songs and performed at civil rights demonstrations. Her popularity grew as she added folk and gospel selections to her repertoire."