Skip to main content

Roberta Flack - Angelitos Negros

That link between writing music and the physical outcome of it is one of the problems I have with the modern blues musician. They make records. They are not recorded. It's not their fault, you understand, we live in a time where music as product is inescapable, so everyone channels their art into this product even if they don't mean to. Their art is made with format in mind. Therefore the modern version of the blues, the type you find under the Blues & Jazz section in HMV, is the performer communicating their version of the blues to other people from original idea through to CD in jewel case. They are artists. My over simplistic view of the blues is that it has a purpose, and that purpose is to sing away your troubles or sooth them somehow. That's where the roots of the music lie. In theory, if you do a perfect job you won't be playing the blues anymore, as you'll have cheered your ass up. When you're on a 10 album contract you're probably less likely to work towards that goal, if you know what I mean.

Now, I know, a real or natural recording is impossible. I'm not naïve enough to think that the early race recordings I'm talking about were made in wonderful, uncorrupted surroundings and that their strength is in their purity, or some such nonsense. Like the late blues scholar, guitar legend and fat drunken antagonist John Fahey pointed out in his thesis on the aforementioned Charley Patton, any recorded environment is unnatural, even that of the folklorist who went from town to town making natural field recordings of black musicians.

But the early, late 1920s/early 1930s, race records are the closest we can come to natural, to hearing someone articulate their feelings in a piece of music conceived with no mind to commerce, even if the act of recording that music is commercial to the core. Don't underestimate how powerful that is.


Roberta Flack - Angelitos Negros
  • Released in: 1969
  • Genre: Jazz, Funk / Soul
  • Vocals by: Roberta Flack

"Roberta Flack performs in the areas of jazz, soul, and folk, and began her professional career recording for Atlantic Records without much success, until one of her earliest recordings which won the 1974 Grammy for Record of the Year."

See previous Song of the Day 

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jackson Browne - Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Europe has a rich history of embracing blues and jazz music. In the early 20th century, American jazz musicians began touring Europe, introducing the continent to a new sound that was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Jazz became an instant hit among European audiences, and many European musicians began incorporating jazz elements into their music. Today, jazz festivals are held all over Europe, attracting thousands of fans from all over the world. In addition, many European cities have thriving blues scenes, with local bands and musicians performing regularly. Blues and jazz have also made their way to Asia, where they have found a devoted fan base. Japan, in particular, has a thriving jazz scene, with many Japanese musicians achieving international recognition. In addition, China has also seen a rise in the popularity of jazz music in recent years. Jazz festivals are now held in major Asian cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, attracting jazz lovers from all over ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me

The positivity and uplifting effect of the musical product is more likely to mean the musician is cheering themselves and everybody up rather than that the musician is telling us they are happy. This can largely be applied to attitudes to the performance of jazz and other Black cultures in the Western world. Whilst some of the aforementioned jazz pioneers, like Ella Fitzgerald, stayed clean, several had a history of drug abuse... which often resulted in premature deaths. Louis Armstrong, who used the infinitely safer drug marijuana throughout his 69 years... Whilst drug use was not uncommon among musicians in general, this pattern that many of the greats of jazz died young due to addictions speaks of a consistent level of turmoil, and alludes to their common experience of racism as a depressive factor in 20th Century America. Source: A Soft Reminder of Where Jazz Came From by Tom Platts Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me Released in: September 1955 Genre: Jazz Label: Savoy "...
Post a Comment
Read more