Anomale Used Blog

The early recording industry promoted many local country singers... From the 1960s artists such as Peter Posa and Maria Dallas were played on the radio... The country touch, 1968 - 69, and That’s country, 1976 - 83, were popular TV shows, featuring musicians such as Patsy Riggir, Brendan Dugan and the Topp Twins. The Gold Guitar Awards for country musicians were held each year in Gore. In the 2000s some artists played alt country, combining country and alternative rock influences. Blues music has African American roots. New Zealand jazz musicians played blues instrumentals from at least the 1930s. By the mid 1960s acoustic blues was performed at folk clubs, and rhythm and blues styled pop bands played electric blues. Original blues songs were written locally from the late 1970s. Source: Story: Folk, country and blues music by Chris Bourke Jim Croce - New York’s Not My Home Composed by: Jim Croce Released in: 1972 Genre: Pop, Rock Jim Croce · New York’s Not My Home "Jim Croce was ...

We, as musicians, can identify that most, if not all, different styles of blues music continued the legacy of its origins in two ways.... with the ever present blues scale and with the form, commonly referred to as the 12 bar blues. However, Once Southern migrants introduced the blues to urban Northern cities, the music developed into distinctive regional styles, ranging from the jazz oriented Kansas City blues to the swing based West Coast blues. Chicago blues musicians. Even though these cities were introducing new populations to the origins of jazz and blues music, by the time these tunes were heard by audiences, they were drastically different from when they arrived. Another realization that I had when researching this topic was the fact that many blues composers would create their own melodies with the 12 bar blues form, but then would simply slap a location in the title, followed by blues, and call it good. New York City Blues, West End Blues, West Coast Blues, Statesboro Blues, ...

In the mid and late 1980s a more commercial, harder blues emerged that arguably crossed over a little with country music... Since the 1990s the blues as a core genre hasn’t changed massively, but then it never really did. What it has done, like so many other kinds of music, is melded and morphed with other kinds of music from around the world to create some really interesting takes on the old idea of the blues. Bands like Tinariwen for example who blend music from Mali with conventional blues to make something quite unlike either. Indeed in a kind of cyclical process, the blues has returned to many African countries and found new life there. Ultimately the blues is a kind of universal musical language, which shouldn’t be surprising given that it’s possible to trace many forms of modern popular music back to it if you look hard enough. There’s something reassuring and familiar about its pacing, structure and chord sequences. Whether it’s a hobo playing boxcar blues on a three stringed g...

Reflecting on traditional masculinity and the limitations on men’s emotional expression, I happened to hear a blues song on the radio. While men’s suffering is often silenced, in Blues music, you can hear it loud and clear. I was reminded how music connects us to people, history and to our own emotional experiences... Now that I’m old enough to comprehend the lyrics, and I can see why my dad listens to the blues. He's a sensitive guy who seemed to get hit by life's meanest problems, poverty, disability, drugs, you name it. Blues music is about the perpetually unlucky, drifting and lost. To empathize with my father, I once devised an elaborate fantasy about becoming a famous blues singer. That was until I realized that except for a few wonderful, fabulous women... most blues stories are about men and men's troubles. Listening to the lyrics of some of the best and saddest blues songs, you'll discover tales of heartbreak, loneliness, and loss. You can find similar themes i...

The achievement of material affluence became a goal for many US citizens as well as an object of satire and ridicule for the writers and intellectuals of the Lost Generation. Technological innovations like the telephone and radio irrevocably altered the social lives of Americans while transforming the entertainment industry. Suddenly, musicians could create phonograph recordings of their compositions. For jazz music, which was improvisational, the development of phonograph technology was transformative. Whereas previously, music lovers would actually have to attend a nightclub or concert venue to hear jazz, now they could listen on the radio or even purchase their favorite recordings for at home listening. After Congress passed the Volstead Act in 1919, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, many Americans sought refuge in speakeasies and other entertainment venues that hosted jazz bands. Harlem’s Cotton Club was one famous venue, where both whites and blacks gat...

Music making in the context of a blues jam is focused on musical and social interaction. A distinguishing characteristic of participatory music making is that there are no audience artist distinctions. The success of a particular performance is judged on the level of participation achieved rather than the quality of the musical outcomes. When people attend the jam, it is assumed that everyone present can and should participate in the performance. The inclusion of people with a wide variety of skills and interests during performances is important for encouraging participation. The differentiated musical tastes and abilities of the participants cultivates a unique dynamic, and some constraints, during performances. By the same token, musical interaction among novices and more skilled players provides scaffolding and ongoing musical challenges. In a participatory framework, having an ever expanding set of challenges is critical so as to avert boredom... the term andragogy to denote self d...

One of the most widespread of early musical forms among southern blacks was the spiritual. Neither black versions of white hymns nor transformations of songs from Africa, spirituals were a distinctly African American response to American conditions. They expressed the longing of slaves for spiritual and bodily freedom, for safety from harm and evil, and for relief from the hardships of slavery. Ragtime became the first nationally popular form of American music in 1899... But ragtime was not new in 1899. Documents reveal that it was being played as early as the 1870s. Black musicians spoke of ragging a tune when describing the use of syncopated rhythms, whether in classical compositions, popular songs, or genteel dance tunes. While black musicians could rag tunes on any instrument, the music we call ragtime developed when the piano replaced the violin as the favorite instrument for dance accompaniment. Source: The History of African American Music by Lori Brooks and Cynthia Young Mildre...

By the early 1950s, however, a number of independent radio stations, again, mostly White, owned, began popping up, including rhythm ‘n’ blues or Negro radio stations. Since it was not possible to segregate radio waves, Black music became accessible to everyone and White teenagers began taking an interest in it. Seeing this, the music industry recognised the potential of appropriating Black music and record companies started making sanitised covers of the music with White artists to distribute to White listeners. But as Maultsby explains, they did so while keeping the original artists in the background, unexposed and rhythm ‘n’ blues music, covered and performed by White artists, was now marketed to the mainstream White listener as rock ‘n’ roll. Record companies and White artists wanted the Black sounds and styles that appealed to the White audience but they did not want the Black artist. American record producer and founder of Sun Records Sam Phillips had been looking for a White man ...

In Cross Road Blues, Johnson sings an age old tale about a man’s choice between good and evil: I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knees/Asked the Lord above ‘Have mercy, now save poor Bob, if you please.’ There is a longstanding Delta legend of a bluesman who waited by the side of a deserted crossroads one night for Satan to come and tune his guitar. It’s a story made more relevant when coupled with Johnson’s frequent references to the Devil, including in the song Me And The Devil Blues, in which he sings, Me and the Devil, was walkin’ side by side. But Johnson certainly was not the only blues artist who sang about the Devil. While Johnson’s incredible improvements on the guitar, as detailed by Son House, were certainly miraculous, a 2008 story in Living Blues Magazine offers a more viable explanation. In that two year period, when Johnson first travelled the Delta, he met guitarist Ike Zimmerman, who took the young artist under his tutelage. According to blues scholar Bruce Conf...

It is acknowledged that most of the current fan base came to the genre by way of another artist that was popular in their youth. The British invasion gave new life to the blues in the 1960’s and those artists went as far as bringing the blues greats as opening acts with them when they went on tour. They revered them and they made sure their fans knew where they got their influence. Blues was cool, and the way it was interpreted by these young artists made it current and relevant. During the 1980 and 90’s... brought a whole new fanbase to the genre. I was having a conversation with Mick Kolassa, Vice President of the Blues Foundation and he used the Analogy of the On Ramp To the Blues. I thought this was a great way to look at how most blues fans were introduced to the genre. Whether it was the British Invasion... I can be pretty safe in saying that the majority of blues fans took some ON RAMP artist to get on the Blues. The artists don’t have to be pure, traditional blues. They just ha...

When the story of Blues is told to the world, the small town Holly Springs, Mississippi and the North Mississippi region as a whole, is often left out. But, those who know, know that this region is the Hill Country, and it is the home of a style of blues unlike others and continuing to shape popular music culture. Mississippi Hill Country Blues, like all forms of the blues, is deeply rooted in the cultural memories and experiences of those who first performed it. It builds upon the African and diasporic emphasis upon rhythm as not just beats and timing, but giving syncopation and polyrhythm both rhythmic elements, an elevated role in music much like that of the melody. The driving rhythm and aggressive groove, established primarily by sitting on one chord for long phrases, set Hill Country Blues apart from other forms like Delta Blues. Hill Country Blues is the soundscape of the region that includes several counties and towns around Holly Spring, Senatobia, and Como, Mississippi. The r...

The roots concept also has an ideological undertone. It implies that you can study at one culture with the light of history, while the other cultures are just roots to the former, a repository of stagnant, centuries old tradition. The concept insinuates that one continent is a provider of musical raw material to be processed somewhere else. Now to us in Africa, this is not acceptable. We are not roots to anyone. Why is there nobody talking about the jazz roots of South African urban music, for example? Here, people prefer to speak of influences. I have discussed some of these questions with our guitarist and singer... who sings many blues in our jazz band in Malawi. He would never claim to be the roots or the source of anything, but simply explain how he became interested in jazz through his uncle... and how he is trying to create his own music. Source: Africa and The Blues: An Interview with Gerhard Kubik by Banning Eyre Steve Winwood - We're All Looking Released on: Nine Lives al...

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 "...