We Love the Blues, but Tell Us about Jazz

2018 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
American Music ◽  
Good Friend ◽  
African American Music ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Uk ◽  
New Orleans Jazz

Beginning in 1950, Broonzy would tour Europe and the United Kingdom for much of the 1950s while new generations in Britatin, Holland, France, Belgium, and more began discovering and rediscovering African American music from the pre-war period. Big Bill became one of the first African American blues artists to tour there, quickly becoming a fan favorite, especially in England. A subculture of continental Europeans from the period developed a lively community of jazz enthusiasts whose record collections and academic writings connected these post-war devotees across borders and languages. Central to their fascinations and curiosities was the juxtaposition between Bebop and traditional, New Orleans jazz. Many traditionalists loathed Bebop and through Big Bill, discovered the blues impact on but delineation from the music they loved so much. In the UK, the folk music revival spread, thanks in large part to Alan Lomax, and Lomax, by this point a good friend, found in Big Bill a treasure who could highlight his and the revival’s pretensions on black blues. In effect, Broonzy began navigating these audiences, essentially reinvigorating his career and building celebrity across the Atlantic.

I Come for to Sing

2018 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Greene
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Vernacular Music ◽  
Folk Music Revival ◽  
The Way

From 1930 to 1970, a second folk music revival took hold in the United States and Europe, determined to capture and preserve for posterity US and European vernacular music. Critical to this collection of folklorists, academics, political activists, and entrepreneurs was the history and impact of African American music on folklore and culture. Big Bill, quite familiar with the types of country and Delta blues the folk music revival craved stood happy to oblige. Soon, one of the most sophisticated and urbane performers of the age began performing alone accompanied by his guitar for folk audiences from New York to Chicago. Within this community, Broonzy found a culture and environment willing and able to support his transitioning career from black pop star to folk music darling. Along the way, he would meet more individuals who could aid in his career reinvention and he both accepted and rejected their expectations of him and his music.

scholarly journals Stanley Péan et l’interculturalité en diaspora

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Fianco
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
American Music ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Intercultural Exchange ◽  
Young Writer

In spite of being viewed as a young writer until the ’90s, Stanley Péan is now known as one of the most distinctive and established voices in the Haitian-Canadian literary scene. The pivotal moment in his career happened in 1996, when Zombi Blues was published. This novel displays a cultural space in which Haitian traditions and Canadian modernity converge and allow intercultural exchange to take place. Drawing from this perspective, the following article aims to analyse how Péan creates a fictional universe through the blending of cultural elements. Using the collection of myths and beliefs that permeate the Haitian and African cultural panorama as a reference point, we will investigate the ways in which Péan adapted and transposed these traditions to the Haitian diasporic context. Particular attention will be given to the use of jazz and African American music, as well as to the reinterpretation of mythological creatures such as the zombie and the marasa twins. Hence, the article tries to show how Péan’s cultural crossroad contributes to the foundation of a new literary interpretation of Haitianity.

Black Music USA: From African to African American Music

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Robert Sacré
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
Black Music ◽  
Deep South ◽  
African American Music ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primitive Forms ◽  
Work Songs

This chapter discusses the history of African American Music. Many of the roots of black American music lie in Africa more than four hundred years ago at the start of the slave trade. It is essential to realize that the importance given to music and dance in Africa was reflected among black people in America in the songs they sang, in their dancing, and at their folk gatherings. As such, every aspect of jazz, blues, and gospel music is African to some degree. Work songs and the related prison songs are precursors of the blues. One can assume that primitive forms of pre-blues appeared around 1885, mostly in the Deep South and predominantly in the state of Mississippi. However, it was several more years before the famous AAB twelve-bar structure appeared, and when it did, one of its leading practitioners was Charley Patton.

The Fiery Debate

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-112
Author(s):  
Douglas W. Shadle
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
American Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Antonin Dvorak ◽  
Musical Identity ◽  
African American Music ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Vernacular Music

About eight months after Antonín Dvořák became director of Jeannette Thurber’s National Conservatory of Music in New York, he weighed in publicly on the question of American musical identity and argued that African American vernacular music (or “negro melodies”) should become the foundation of a national classical style. The New York Herald, which first printed his remarks, stoked a months-long debate that exposed deep-seated anti-Black racism throughout the country’s classical music industry as many musicians rejected the Bohemian’s suggestions outright. Dvořák remained supportive of African American music and musicians but did not fully understand the political implications of his positions.

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