Blues People: Negro Music in White America

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Taking as read the unique situation of alienation for American slaves, J/B shows how the weird, forced syncretism of African tropes with an accepted Christian milieu turned out some of the best goddamn music you'll ever hear.

A young star pushing the boundaries of modern improvised music, carrying the torch of vitality for improvised music as a premier alto saxophonist, composer, producer, and educator.the first major book of its kind by a black author — NPR So essential and, for many of today's music fans, so under-examined . It's not quite that straightforward, of course, which Baraka acknowledges, but I think his general thesis holds true, and it can be applied to pretty much all subsequent popular music in America. His sacred music became the spirituals, his work songs and dance music became the blues and primitive jazz, and his religion became a form of Afro-American Christianity.

The basic thrust of Blues People was to reclaim the blues as a way of looking at the world, not just a music: “each phase of the Negro’s music,” he wrote, “issued directly from the dictates of his social and psychological environment. Despite the fact that it was written a full 15 years before a rapper first stepped into the studio, Baraka seems to have anticipated it with his analysis of jazz. Baraka used the example of black minstrels in blackface imitating white minstrels imitating black people imitating the white ruling class. The music was the score, the actually expressed creative orchestration, reflection, of Afro-American life.Jones sees bop as a conscious gesture of separatism—ignoring the fact that the creators of the style were seeking, whatever their musical intentions—and they were the least political of men—a fresh form of entertainment which would allow them their fair share of the entertainment market, which had been dominated by whites during the swing era. He wrote a social history of African-Americans in the USA through the prism of music or---maybe on the principle of red and yellow tile floors (are they red with yellow designs or yellow with red designs ? And it was indeed, out of the tension between desire and ability that the techniques of jazz emerged. That does not mean that the documentary is without historical merit, but one should always be aware that everyone has an angle and even when they are trying to be objective, they inevitably shine the prism brightest on the corner of the room which they like the best. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music—through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz.