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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
new online essay on the blues
new online essay on the blues
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kudzurunner
6412 posts
Jan 24, 2018
11:19 AM
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There's a bit of harmonica content in the following essay, which was published online this morning in STUDY THE SOUTH, a journal published at my academic home, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
The essay is part of a new book project, something that's probably 2/3 complete. I've discovered that the way professors write isn't everybody's cup of tea. (Downbeat is about to publish a largely unfavorable review of BEYOND THE CROSSROADS by a guy who clearly doesn't understand the book.) The new project, BLUES TALK, is oriented towards non-scholarly readers who are nevertheless interested in thinking seriously about the blues.
Here's the essay:
Blues Expressiveness and the Blues Ethos
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Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil and the Blues Tradition
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 24, 2018 11:19 AM
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Honkin On Bobo
1500 posts
Jan 25, 2018
5:47 AM
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Excellent, excellent essay. Particularly the section on the blues ethos. It struck a chord deep within me. Kudos.
HOB
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harpoon_man
229 posts
Jan 25, 2018
3:27 PM
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Nice essay, Adam! The blues ethos you describe is something a lot of people don't understand, but you hit the nail on the head.
A lot of people think something like "blues music is just sad music about feeling sad," but that really misses the point - the bluesman may be feeling sad, but he's not just going to lie down and die. Instead, he is singing about the sad thing and playing music about it. There's a lot of optimism in that, and an attitude that always perseveres.
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harpoon_man
230 posts
Jan 26, 2018
12:37 PM
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Also, the discussion of "signifying" was helpful as well. I'm no stranger to the symbolic imagery in many blues songs, but I never quite understood the definition of "signifying" until I read this.
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tf10music
291 posts
Jan 26, 2018
1:30 PM
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You had me sold even before you busted out the Orlando Patterson reference!
A note about AAB, inspired by your article:
AAB structurally mirrors syllogism (the philosophical device), a logical process whose most basic form possesses 3 steps -- two conditions and a conclusion.
A simple example (probably the one on Wikipedia, to be honest):
A) All men are mortal
B) Socrates is a man
C) Socrates is mortal
In AAB, however, the two conditions are the same, and their repetition, as you say, represents an intensification. For me, this moment of intensification (on the IV) functions as a tipping point where we can see the condition overreaching its boundaries and forcing the subject to make a decision. That decision occurs in the final line of the stanza (i.e. the "B" of "AAB"). Here's an example:
Baby please don't go
Baby please don't go
Baby please don't go down to New Orleans -- you know I love you so.
The condition, here, is that the woman is leaving (so that the speaker is asking her to stay), and the decision occurs the moment the condition intensifies to such a degree that the speaker is compelled to tell her how much he loves her.
There are all kinds of Hegelian things to be said about this structure (and about the dialectical motion implied by the idea of 'overreaching'), but to be honest I'm more interested in moments where we see the subject reasoning its way through a particular spatial or temporal situation, and making a decision based on the increasing urgency of the singular condition that determines its motion through space. For example:
I got to keep moving,
I got to keep moving,
Blues falling down like hail...
Or
I'm going away baby, don't you wanna go,
I'm going away baby, don't you wanna go,
Lord, I'm going somewhere I ain't never been before...
In both of these verses, it is the condition of being in motion that leads to decisions about what motivates that same motion (in the Johnson lyric) and where it might be leading (in the McDowell lyric). In so many instances across the blues songbook, the necessary condition for a subject's ability to know where it is going or why it is going somewhere is that it is always-already on its way. That has so many social and metaphysical resonances that I don't even know where to begin.
Your framing of the AAB structure as a mode of intensification is really smart. I've already found it to be very generative.
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Stream my music at https://soundcloud.com/benmeyerson
Download it at https://benmeyersonmusic.bandcamp.com
Last Edited by tf10music on Jan 26, 2018 4:39 PM
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