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Why was blues popular in the 1920s?
When did blues music start?
Why was the Blues considered disreputable in the early 20th century?
How did blues music become popular?
Early blues music was very slow and emotional using simple harmonies with a vocalist accompanied by a guitar. Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson made the blues style very popular in the 1920s.
Feb 21, 2024 · 1920s: The Blues Takes Flight. The years from 1920 to 1930 were critical in the history of blues music. The boom of the recording industry added fuel to the spread of blues music, allowing artists to distribute their music further than ever.
- Musicnotes
Through blues and jazz in the 1920s, African Americans took center stage with music from their own cultural heritage as record companies propagated the growth of a "race records" market that sold music by black artists to black listeners.
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The blues is a form of secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South. Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is essentially a vocal form. Blues songs are usually lyrical rather than narrative because the expression of feelings is foremost.
Where did the blues get its name?
In the 19th century the English phrase blue devils referred to the upsetting hallucinations brought on by severe alcohol withdrawal. This was later shortened to the blues, which described states of depression and upset, and it was later adopted as the name for the melancholic songs that the musical genre encapsulates.
How did the blues begin as a musical genre?
The origins of the blues are poorly documented, but it is believed that after the American Civil War (1861–65), formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants created this genre while working on Southern plantations, taking inspiration from hymns, minstrel show music, work songs and field hollers, ragtime, and popular music of the Southern white population.
Why is the blues considered the “Devil’s music”?
Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is essentially a vocal form. Blues songs are lyrical rather than narrative; blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories. The emotion expressed is generally one of sadness or melancholy, often due to problems of love but also oppression and hard times. To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques such as melisma (sustaining a single syllable across several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound.
As a musical style, the blues is characterized by expressive “microtonal” pitch inflections (blue notes), a three-line textual stanza of the form AAB, and a 12-measure form. Typically the first two and a half measures of each line are devoted to singing, the last measure and a half consisting of an instrumental “break” that repeats, answers, or complements the vocal line. In terms of functional (i.e., traditional European) harmony, the simplest blues harmonic progression is described as follows (I, IV, and V refer respectively to the first or tonic, fourth or subdominant, and fifth or dominant notes of the scale):
Phrase 1 (measures 1–4) I–I–I–I
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Phrase 2 (measures 5–8) IV–IV–I–I
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, also reaching white audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers.
In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable, especially as white audiences began listening to the blues during the 1920s. The close association with the devil was actually a well known characteristic of blues lyrics and culture between the 1920s and 1960s.
Q: How did blues music become popular in the 1920s? A: In the 1920s, blues music began to gain popularity as it spread from its rural roots to urban areas. With the advent of recording technology and the popularity of phonograph records, blues musicians were able to reach a wider audience.
