Essay About Gospel Music And Jazz Musicians

Jazz and Blues
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Jazz and Blues
The blues is considered to be the single greatest musical influence on the development of
jazz. From its earliest beginnings as it evolved from music heard in the Mississippi Delta roughly
a century ago up to present day jazz, jazz musicians have considered the blues an essential
benchmark that must be thoroughly mastered in order to express their art. While there is no
consensus as to precisely how either the blues or jazz originated, it is known from examination
of their musical structure that jazz, as it is known today, would not exist in its present form
without the influence of the blues. The 12-bar blues chorus provides jazz with its most popular
template for jazz improvisation. Musicians, such as King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton and Louis
Armstrong, who are famous for their contributions to the development of jazz, drew upon blues
songs in creating their most famous compositions. From their earliest parallel histories, both
blues and jazz musicians have demonstrated their ability and willingness to adapt the structure of
the blues to their own devices, such as when Duke Ellington adds elaborations to “Mood Indigo”
or when Miles Davis uses chords instead of scales in “All Blues.”
This history brings up the question of what, precisely, is meant by the term “the blues,”
which has been defined as a “feeling, a kind of musical scale, a type of song, a particular chord
progression, a poetic form, an attitude, a shared history [and] a flatted fifth.” The history of the
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blues shows that it is all these things and more. The life narratives of great blues artists who were
instrumental in the development of the genre inevitably include descriptions of being castigated
and punished by their families for pursing what was characterized as the “the devils music.”
Another recurring element in these narratives is the defense of the blues offered by these
performers. For example, Henry Townsend identified the main difference between the blues and
gospel music is that gospel music refers to biblical times and the blues “will send you anyplace
different from gospel,” but that “one truth is no greater than the other.” Of course, the
perspective of the older generation during Townsends youth in the early part of the twentieth
century was influenced by the prevalent association made by the public between the blues and a
culture that featured “violence, promiscuity, profanity and alcoholism.” Nevertheless, the same
motifs, that is, stories of restless, prodigal sons who are attracted to the “forbidden musical fruit”
of blues, jazz and alluring nightlife, recur frequently throughout the biographies of famous blues
and jazz musicians during the 1920s and 30s, when the blues was emerging from the South and
the “devils music” was evolving into a “codified form of entertainment.”
The way in which contemporary audiences relate to blues and jazz is demonstrated by a
large-scale survey and in-depth interviews that were conducted at the 2007 Edinburgh Jazz and
Blues Festival (EJBF). First of all, this studys findings revealed that events attendees valued the
opportunity to be among fellow blues and jazz enthusiasts, as they revealed a distinct sense of
community. These research results also provide a rebuttal to the idea that jazz/blues audiences
are younger than audiences attending events that feature classical