The Blues Flashcards
What did white revivalists prioritize in the blues?
The tune and text
How is the lies a combination of European and African musical traditions?
It combines European form, harmony, and instruments with African style.
What is Thomas A. Dorsey’s relationship with gospel music?
He says he invented it, but he just composed some famous examples.
What song ushered in the contemporary gospel era?
Edwin Hawkins’s “O Happy Day”
Where did the harmonic and structural form of the blues come from?
The folk ballad
What is the relationship between the instruments and the vocalist in the blues?
The instruments act as a response to the vocalist’s musical line
What was characteristic of the Holiness-Pentecostal style of gospel music?
Uninhibited performance with dancing and shouting
In the blues revival, what did black artists find difficult about the middle-class audiences or which they were playing?
Behavioral standards discouraged participation in the way of African American performances
What was ironic about the blues “revival”?
The blues was never dead
True or False: A blues profession is simple and doesn’t give the feeling of moving anywhere.
True
What is the persistent myth about Robert Johnson?
He sold his soul to the devil in exchange for amazing guitar abilities.
What was the common critique of white blues artists in the 1960s and after?
That one had to “live the blues,” and white people could never truly do that
That is a riff?
A short recurrent phrase
What blues musician played at the White House in 1999?
B.B. King
How does the Tindley style of gospel music incorporate the spiritual tradition?
Call and response
Gospel music is best described as a combination of:
Blues, spirituals, and hymns
In the early days of gospel music, churches:
Rejected it as sacrilegious because of its in coronation of popular music
Which instrument is suited poorly to the blues because of its inability to properly play blue notes?
Piano
What British style was a combination of American and British folk music, influenced heavily by the blues?
Skiffle
What is jump blues?
Fast, small-combo blues popular in the 1940s.
What is one reason that white Americans were attracted to the blues in the 1960s?
It was a vehicle for rebelliousness
How did Thomas A. Dorsey promote his music in his early days as a composer?
Singing the songs out on street corners
In Bessie Smith’s St. Louis Blues film appearance, she is depicted as:
A drunk
The blues form uses a rhyme/lyric scheme that an be best described as:
AAB
What is a griot?
A West African music specialist who serves as a custodian of cultural history
What does William Barlow mean when he calls patterns of popular music in the first half of the 20th century an illusory “pattern of musical expropriation and racial exclusion?”
Even though many popular songs were rooted in black forms like jazz and blues, the songs were mainly performed by white vocalists
How did the folksong movement affect the blues?
Black musicians were featured at performances and race records reissued
