roduction of industrial civilization, such as the lonely soul, the pressure from the fast paced life, as well as the fear of death and the helpless feeling about life, and so on. In a word, sentimental and sorrowful feeling was the eternal theme of Blues. Generally, Blues adopted direct ways to reveal their feeling. It gave Afro-Americans more freedom to reveal their feelings so that it was very popular not only among black people, but also among white people.
In the 19th century, Blues was a pure Afro-American music. It was famous in the south of America, where most of the black people gathered. But the music traveled to northern cities along with the migration of black workers in search of jobs before and after the First World War. In the late 1930s, the electric guitar—a major contribution to rock music—made it easier for musicians “to cut the noise in ghetto taverns” and gave southern Blues its urban style. And since the 1960s, many talented white musicians have chosen Blues as their primary vehicle of expression—using the great black players of the past and present as their models. And so Blues became a popular music style not only among black people, but also among other peoples. Purists insisted that Blues was an expression of Afro-American cultural, inaccessible in essence to the white practitioner, but the opposition points to the universal spectrum of feelings—from sadness to joy—that Blues expresses.
What remained indisputable was the historical fact that Blues was developed entirely by the Afro-American, who over the years incorporated African elements of melody, rhythm, and phrasing with the European inventions of diatonic harmony and form. Both audience and players alike were predominantly blacks for that gestation period. The modern white players came later—to “discover” the authentic music and recast it. Some incorporated it with Rock & Roll, pop, folk and country music, while others faithfully covered gems of the classic Blues repertory. Regardless of the color or nationality of the players who were involved, it was universally acknowledged that Blues was a black music.
As sheet music grew in popularity, Jazz developed in New Orleans between the late of 19th century and the early of 20th century. As an improvisational and mostly instrumental musical form, Jazz absorbed and integrated a diverse body of musical styles, including African rhythms, Blues and Gospel. Jazz influenced many bandleaders throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Groups led by Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller were among the most popular of Jazz, or “swing” bands, whose music also dominated radio and recording in their days.
As to the development of Jazz, Blues, as the main origin for Jazz, made an unspeakable contribution to it. The two famous kinds of music of Afro-Americans—Blues and Soul music were the primary source of Jazz. At the same time, Jazz, a popular music style, made great contributions to Afro-American culture, which was regarded as an important part of American culture.
Spiritual song, another style of Afro-American music, was famous in the 1960s. It absorbed the inspiration of gospel, and emerged in Detroit first. It siphoned off some performances, such as the improvisatory cadenza, shouting, sob and murmur, and so on. So it formed a gorgeous and free style. It was known that the first group of slaves was sailed to American in1619 from western Africa, and since then a great number of slaves were sold from
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