Thematic Facilitation

Jordan Johnson
Ethnics 5
March 16, 2011

Thematic Facilitation (Chapter 6-9)
Chapter 6: Primitive Blues & Primitive Jazz:
This section focuses on the origins of the Blues and jazz music. There are different flavors of both Blues and Jazz. However, the origins all share a common root, the folk music of the descendents of African living and working in the Southern part of the United States. The foundation of these forms of music were “work songs” that generally took a call and response form that some have traced back to traditional African musical roots. During this time all slaves could do was sing about their sorrows after slavery was abolished; it became a popular form of music.   The blues has had a profound affect on all genres of music and along with its cousin, jazz, has had a profound effect on popular music of the last century. African slaves were a nonliterate people with a strong and sophisatcated oral tradition of songs, stories, historical accounts, proverbs, and tales. The African American slave songs influenced spiritual songs, sot it is not surprising that the name spirituals was given to religious slave songs. I liked the quotes that group six used for their presentation. I thought they did a good job of presenting their chapter.

Chapter 7: Classical Blues:
This section focuses on classical blues. Classical blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. Gertrude “Ma” Raing, from Gerogia, was the “Mother of the blues”, and lived from 1886-1936. She was the first woman to incorportate blues into her act of songs and comedy. The classical blues singers were pioneers in the record industry, among the first black singers and blues artists recoreded. They wee instrumental in popularizing blues throughout the U.S. The Classic blues made a significant contribution to the development of jazz as mainstream popular music, and to the discovery and recording of male country singers who would later become “classic” in their own right. I... [continues]

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