Blues Music Journey

The Mississippi Delta stretches from Memphis, Tennessee to Vicksburg, Mississippi and from Helena, Arkansas to the Yazoo River. The Blues is a crucial part of the history in music. The “Blues is both music and the culture that produced it”
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Listening to Mrs. Robbins and viewing Jacob Lawrence’s paintings gave me a better understanding of Jacob Lawrence as a painter. Mrs. Robbins explained how his parents moved and divorced in his childhood, and how he fell in love with color through the paintings on his mother’s wall. She explained his influences, from his schoolwork to the masters of the Renaissance. Also, she explained how he went to libraries and museums to research (Ray Bradbury also did this). I find it interesting how he received
Carmichael's guitar playing helped me understand the twelve-bar blues. I had not heard of the twelve-bar blues before we learned about them. It has a good groove to it, and I like how the turn-around can help “reflect its performers personal style” (The Birthplace of the Blues). The Blues-A Musical Journey by Martin Scorsese supported my understanding of the blues. The movie helped show the different scenarios of blues music as well as told the stories. The best defined scene of the The Blues movie is when Corey Harris and his manager are standing around and talking about how present day people will recreate blues songs exactly the way they were written. Current day blues musicians do not know the meaning of the blues, as they do not make it their own. The “Blues is both music and the culture” of the people who perform it (The Birthplace of the
It is about the truth behind people. People are not always showing them true selves, meaning that most people can not be trusted. The masked man wears “the mask that grins and lies” portrays someone who hides their feelings and true thoughts behind a figurative mask.”We wear the Mask” relates to me because showing emotion is not one of my strong-suits. My emotion is usually hidden behind a “mask” (“We Wear the Mask”). When a person hides their true emotion, that emotion becomes bottled up inside and can make them do bad deeds. Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” starts off with “Invisible” listening to Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blue. Listening to the song helps bring in the theme of loneliness and trying to hide. The theme of loneliness is shown through the first and second stanza through the lines: “Cold empty bed...Even the mouse ran from my house” (“Black and Blue”). He has an empty bed and even a mouse does not want to be near him. The theme of trying to hide is shown through the third stanza: “I can’t hide what is on my face” (Louis Armstrong, “Black and Blue”). He is trying to keep his emotions inside. The idea of not favoring a certain skin color is brought into play. Louis Armstrong uses the phrase “the only sin is my skin” to show the idea of not liking his own skin color. The narrator of the song is self-conscious. Race plays a key role in “Invisible Man,”