In the book Blue like Jazz there is a couple of conversion stories I would like to talk about. The first one comes from Chapter 4. It is the conversion of Millers friend Penny. Penny was a person who did not like Christians and Christianity based on the stereotypes that she had seen and the world has given to them. In the chapter it says that Penny wanted nothing to do with Christianity until she met a friend from her school. She went to college at the same place as miller, which is reed college, and after her freshman year she decided to study at a school in france. While there she was introduced to another student from Reed who she was very fond of and her…
Baldwin never exactly mentions the time, it is believed by most columnists that Sonny's Blues takes place somewhere in the 1950's, or in the Post-WWII era. The setting in which the story takes place is in Harlem. This period was a significant era for Harlem. Harlem happen to be a place separate from civilization where people were free to do as they pleased which permitted for creative art in the forms of writing, poetry, paintings, and music to display; yet, it also gave life to drug use, sexual quest, and destitution. The two biggest categories of music that seem to be suggested in Sonny's Blues are the Blues and Bebop. It is conveyed that Baldwin was trying to show a space between these two within their styles and time periods, much like…
James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” exemplifies suffering as the major theme depicted through the struggle of two brothers as they try to understand one another. Baldwin’s underlying message deals with the hardships that African-Americans endured through the mid twentieth century, a time when race determined your status in society.…
Conscious Hip-hop is the modern form of the blues. Both genres of music express the hardships of the African American people in their respective time periods or explain the culture surrounding the artist and/or their community. Through their lyrics, the artists from the two genres are able to spread the culture and experiences of the black race.…
Why B.B King is the most influential person of the blues era? With all the trials and tribulations, he had to go through in his life, he became the most influential artist there was of the blues era. Although B.B, had great success added to his name, the simple fact of his birth place could have created havoc on his future. Mississippi was known for its dislike of African Americans and during this time there were no laws to protect them. In the year that B.B King was born seventeen African Americans had been lynched in America and the Ku Klux Klan reported had 1 billion members. Economically, most black families farmed and sharecropped and during the twenties sharecropping was another form of slavery.…
James Baldwin 's essay "Sonny 's Blues" is a story of the struggle of a jazz musician, Sonny, growing up in the harlem renaissance. It is told by the musician 's brother who takes Sonny into his own home after being released from heroin rehabilitation. The story examines Sonny 's path as a musician but has an underlying theme of the suffrage and attempted escape of Harlem residents at this point in history. Baldwin justifies Sonny 's drug habit by showing empathy for his struggle to obtain creative relief.…
The blues music has gone through a massive evolution since it first started out as a musical tradition for the African Americans and their slave culture. Since then we have seen many important improvements and milestones for when it comes to human rights and black music. The end of slave import and the end of segregation lead to black music in the radio among others. It became possible to record and possess music by African Americans with help from record labels like Okeh Records and Paramount Records, great artists like Son House, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters had massive success, and in the late 1940s we even had a black man owning a radio station. After that the blues had a bit of a quiet period before we…
The Delta Blues was one of the first inspirations for rock n roll. It is entangled in African American history and still is today. The Delta blues has a rich history, and unique musical style which is incomparable.…
“Sonny’s Blues” is set in post-World War II New York, in the midst of an important cultural and political revolution that permanently changed the country. Artists from all over the world had made New York a new cultural capital, establishing Greenwich Village, where Sonny briefly lives. A diverse array of artists , including the painter Jackson Pollack, musician Charlie Parker, and writer Jack Kerouac, all converged in New York around this time. These artists learned and borrowed from one another. In “Sonny Blue’s,” Sonny wants to move past the traditional conventions of music, as did many postwar artists. At the same time that the art scene in New York was exploding, thousands of African American soldiers were returning home from the war and heading north toward communities like Harlem, where, instead of finding new job opportunities and equal rights, they found newly constructed housing projects and vast urban slums. Sonny and his brother both serve in the war, and each returns to find a radically different life in America.…
The Blues music is a very unique type of music in every way. It is a mixture of African and European music made by its sad, or blue notes. It is also one of the oldest forms of American music. The Blues began in the 19th century and throughout the Southern United States by slave workers and field hollers. Gradually it started to blend in with other American musical forms. The most traditional form of Blues is Country Blues. It consists usually of one person singing with an acoustic guitar, harmonica, saxophone, or another simple instrument. Blues music is usually sung about some type of hardship or some emotional pain the singer is going through. Some popular performers in this style of music are people like Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin'…
The Afro-American blues follows some of the characteristics of the Western African music tradition, such as the syncopation, harmony, and rhythm. Like Robert Johnson’s “Crossroad”, similarities with the Western African music is the way Johnson swing the lyrics and rhythm, it is very similar to Western African music. Charley Patton’s “Spoonful Blues” also have a similar style with Robert Johnson’s “Crossroad”. One more artist that I listened to is Huddie Ledbetter’s “Take This Hammer”. I think that the way he strums his guitar is similar to the way Western African drum players hit their percussions, there is a similar syncopation and rhythm to it. I would say that Western African music is a bit more up-tempo, and the blues has its characteristic…
Blues is the root of modern pop music. Blues is after the civil war, by American black Africans in poor underlying life creates music. In the process of development, as the change of black life circumstances and the thought emotion, it has experienced the change of different style. Its on the development of contemporary pop music in the world is produced an indelible effect. In this paper, the development course of Blues, to explore the impact of its pop music to the world.…
Cited: Time Period: Early 17th Century to Modern DAy. (2007, March 31). Retrieved April 14, 2013, from Cultural Diffusion of African Music into American Music from the Time of the Slave Trade: http://www.writework.com/essay/cultural-dif…
Reading poetry is extremely difficult, so I tried in a different way: I went to YouTube and looked for someone reading out loud The Weary Blues. Then I founded Langston Hughes reciting this precise poem, accompanied by a jazz band. Immediately I felt transported to 1958, seated in the front row of the theater, felling a mix of rhythm and depression in the air. Then, sitting in a stool in front of me, Langston Hughes starts to recite his "Weary Blues". In the way that Langston recited the poem, seems for me more like a song, the arranged of the music is perfectly synchronized with every single line of the poem. I felt mesmerized by the rhythm of the poem, even though I barely couldn't understand the meaning. There was something in the way the poem was recited that made me fell that the significance of this poem was related with sadness and pain. After read carefully the…
While blues lyrics often deal with personal adversity, the music itself goes far beyond self-pity. The blues is also about overcoming hard luck, saying what you feel, ridding yourself of frustration, letting your hair down, and simply having fun. The best blues is visceral, cathartic, and starkly emotional. From unbridled joy to deep sadness, no form of music communicates more genuine emotion.…