Thoughts on blues in a kind of anthropological way

[Tom22]

I started going off in left field in sharing my ideas about blues and how Haley seems to get the part I like most about it.

Miguel also had a good quote of Adele's. While I think those belong in that thread, I wanted to add more and I think that would start straying too far from the topic of Haley's new album.

I kind of surf the web on these things trying to find words and explore abstract impressions I might have to reinforce or dismiss them.

Anyway to start out this thread, I figure I should repost where it started from.

Comment from Adele when she was being interviewed about her debut album, 19.

“What I particularly like about soul and blues is its honesty, sincerity and depth. While with pop, though you do have the entertainment factor, when you scratch away the surface there`s very little underneath. Whereas with soul you can constantly trawl through it and find great new things. To me the most important thing, in terms of longevity is to be REAL in your music. And soul and blues are filled with real, proper emotions.

Great quote.

Thanks for finding it and sharing it with us Miguel.

One thing I (personally) feel Adele is missing from her sound is the sense of "swagger", or a bit of a strut, or , if not quite defiance, a warm resolve not to let the pain overcome you and to reach the possiblities beyond.

I don't want to knock Adele too much on that. If you read her lyrics, they do take in that blues convention of painting a positve, even if the positive painted is one that wasn't necessarily achieved.

Haley sung Adele's song "rolling in the deep" with more of that sort of attitude that I like and even anticipate or expect in blues.

When Haley sings "there's a fire "We could of had it all" ... perhaps it's very subtle, but it glares out to me ... the tinge of bitterness with Adele. Bit difference between "It sucks what you did" and "You suck for what you did" at least in my mind.

Listen to how BB King sings the line (picking out what could be contrued as the most negative part)
"you're going to be sorry one day" .. which could easily be sung with bitterness and would be by most artists the last 30 years would sing it with bitterness. But he sings it as a statement that is more about the "her" missing out on the future ... not as "getting what you deserve" attack.

To me, that's what blues is. And the rest of the song.. especially the instrumentals, seem like a positive dreaming ... and here Adele gets it dead on ... not a saccharine (artificially sweet) superficial happyness but an appreciation of the intricate, with each low contrasted with a high, each open more minor chord, resolved (a chord resolve is a musical way of closing a complexity examined)




"The thrill is gone" on its surface, seems like a downer, yet to me, the song is about healing and going forward. I could see the kid singers spitting out the line with a vile which if you listen to bb isn't the point.

"free free free..."

"now that it's over, all I can do is wish you well"

Haley gets that part of blues.. and infuses some of the attitudes in all of her songs. It's one of the reasons I love her.

None of that contradicts the comments Adele has, but augments them.

[Tom22]

Rather than go on and on I’m going to post a couple sort of academic links. Yeah, I read this sort of stuff when I’m web surfing. I don’t necessarily take in every word and paragraph my first look.
Elegy - in trying to figure out whether the word “lament” has changed I stumbled on this page.

I certainly didn't follow most of this link.. especially the techical part which was (pun apropo) greek to me indeed. Still I did understand quite a few paragraphs .

http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=Artic...12&mn=3989

My thoughts were:
- The blues seems to be something that has reoccurred in human history.
- The ideas of applying rhythmic conventions seemed a little close to what I was trying to point to in chord resolves.
- Songs of lament/mourning developed a form that was later extended to songs not so clearly about lament even if drawing on those over tones - boy that sounds like the idea of what “blues” is

At first sight, the two senses of the word elegos and its derivatives seem
 unrelated to each other, since many examples of ancient Greek songs or poems composed in
 the elegiac couplets of elegy seem to have nothing to do with the singing of sad and
 mournful songs. A closer look at the surviving evidence, however, may help undo such an
 initial impression. Although there is currently no consensus in the scholarly world of
 classical studies about the origins of elegy, an argument can be made that elegy
 evolved from traditions of singing songs of lament.

Ok if that link seemed really academic this next one is a step beyond. I don’t expect many people will even look at it. I didn’t read it terribly carefully and can’t speak to the sweep of it but many sentences got to what I was trying to think of. I had a liberal arts education which while some time ago, I have some memory of general approaches the referenced philopshers.

I’m just linking it because it’s sort of associated with the ideas I had about generation’s shifts in social context can also change how people approach the same words. (from the url on the link I'm sure if I got too far into other chapters of the book I'd disagree with a lot they said later)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky...gotsky.htm

If I were to go anywhere with the thoughts that a quick look at that stimulate it’s that when people “don’t get” what I might hear or say about blues, it could very well be that their perception of the world around them makes any “point” or “nuances” meaningless … there is nothing to “get” for them.. not a matter of them not “getting” it. How can you get something that isn’t part of your thinking ? Yet, maybe if they listen to enough old blues long enough their thinking might start wrapping around that viewpoint.

Trying to relate this to Idol and or Haley:
Something struck me wrong about Joshua ledet’s take on so many of the songs he did. Even his gospel influenced numbers seemed to be missing the same thing. I didn’t feel like he was “getting” the songs in the way I “got” them … but who am I to say my perspective is right.

Still there are a great many (but a minority) of artists that can go where I think the music was supposed to go. They seem to be the ones that particularly admire Haley and vice versa.