- Perrier
- Chardonnay
- Snapple
- Slim Fast
Via Chad Orzel, Scott Spiegelberg’s instructions on How To Sing the Blues.
If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is another blues way to die. So are the electric chair, substance abuse, and dying lonely on a broken-down cot. You can’t have a blues death if you die during a tennis match or while getting liposuction.
What I want to know is: How is it possible that culture-defining new soulful music emerged at nearly same time at different parts of the world? We have the blues in the US, the fado in Portugal, the rembetiko in Greece. Each became almost a national theme in that culture.
Curious in Rome…
Amare, I thought Fado was pretty ancient artform…though I may be wrong.
And let me add to the list the fictional album “Wynton Marsalis Plays the Blues”…which may well already exist.
Hmm, Moshe maybe you’re right about the origin of fado. A person who lived in Portugal for many years told me it started in the 1920s, but I cannot find any information now to support that, while I can find more hints that its origins are very old.
I think it is not really ancient, since it has some strong influence from African music (as imported from Brasil), but it is older than the 20th century I think. I guess one can google…
The blues emerged in the early 20th century in the United States as derivatives of folk songs sung by former slaves while working in the fields combined with gospel songs primarily from the Southern Baptist tradition. It took much of its current form when musicians migrated to urban areas primarily New Orleans, St Louis, Memphis and Chicago (note the Missisipi River connection) where the development of electronic instruments had a major influence. Modern Rock and Roll can trace its roots to blues as well as country/bluegrass. Its an interesting history of cultural interaction driven in part by the fact that previously segregated populations (black and white in the U.S.) began to hear each others music during WW II leading to the emergence of RR in the early 50’s.
Cheers,
Elliot
I’ve got those lonesome physics blues
My research grants
They got turned down yesterday
I’ve got those lonesome physics blues
My research grants
They got turned down yesterday
My girl left with the postman
And Singularities
In my equations well they just won’t go away
I’ll follow Elliot’s blues post (two back) with something of the rebetika.
The “rebetika” (I see it also spelled “rembetika”, I am not sure of the correct spelling), was rooted in the late 1800s and came to full form right after WWI. Rebetika music emerged with a life of its own from the sorrows and pains of people who had nothing after some religious and political upheavals in 1921. In 1921, the Greek army invaded Turkey, which was the greatest disaster in modern Greek history. They were slaughtered. In an absurd settlement, the League of Nations decreed an exchange of populations between the countries. Nationality was to be based on religion. All orthodox Christians were declared Greek and all Moslems were declared Turkish. The result was that the Greek population swelled from four million to five-and-a-half million. Athens and its port of Piraeus received the majority of the refugees, which included small numbers of ‘Greeks’ that had been away from Greece and living in Asia Minor for perhaps 1000 or more years (but they still had their language). One might consider these Asia Minor Greeks as closest to the “original Greeks”, but because they had been away from mainland Greece for so long, they didn’t find enough commonalities with the other Greeks. These ‘early Greek’ refugees were among the poorest in Piraeus. In their despair and poverty and homeless feelings, they mixed with the ‘Christian Smyrna Turks’ in the underground hashish dens, lamenting their sorrows, and this was where the music was born.
Originally the lyrics reflected their origin in the dens that produced them: “I am a rascal and a bum, and I enter the opium den still high from the night before”, then the songs evolved into reflections of their dreams, hopes and apprehensions: “The moon is down, the darkness is deep, only one man, cannot fall asleep” (this about loneliness). A majority of Greeks at that time (and perhaps since) found their ‘soul’ in the music because of a close harmony with the music and poetry and bouzouki instrument plus a blending of the musical elements of their previous ~500 years history. In time,the music evolved into a national expression of every dream, hope, love, and fear and is still treasured today by that culture.
Amara, the Smyrna slaughter is beautifully used as a background for the first part of the novel “Middlesex” by Jeffery Eugenides (excellent title, if you read it you’ll see).
Nice coincidence, a colleague and friend yesterday said that I _must_ read some books by Eugenides (an author of whom I had not heard before).
So my suggestion to you is if you can find original 1920s-1930s Greek rebetika, please try. The Greek is very slangy (a Greek friend translated for me), and the singing is often very bad. The words are both poetic (one sings about a girl who “makes the stars fall from the sky” and then a backgound singer says: “what? that girl made your head into an idiot”), another song talks about a policeman who keeps beating him up when he’s lying on the street. These are really down-and-out homeless ‘bums’ who’s largest crimes are mostly being high or drunk or maybe getting into a fight with someone else, or maybe stealing some money from their girlfriend. You can instantly hear the mix of the ‘Asian Greeks’ because the music sounds oriental. The songs are often slow, the bad singing thick, giving a picture of a drunk guy shuffling his feet, and the music is extremely expressive- it puts you right there. This is really original stuff: utterly charming (imo), quite serious at the time, and probably very funny for a Greek to listen to today.
Thanks Amara, I believe I am vaguely aware of the music, since I grew up in a town which was at the time largely composed of greek and turkish immigrants, but I will try to see if I indeed have the right idea.