From Blues to Rap

Adapted and embellished from History Detectives/THIRTEEN

For many, the 20th century was seen as "America's century." It was a century in which the United States' influence would be felt around the globe economically and politically. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of music. From jazz to rock, America was the birthplace to some of the most influential music the world had seen, aided by the popularity of new technologies such as the phonograph, radio, and cinema. There was one other very successful distributor of American tunes to the rest of the world: the American GI, who brought his music with him wherever he went from the Europe of World War I to the Middle East today.

What was the most important influence on 20th century music? One possible answer is African Americans and the musical culture they brought to this country – developed within the bonds of slavery. Their music and dance highly influenced the European-based culture that was already here. Later it blended with the contributions of immigrant populations.

Even before the 20th century began, blues music was evolving across the country out of the traditional African slave spirituals, work calls, and chants. Of all the developing genres, the blues would be the most far-reaching, with its influence felt in everything from jazz to rock, country music to rhythm and blues, and even classical music in the 20th century.

Jazz's influence on the world music scene would be nothing short of transformational. Jazz saw its early development in the African-American communities all throughout the South, most notably in New Orleans – with rhythms reflecting the diversity of cultural influences from West Africa to the West Indies, from ragtime to the blues. It spread from there up the Mississippi River to Saint Louis, then to Chicago, and eventually New York. The raspy trumpet of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and the doleful voice of Bessie Smith were as infectious in their day as the Spanish Influenza that swept the world in 1918.

With similar roots to blues (and blues as one of its roots), jazz also took from another American art form – Ragtime – to create its unique syncopated sound. Its early white detractors were many, from prejudiced Henry Ford to Thomas Edison. Racism was often the reason for cries of "it's immoral." Yet the insistent, danceable, heartfelt sounds quickly spread American culture to the far corners of the globe. There is no denying the toe-tapping popularity and genius of Scott Joplin’s 44 ragtime compositions beginning in the 1890s.

Its ever-mutating style turned itself into the swing music of the late 1920s (The Jazz Age of The Great Gatsby) and 1930s. Everyone was dancing to American big bands lead by the likes of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman right through the years of World War II. They often featured the likes of the legendary singers Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra. Harlem was the place to go if you were in New York and wanted a good time.

In the 1940s and 1950s the emphasis slowly shifted from dancing to listening when the Bebop Era began featuring faster tempos, more complex chord changes, and complicated melodic improvisation. The virtuosity of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie showed us just how far from the melody they could go and still provide compositional integrity. The music of Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane challenged your intellect much like the classical music of the time. Performers like Miles Davis helped to blur the lines between genres in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Cool Jazz of that period was focused in mid-town Manhattan with 52nd Street as its focus.

Jazz's knock-on effect was further seen in rock ‘n roll's development in the United States in the 1950s. Artists from Elvis Presley to Chuck Berry created their infectious music using the influences of boogie-woogie and blues, along with jazz. Beginning in 1955 with Bill Haley and the Comets, rock's popularity quickly spread around the world, with English groups of the 1960s such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones often crediting American musicians and styles for their inspiration.

Soul music, which dominated the charts in the 1960s, grew up alongside rock ‘n roll, and also developed out of African American gospel, and rhythm and blues traditions. Leading the way were the high-energy performances of Little Richard and James Brown, followed by the profound sweetness of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. As the decade progressed soul music became regionalized and morphed into the funk of the 1970s and other genres such as jack swing in 1980s New York, it helped lay the groundwork for the next two decades of popular music.

The end of the century saw the birth of hip-hop music and culture. As early as the mid-1970s in the Bronx, DJs began isolating percussion rhythms from songs and talking over and between the songs, continuing a poetry tradition that reaches back to ancient Greece. Rap music, with its semi-autobiographical lyrics and deep rhythms were just one more evolution in the blues tradition that had started at the beginning of the century, and one further, enormous transformation in the world of music created and nurtured in the African-American community. Now people are rapping around the globe, including places like South Korea with its highly successful K-Pop industry.

Where we go next is anybody’s guess, but the threads that trace back to Africa will always be there. Acculturation in America began in the holds of slave ships and has no end.