Music

The Pre-War Blues

The American sheet music publishing industry produced a lot of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry had published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: Baby Seals’ Blues by “Baby” F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), Dallas Blues by Hart Wand, and Memphis Blues by W. C. Handy. Handy used his formal training as a musician, composer and arranger to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself...

Migration blues

Continuing a history of the Blues Beginning around the First World War, millions of black US Southerners moved north to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York. Known as the Great Migration, this population movement changed the course of American history. People left the South to escape the oppressive racist system, but also, and more importantly, because of the job opportunities and promise of economic security in Northern cities. Blind Blake sang about getting a job at Mr Ford’s place in’ Detroit Bound Blues. Jobs in the automotive industry were an important factor pulling African...

Sex, prison, law, and racism in the blues

It was the fusion of blues with ragtime and Jazz in the early twenties by band leaders like Handy that popularised the blues. His signature work was the St Louis Blues. The other way blues reached white audiences was through the classic female blues performers, the music evolving from informal entertainment in bars to entertainment in theatres. The blues performers were organised by the Theatre Owners Bookers Association (also known as “Tough on Black Asses”). Musicians performed in nightclubs such as the Cotton Club, juke joints and infamous bars along Beale Street in Memphis. At the same...

Dylan: He’s not there

I must admit, I’m no Dylanologist, so I was not particularly upset by director Todd Haynes’ decision to merge Suze Rotolo and Sara Lownds into one character, nor the fact that I’m Not There is far from a biography of Dylan. However, while the film has an excellent score (unsurprisingly, it features lots of Bob Dylan tracks) and features some memorable performances from the six actors representing the singer-songwriter’s different personas, it feels like a simple homage rather than offering any particular insight. Central to the appeal of I’m Not There is its jigsaw-like composition. The film...

The story of the Blues

The Blues? It’s the mother of American music. That’s what it is – the source. — BB King Europeans involved in the slave trade stripped as much culture from their human cargo as possible but music was so deep rooted in the African men and women that it was impossible to tear it away from those who survived the horrific journey. In West Africa, where the slaves came from, every ceremony was celebrated with singing and dancing and the music went with them to work into the fields of North America. Initially the music took the form of Negro spirituals and field hollers. What came to be known as...

Henry "Red" Allen

Jim Denham on Shiraz Socialist commemorates Henry "Red" Allen, born 100 years ago in January 1908.

Drumming to a different beat

Bruce Robinson asseses the life and work of Max Roach There can be few musicians who have revolutionised the way their instrument is played, helped change the whole history of their music and remained innovative and open over 50 years. Add to that a radical social and political commitment and a keen awareness of how that was expressed in the history of jazz and could be expressed in his own music, and you get Max Roach, the jazz drummer, who has died aged 83 in New York. Max Roach first began getting noticed in the early 1940s just as the new jazz style of bebop was starting to take off. Many...

Did Bob Dylan sell out?

A talk by Mike Short at the AWL London Forum on 8 December, 2005 The implication of the initial question is that Bob Dylan was a committed, full-time member of the early 60s movement that we will call ‘folk protest’; and then later on he sold out, abandoning his left-wing principles in the name of making different types of music – more personal songs, a rock and roll style. Well, clearly as the 60s progressed, Dylan moved away from protest songs and made many different types of music. But far too many histories of the era take a very, well, dialectical perspective, based on two types of Dylan...

Singing for revolution

Amy Fisher reviews the centre for political song website, www.caledonian.ac.uk/politicalsong/song The Centre for Political Song, a website hosted by Glasgow Caledonian University, makes reasonably interesting reading — none of the traditional political songs are here, like the Red Flag or the Internationale, but instead lots of lyrics written to familiar tunes, by activists. In the current climate, around the anti-war, anti-Bush movement, the site can be forgiven for primarily hosting lyrics attacking Bush, Cheney and Rice in the most simplistic of terms (“Bush Whacked”, “Bush It!” and so on)...

An open letter to Attila the Stockbroker (and Attila's reply)

Stop the War, punk and sexism (and Attila's reply) On 27 May, a group of young AWL members went to a Stop the War benefit gig in Balham and caused a bit of a stir by objecting to some lyrics in one of Attila the Stockbroker’s songs. Here one of them shares her thoughts with him. Dear Attila the Stockbroker, A GROUP of us, young people, mostly women, came to your recent benefit gig for Wandsworth Stop the War. After enjoying your set, we were shocked by the words of your song “Supermodel” and the hateful language you used to describe women exploited by the fashion industry. We felt...

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