Blues People

    Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka, is a seminal study of Afro-American music. It is considered a classic work on jazz and blues music in American culture. It documents the effects jazz and blues had on America on an economic, musical, and social level. It chronicles the types of music dating back to the slaves up until the 1960's. Baraka approaches this musical genre from a sociological, historical, and political standpoint, starting with the early slave trade in America.

    Baraka looks at the many African influences of the blues, as well as its opposition to more classical Western styles of music, and how it has evolved. Baraka focuses most of his attention, in later chapters, on the birth of jazz and how it owes their creation to the blues. Baraka contends that although slavery destroyed many formal artistic traditions, African American music represents certain African survivals. Most important, African American music represents an African approach to culture. As such, the music sustains the African worldview and records the historical experience of an oppressed people. Baraka also argues that while Africans adapted their culture to the English language and to European musical instruments and song forms, they also maintained an ethnic viewpoint that is preserved and transmitted by their music.

    When you are finished, you won't be an expert on the subject of blues or jazz music, but he does manage to fill you deeply with a sense of ownership and responsibility for holding and transmitting the history. I have to admit that my ignorance of jazz and jazz players meant some of this reading was confusing to me. I understood the points Baraka made but it would have communicated more if I was familiar with the recordings he referenced.

    Blues People is an important read for anyone interested in blues and jazz or in the people who created them.

    For the most part I found Baraka's insights and observations about black folk and black music in America informative and very interesting especially when discussing how the legacy of slavery affected the evolution of the music.