Blues Legacy in Jazz Music

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The roots of jazz music are to be found in many venues and areas; from art to the diversity of social blankets and experiences people have gone through, from sorrow to joy, from elation to misery, jazz seems to have fed itself a bit from every aspect of life. But there is one root of jazz that seems to overwhelm the others, namely the blues. Blues music has gone through several stages of development and has managed to become the “underground aquarium that would feed all the streams of American music, including jazz” (Ken Burns’ “Jazz” documentary, Ep.01). Though, at first hearing, blues tunes seems to be simply structured, using just 3 chords and a few choruses , it allows millions of variation, adding to the improvisation factor that will stand to be the most awe- provoking aspect of jazz performances. The apparent simplicity of blues music has been played with in a great number of ways along the years. If in the late 1800s, the poor African- Americans used a guitar, a harmonica and a powerful sad voice, things evolved with the adding of blowing instruments, drums and basses at the beginning of the 1900s. Blues music’s evolution was organic, it mend itself naturally to the fashion of the times to become the music that, when listened to, one immediately associates it with America, with all of its history, hardships and diversity of people and feelings. Blues music was born in the South, specifically in the Mississippi Delta, and migrated along with the poor African-Americans to the cultural and cosmopolitan city of New Orleans, Louisiana. These men were seeking for jobs on the docks of the city, trying to escape a very segregated environment where they were still being treated as slaves. In New Orleans, the situation of the blacks was not much different either; with the Jim Crow laws in force, the blacks seemed to find no escape from their position of inferior

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