Amiri Baraka's Blues People is a fascinating read on the socio-cultural context of African American music as it pertains to the place of Black Americans in US society. While mostly centered on the blues, the text examines Black music from its African origins and the shouts, hollers, and spirituals of pre-Emancipation to the avant-garde jazz of the 1960s. While it owes much to its era and the impact of Herskovits can be strongly detected in the early chapters, it shows how the Afro-American developed a distinct music in their American context. So, regardless of how one feels about the accuracy of claims of African origin or retention, Baraka, like Gunther Schuller, presents a plausible theory of the ways in which the African past lingers in Black music.
It's an ambitious work that relies on a paradigm of double consciousness as seen in music, as well as certain sociological assumptions or conclusions about social stratification of Blacks and the question of assimilation in relation to the evolution of musical styles. Personally, I find Baraka's dismissal of ragtime problematic (ragtime's more serious composers and performers did look to African American folk traditions, not just marches or the American popular song) , as well as some of the assumptions about the black middle-class as devotees of assimilation (perhaps a result of his reliance on the seminal study of Frazier), but he is generally quite persuasive. Some may take issue with his attitudes on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and gender dynamics in Black America, too.
The "blues continuum" concept for understanding Black music after the rise of radio and "race records" is an interesting way of understanding the continued links connecting country blues, urban blues, jazz, and R&B, not to mention the reaction and counterreactions that characterize the rise of of bebop, R&B, and avant-garde jazz. The cleavage between the Black masses and the bourgeoisie of the race are also interesting dynamics to consider in terms of the transformation of jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. Gunther Schuller's study of jazz includes some of these insights, but not quite in as forceful a manner as that of Jones, although the former certainly includes greater musicological insight and analysis.
Baraka brings to the table a deeper understanding of the blues as it pertains to African American culture and identity than Schuller, however. He also demonstrates why it is that jazz in particular, of all the blues-influenced forms of Black music, could appeal so widely and become flexible enough to absorb all kinds of influences so that whites and middle-class blacks could become innovative in it. For that reason, Blues People should continue to be read as a study of music as a way of understanding Black America and the social context of its music. Jazz aficionados have much to learn from this, in spite of its shortcomings.
It's an ambitious work that relies on a paradigm of double consciousness as seen in music, as well as certain sociological assumptions or conclusions about social stratification of Blacks and the question of assimilation in relation to the evolution of musical styles. Personally, I find Baraka's dismissal of ragtime problematic (ragtime's more serious composers and performers did look to African American folk traditions, not just marches or the American popular song) , as well as some of the assumptions about the black middle-class as devotees of assimilation (perhaps a result of his reliance on the seminal study of Frazier), but he is generally quite persuasive. Some may take issue with his attitudes on the literature of the Harlem Renaissance and gender dynamics in Black America, too.
The "blues continuum" concept for understanding Black music after the rise of radio and "race records" is an interesting way of understanding the continued links connecting country blues, urban blues, jazz, and R&B, not to mention the reaction and counterreactions that characterize the rise of of bebop, R&B, and avant-garde jazz. The cleavage between the Black masses and the bourgeoisie of the race are also interesting dynamics to consider in terms of the transformation of jazz in the 1920s and 1930s. Gunther Schuller's study of jazz includes some of these insights, but not quite in as forceful a manner as that of Jones, although the former certainly includes greater musicological insight and analysis.
Baraka brings to the table a deeper understanding of the blues as it pertains to African American culture and identity than Schuller, however. He also demonstrates why it is that jazz in particular, of all the blues-influenced forms of Black music, could appeal so widely and become flexible enough to absorb all kinds of influences so that whites and middle-class blacks could become innovative in it. For that reason, Blues People should continue to be read as a study of music as a way of understanding Black America and the social context of its music. Jazz aficionados have much to learn from this, in spite of its shortcomings.
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