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Topic: A minor theological problem Return to archive Page: 1 2
May 22nd, 2004 06:46 PM
Ten Thousand Motels I've never understood, at least completely, why they call the blues the "devil's music". Over the years I've argued over this with everyone from ministers to hippies.
May 22nd, 2004 06:53 PM
not bound to please
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
I've never understood, at least completely, why they call the blues the "devil's music". Over the years I've argued over this with everyone from ministers to hippies.



control

May 22nd, 2004 07:03 PM
polksalad69 Does Robert Palmer's Deep Blues go into that? It's been awhile since I read it.
May 22nd, 2004 07:14 PM
glencar This is a theological problem? Innerrestin'...
May 22nd, 2004 07:36 PM
Main Offender Look at American history, the blacks have always been persecuted and still are. So, for them to make music, it must be from the 'devil',right? And the blues began literally as songs sung after a long, hard days work. Maybe the blacks themselves thought of those tiring days as days from hell. Right now I have three books on the blues coming from amazon so I really want to learn about what made the Stones become the Stones. And I think it starts in the Delta.
May 22nd, 2004 10:08 PM
polksalad69
quote:
Main Offender wrote:
Right now I have three books on the blues coming from amazon


what books, just curious?
May 22nd, 2004 10:48 PM
PolkSalad search google groups

http://groups.google.com/grphp?hl=en

for devils music, you'll find it discussed on blue-l
May 22nd, 2004 11:24 PM
Bloozehound Early blues was like the hiphop/gangsta rap culture of today - very controversial, raw, edgy, lotta soul, truthful, in your face - not to mention EXTREMELY SEXUAL, which white, uptight(tampon) victorian, middleclass America found outragous, dangerous & fascinated with at the same time, hence the devils music. Toss in the bible thumbin principles & prejudice against black "pagonistic" voodoo african culture that was also a part of black rural south -and you found white, angst ridden, teens doing what they do best - rebelling against the norm.

Remember Elvis at first just tried to sound like a black memphis bluesman singin Big Mama Thortons "aint nothing but a houndog"

It's really no different than what the Beastie Boys and say Vanilla Ice have done,(with different levels of succession) today with rap music.

It was dangerious and at the same time a rich musical heritage whose time had came & converged.
May 22nd, 2004 11:30 PM
Bloozehound Not mention up until say the 60's british invasion, white boys couldn't figure out how to make that lead guitar talk - see early clarence gatemouth brown, t-bone walker, bb king...ect...ect...a trait we take for granted in todays music world
May 23rd, 2004 12:15 AM
stonedinaustralia it can go back as far as the middle ages when certain tones and musical motifs were forbidden

i forget exactly when but back in the 1400's 1500's a Papal Edict was issued concerning the use of music in connection with worship - basically singing was to be in unison (i.e. all singing the same note)- some minor harmonizing (i.e. octaves and fifth's) was allowed - but only a little as too much musical "colour" would, it was felt, detract the singers from the purpose of the singing -- that concnetrating on the lyrical content of the hymns

one particular musical interval was considered with such horror that it was named "Diablo in Musica" - that interval was the flattened fifth which (along with the flattened third) is a the key to the "blues scale"

the pharse "why should the devil have all the good tunes" apparently comes from around the turn of the 19th/20th Century - an English Salvation Army officer began setting christian hymns and songs to tunes which resembled (or even fully adopted) popular tunes of the times. Of course the more conservative elements of the church were, again, horrified
May 23rd, 2004 02:01 AM
Bloozehound as they say on the "tv" yada yada yada

in other words rebelliousness has always came from those that oppose the accepted or the norm

in our little slit of time it happened to be in the form of black spirituals
May 23rd, 2004 06:37 AM
caro
quote:
Over the years I've argued over this with everyone from ministers to hippies.

What did they all tell ya?

Just a thought, not backed up by any particular blues-knowledge : Maybe it's not the devil that defines the blues, but the blues that defines the devil...
I was thinking of what how other slave descendants have used the figure of the devil in haïtian vodoun : with the help of some really weird syncretism, the devil has become Papa Legba, who is at the same time St. Peter, St Martin, the master of keys, the spirit of crossroads (where humans and gods meet), and "the Lame One". They kind of stripped the devil's figure of a big part of its meaning (especially the evilness) and filled it with plenty of new meanings.
I can imagine that a similar thing happened (in a non religious way) when the blues was born -- especially since voodoo also exists in the south of the USA.
May 23rd, 2004 09:15 AM
Water Dragon I am enjoying this thread...TTM, that Maine water is doing you a heap of good!
May 23rd, 2004 09:31 AM
J.J.Flash vide Robert Johnson (at least, all the chit-chat about him).
[Edited by J.J.Flash]
May 23rd, 2004 10:51 AM
Main Offender
quote:
polksalad69 wrote:


what books, just curious?



These are now "shipped":
The Life and Legend of Leadbelly
Between Midnight and Day:The Last Published Blues Archive
Robert Johnson:King of Delta Blues
The Blues Highway: New Orleans to Chicago

I have no idea which one I'll start with. They should come next week.?
May 23rd, 2004 11:01 AM
polksalad69
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
it can go back as far as the middle ages when certain tones and musical motifs were forbidden


Somewhere between the middle ages and the 50s the blues was considered the devil's music. Did white American teenagers even know about the blues in the 20s? Saturday night music was the devil's, it sure wasn't church music. Too much sex and booze.

quote:
one particular musical interval was considered with such horror that it was named "Diablo in Musica" - that interval was the flattened fifth which (along with the flattened third) is a the key to the "blues scale"



I remember reading the flatted fifth was satanic, never heard about the IIIrd tho...

May 23rd, 2004 02:25 PM
scratched
quote:
polksalad69 wrote:
I remember reading the flatted fifth was satanic, never heard about the IIIrd tho...




He means the flattened third played with the flattened fifth results in an 'evil' diminished chord. This wasn't just frowned upon back then, it was illegal! True.
May 23rd, 2004 02:34 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
Water Dragon wrote:
I am enjoying this thread...TTM, that Maine water is doing you a heap of good!



Water!!???! Well not exactly water.
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]

Interview with Gayle Dean Wardlow-good stuff
http://www.bluesworld.com/Gayle
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels]
May 23rd, 2004 03:40 PM
Nasty Habits Because black people sang it and it made white people go crazy.

And black people go crazy.

And crazy's for church or the bedroom.

That's an easy one, 10,000.

May 23rd, 2004 03:45 PM
polksalad69
quote:
Nasty Habits wrote:
Because black people sang it and it made white people go crazy.




When did the blues first make white people go crazy?
May 23rd, 2004 03:51 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
Nasty Habits wrote:
Because black people sang it and it made white people go crazy.

And black people go crazy.

And crazy's for church or the bedroom.

That's an easy one, 10,000.




LOL. Thanks for that. Now I'm not so scared of eternal damnation. Because listening to this blues stuff seems almost angelic to me. Alot of these songs on this compilation I just bought are just one guy and a guitar and maybe a harmonica. Somehow it has a symphonic quality to it.

May 23rd, 2004 03:52 PM
Bloozehound
quote:
polksalad69 wrote:


When did the blues first make white people go crazy?



When their kids started singing it
May 23rd, 2004 10:37 PM
stonedinaustralia
quote:
polksalad69 wrote:


Saturday night music was the devil's, it sure wasn't church music.




that's right, church music was for Sunday morning

in line with this topic:

those of you with Stanley Booth's "True Adventures" will recall there's a transcript of Jerry Lee Lewis agonizing over whether his singing rock and roll would send him to hell

Little Richard also worried about this a great deal - to the point that he renounced rock and roll for the church at one stage


and of course Ray Charles upset quite a few people, particularly among the black community, by taking gospel musical ideas and combing them with what you would call blues' lyrical pre-occupations - a mixture of the sacred and the secular

also re my post above - as soon as i made it i realised mu error - the blues scale is, of course, based on the flattened third and the flattened seventh but, as scratched pointed out, with the flattened fifth you get a diminished chord
May 24th, 2004 02:27 AM
Taptrick -

And let's not forget the wholle idea of The Crossroad's and Robert Johnson selling his sole for guitar ability. Will Ferrel did a hilarious bit on this with Garth Brooks. Garth played a looser guy who couldn't write a song when Will Ferrell shows up as the devil with an electric guitar...except he sucks and can't play a lick! He strikes a deal with Garth but after several attempts Garth says they should should just cut the deal off. Will has some hilarious lines: "The guitar was out of tune!" "This is hard!" - Then as he gives up Garth says "What was I thinking? The devil can't write no love songs..." Then he starts to play a killer little chord sequence with that lyric. Surprised he hasn't written it out.


-
May 24th, 2004 10:17 AM
dkmonroe
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
I've never understood, at least completely, why they call the blues the "devil's music". Over the years I've argued over this with everyone from ministers to hippies.



I think it has to do with the fact that blues music was gospel music at first. Blues musicians took the melodies and the structure of gospel and changed it into songs singing about sex and booze and murder and other, not just merely "worldly", but manifestly "evil" topics. In other words, it was like taking Gregorian Chant and using it to sing "Darling Nikki."

And for those who want to inject race into it, I'm quite sure that it wasn't just white people who called it "the devil's music." Blues was controversial in the black community as well, just 30 years earlier than it was in suburbia. Not to say that it wasn't a racial issue for some people - it certainly was - but that's only part of the story.
[Edited by dkmonroe]
May 24th, 2004 10:19 AM
jb I think the Flip Wilson show had something to do with it.
May 24th, 2004 12:43 PM
polksalad69
quote:
dkmonroe wrote:
And for those who want to inject race into it, I'm quite sure that it wasn't just white people who called it "the devil's music." Blues was controversial in the black community as well, just 30 years earlier than it was in suburbia. Not to say that it wasn't a racial issue for some people - it certainly was - but that's only part of the story.




YES, I couldn't quite experss that yesterday. Sunday brain fog, ugh!!!
May 24th, 2004 12:53 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
dkmonroe wrote:
And for those who want to inject race into it, I'm quite sure that it wasn't just white people who called it "the devil's music." Blues was controversial in the black community as well, just 30 years earlier than it was in suburbia. Not to say that it wasn't a racial issue for some people - it certainly was - but that's only part of the story.



Yeah. There are some people who are just so unhappy with their own lives that watching someone else enjoy themselves is an affront.
May 24th, 2004 01:35 PM
dkmonroe
quote:
jb wrote:
I think the Flip Wilson show had something to do with it.



Yeah, but he don't want credit for the blues!
May 24th, 2004 01:50 PM
dkmonroe
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:


Yeah. There are some people who are just so unhappy with their own lives that watching someone else enjoy themselves is an affront.



Well, I don't wanna be too nitpicky, but I don't think people's problem with the blues had anything to do with people enjoying themselves. The gospel music that seeded the blues was nothing if not intensely, ecstatically joyous. Arguably, the blues isn't about enjoying yourself - that's the whole problem. Instead of being about salvation and the joy of it, the blues is about sin and its misery. And if that sounds too fundamentalist, just give a listen to the early blues artists. That theme is all over their songs.

Rock'n'roll, however is all about happiness. Problem is, it's about taking pleasure in all the things the blues calls "sin". Which is why Jerry Lee Lewis said he had the devil in him, and that rock'n'roll couldn't be redeemed.

Rock'n'roll is Saturday night. The Blues is Sunday morning, but you ain't in church. And you know you should be!
[Edited by dkmonroe]
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