Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Time in the Blues

Time in the Blues

Simon, Julia

Hardcover

Blues & SoulMusic Theory

ISBN10: 0190666552
ISBN13: 9780190666552
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Sep 15 2017
Pages: 274
Weight: 1.10
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
Spontaneity, immediacy and feeling characterize the blues as a genre. Whether it's the movement of call and response, the expressive bends and wails of voice and instruments or the synergistic relationship between audience and performers, the blues embody a kind of living in the moment aesthetic. At the same time, the blues genre has always responded in a unique way to its historical moment, its formal characteristics, figures, and devices constantly emerging from--and speaking to--the social relations emanating from Jim Crow segregation, sharecropping, racist violence, and migration.

Time in the Blues presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the specific forms of temporality produced by and reflected in the blues. Examining time as it is represented, enacted, and experienced through the blues, interdisciplinary scholar Julia Simon addresses how the material conditions in the early twentieth century shaped a musical genre. The technical aspects of the blues--ostinato patterns, cyclical changes, improvisation, call and response--emerge from and speak to the Jim Crow era's economic, social, and political relations. Through this temporal analysis, Simon addresses how the moment-to-moment aspect of time in blues performance relates to the genre's location within historical time, with careful examinations of the historical performance and reception of blues music from the 1920s to the present day. Simon examines the structuring of time, and analyzes temporality to open the broader questions of desire, agency, self-definition, faith, and forms of resistance as they are articulated in this music. Ultimately, Time in the Blues, argues for the relevance, significance, and importance of time in the blues for shared values of community and a vision of social justice.

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