Source+Seven

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 * The Blues & Jazz**

1. The blues and jazz have much in common, from their origins in the African-American communities of the southern United States at the beginning of the 20th century to their spread, through the then-developing media of sound recordings and radio broadcasts, to national and international art forms.

2. Both the blues and jazz have multiple definitions that sometimes go beyond music and speak to the processes and viewpoints that give these revered musical art forms relevance today.

3. From the perspective of musical structure, jazz as we know it would not exist without the blues.

4. The twelve-bar blues chorus, with its familiar harmonic structure and narrative form, was the single most popular template for early jazz improvisation, as compact yet profound in its way as the sonnet proved to be in the realm of poetry.

5. From the outset, the blues frequently deviated from its twelve-bar form, and jazz musicians have similarly displayed a willingness to bend the blues to their own devices.

6. The interaction between those considered blues and jazz musicians, respectively, has also been a constant.

7. Two of today's leading jazz ensembles, the World Saxophone Quartet and the Mingus Big Band, have linked the blues and politics in recent album titles.

8. The bond between the blues and jazz has only been strengthened by the many connotations beyond the musical definitions of these two art forms.

9. When we view the blues as an attitude of facing the uncertainties of existence with a clear vision, a sense of humor and a spirit of resilience, and when we view jazz as a process for ensuring meaningful and spontaneous collective creation, it becomes even clearer that the blues and jazz only reinforce each other.

10. The twelve-bar blues chorus, with its familiar harmonic structure and narrative form, was the single most popular template for early jazz improvisation, as compact yet profound in its way as the sonnet proved to be in the realm of poetry.

11. As jazz evolved and jazz musicians applied more sophisticated ideas of rhythm and harmony, the blues remained a constant, the basis for such influential recordings...

12. Even more frequently, what is involved is the application of blue notes in a scale or blues phrasing to non-blues material.

13. These may be the ultimate examples of improvisers steeped in an aura of the blues.

14. R&B then begat rock and roll, which ultimately fed the fusion movement in jazz, just as the "soulful" jazz of modernists such as Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons had its impact via funk on more contemporary blues.

15. ...Despite a half-century of composing that led him to write extended suites and programs of sacred music, continued to employ the blues as the primary template in his arsenal.