Abstract
In this article certain aspects of the history of blues music are analysed using a field theoretical approach. The analysis shows that blues music – in particular in the ‘classic blues’ of the 1920s – had a far-reaching impact on various subfields of cultural production in the United States, whether in the form of ‘race records’ in the popular music segment or of the Harlem Renaissance, which was located in the literary-artistic field. A fundamental element of all aspects of cultural production in the United States in the 1920s was the structural effect of the ‘colour line’, itself a consequence of racist segregation in American society. Alongside the musical colour line with its mechanisms of exclusion and accompanying cultural appropriation, one of the field effects examined is also the generation of ‘racial pride’ and the invention of a music that was to have an enormous influence in the course of the 20th century. It is thus recommended that a broader perspective be taken of Bourdieu’s heteronomous pole in the field of cultural production.
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Notes
- 1.
Field theory is understood here as the research tradition initiated by Pierre Bourdieu. For a more current discussion of field theory, see for example Hilgers and Mangez (2015).
- 2.
An example for the encoded imitations of these imitations is given by Amiri Baraka. The “cakewalk”, which became a famous dance in the minstrel shows, was an imitation by African Americans of the sometimes pretentious way their white “masters” would walk. Baraka comments: “I find the idea of white minstrels in blackface satirizing a dance satirizing themselves a remarkable kind of irony—which, I suppose, is the whole point of the minstrels” (Baraka 1963, p. 86).
- 3.
For criticism of Handy, see for example the comment by George: “One of worst offenders was black middle-class composer W.C. Handy, who is called the father of the blues only because he was one of the first to commit it to sheet music” (George 1988, p. 20). See also the comment by Hamilton on the origin myth of the blues: “No one knows who sang the first blues, or where they sang it, or when” (2001, p. 22).
- 4.
“Honey, don’t play me no opera/ Play me some blue melody/ I don’t care nothing about Carmen/ When I hear those harmonies” Marion Harris, “Paradise Blues” (Victor 18,152, 1916) as quoted in Miller (2010, p. 153).
- 5.
- 6.
Albert Murray (1976) has pointed out that the term “race” in the 1920s did not have a negative connotation for African Americans: “The fact remains—oblivious as certain critics may be to it—that in the black press of the 1920s the most prominent Negro leaders and spokesmen referred to themselves as race spokesmen and race leaders … the indignation over the race terminology as applied to records has been misguided at best” quoted in Nelson George (1988, p. 20).
- 7.
Suisman writes about Bessie Smith: “When she stopped abruptly in the middle of her first test recording and said, ‘Hold on, let me spit,’ she thrust herself outside the ‘respectable’ model of musicianship that Black Swan endorsed, and the company declined to add her to its roster” (Suisman 2009, p. 221).
- 8.
- 9.
In this context, the career of white jazz musician Paul Whiteman comes to mind (Lemke 1998, pp. 59–61).
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Acknowledgements
For their helpful criticism I would like to thank Alenka Barber-Kersov, Lisa Gaupp, Annette Grigoleit and Volker Kirchberg. Special thanks go to Paul Lauer, who translated the text from german to english.
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Behnke, C. (2022). On the History of the Blues in the Field of Music Production in the United States Beginning in the 20th Century: A Field Theoretical Approach. In: Gaupp, L., Barber-Kersovan, A., Kirchberg, V. (eds) Arts and Power. Kunst und Gesellschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37429-7_10
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