John Doe
MU 010
Blues and Hip Hop Essay
Comparing the Blues and Hip Hop To the inexperienced listener, the blues and hip hop might appear to be worlds apart musically and culturally. While these two genres are almost a century apart in their formation, they actually share numerous qualities in terms of musicality, culture, and purpose. The blues is a predecessor to hip hop and is one of the biggest influences on what hip hop became. Both genres inherited many musical elements from traditional African music, both genres are very referential to songs and artists who came before them, and both serve as outlets of expression for disenfranchised African Americans. While both genres have expanded and diversified as they’ve matured, both began with a minimalist sound. This means there was not an overabundance of instruments being played. The blues could simply be a single performer with an acoustic guitar, but often included a band consisting of a drummer and bass player as well. Hip hop could simply be a rapper performing with a prerecorded backing track, but often included a drummer, bass player, guitarist, and/or disc jockey. Unlike big bands or large ensembles, both genres’ emphasis was usually on a single performer while the other musicians were simply a backing band. In class we watched an interview with Eric Clapton where he said the blues appealed to him because it seemed like “one man against the world.” For the blues is was usually the singer/guitar who grabbed the attention of the performance, for hip hop it was the rapper. Both genres also utilized traditional African music elements of call and response and ostinatos. In African music, the audience was a part of the performance. While blues music’s call and response was usually between performers in the band, rappers very often use call and response with a live or prerecorded audience. Ostinatos is the repetition of a musical phrase or idea, often to emphasize a certain idea or theme within the song. Both genres utilize ostinatos extensively. Several African oral traditions have been utilized by both genres as well. The most obvious is oral story telling, or “toasting.” Many blues and hip hop songs tell stories of different scenes in the singer/narrator’s life. These stories are often meant to emphasize certain problems with society or to celebrate a certain idea. Boasting also appears in both genres. Singers often use their lyrics to aggrandize themselves, either jokingly or very seriously. Finally, the African oral game of “playing the dozens” appears in both genres. Whereas boasting is self-aggrandizement, playing the dozens is talking down another person, both to attack them and aggrandize the person speaking. There is a special relationship between the voice of the performer and the instrumental music in both the blues and hip hop. In blues, the singer often conveys strong emotions with embellished vocal styles. Many blues musicians consider the guitar to be an extension of the voice, or the voice to be another instrument in the song. In hip hop the rapper's lines have a rhythmic quality that fits with the strong beat. The lines are usually spoken instead of sung, but they have percussive elements to them, as well as the vocal style of “beat-boxing” where the performer is truly imitating percussion. Both genres share many cultural elements as well. First, both genres refer extensive to artists who came before them. In the blues, there are hundreds of songs known as “standards,” some of which do not even have a known composer, which are passed down, covered, and reinterpreted by countless artists learning the blues. Blues artists often pay tribute to their predecessors by covering their songs or collaborating with them. In hip hop, and especially early hip hop, the music was largely built on “sampling”. Sampling is when a disc jockey or music producers will take individual elements of songs by other artists and combine them with other samples to create an entirely new song. The originality here is in the arrangement and utilization of the samples. Hip hop artists also pay tribute to predecessors and collaborate with older artists. Another interesting similarity between both genres is the distinctive sub genres within them that are closely tied to geographic locations. Other musical genres do have some sub genres that are tied to geographic locations, but for these genres the sub genres can be very distinct and are closely tied to their area of origin. There is Mississippi delta blues, Chicago blues, Piedmont blues, Texas blues, etc. Hip hop has east coast rap, west coast rap, g-funk, dirty south rap etc. For each genre the location of the sub genre developed its own unique voice and style under the greater umbrella genre. Blues and hip hop also have the distinction of being extensively African American art forms used as outlets of social expression. Blues was born out of the post-war south in the failure of reconstruction. Hip hop was born out of New York and inner city in the aftermath of failed, or at least greatly stunted, reforms spurred from the civil rights movement in the 1960's. In both eras African Americans were greatly impoverished, lacked opportunities for social mobility, and were targets of white ruling class exploitation. Day to day life was a great struggle and both genres were used as outlets to express sadness, frustration, and often times a yearning desire for escapism from the conditions these people lived under. In conclusion, the blues and hip hop share numerous musical and cultural elements that were influenced by traditional African music. Both genres have strong connections to their past and draw on past artists for inspiration and thematic references. Both genres also have numerous geographically tied sub genres that are very distinct from each other. Finally, both genres are strong outlets of expression for African Americans who live in an unequal society showcasing their frustration, sadness, heartbreak, and desire to escape their conditions in order to live a better life.

Works Cited
1) Ethan Goffman http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/aamusic/review.pdf 2) Elijah Wald http://www.elijahwald.com/hipblues.html 3)Even Eskew
http://www.davidsonian.com/connections-blues-and-hip-hop-1.1742163#.U16afvldXD4