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From: Anthony May
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 11:12:57 +1000 (EST)
Subject: blue note, instruments and cultural transfer

Regarding the blue notes and related scales and idioms

John Thaden wrote
>And then take a
>quick listen to musicologists' recordings of African drum and vocal music.
>The connection is obvious. Early blues and gospel singers weren't singing
>Western scales wrong, but African scales beautifully.

and Pate Missin wrote
>It seems to be derived from African ideas of
>melodic construction and can be described in terms of extended Just
>Intonation.

Whilst I agree with John and Pat (they aren't saying anything contentious,
after all), I recently came across an interesting book which caused me to
begin a rethink of a history which had for too long been settled in my
mind.

In 'The Origins of the Popular Style: The antecedents of twentieth century
popular music', by Peter Van der Merwe (Oxford University Press, 1989), the
author makes the claim, substantiated to some extent, that the use of the
flatted third and seventh is common to both African and
English/Irish/Scottish (folk/popular) musics and they both derive from
earlier Arabic music. One thing he sees as significant for the use of this
idiom is the interplay of instrumentation when each of the musics reach the
American shores, the African being based around things like the banjo and
the European using the fiddle. This is a gross oversimplification on my
part and Van der Merwe does attempt to draw some distinction when
discussing African music, i.e., that there is no African music but a range
of musics which are spread around the entire continent. The shorthand here
is for West African musics. But there is an interesting issue of the dual
influences of scales and instrumentation.

Perhaps this is one of the things at the root of the particular role of the
diatonic in contemporary music. The development of a musical idiom based
around the missing notes on an instrument has given it a particular form of
expression that cannot be taken up by other instruments, or that doesn't
need to be taken up by other instruments. Certainly it would seem that
that the history of influence has been one way, that is, people can play
melodies from all sorts of other instruments on the diatonic but other
instruments don't strive to adapt harmonica stylings to their repertoire.

That's the ridiculous thing about harmonicas. You pick them up, then you
start reading music and then you start reading books. When will it ever
end?

Just my AUS$0.02 (and even without the pitiful exchange rates, that isn't
worth too much),
Cheers,
Tony May a.m~ailbox.gu.edu.au