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Narrative Time in the Blues: Son House’s “Death Letter” (1965)

Narrative Time in the Blues: Son House’s “Death Letter” (1965) JULIA SIMON Narrative Time in the Blues: Son House’s “Death Letter” (1965) Blues songs from the folk tradition are often characterized as lacking a coherent narrative structure. David Evans has analyzed in detail the construction of folk blues out of local tradition, emphasizing the often- arbitrary character of the relation between stanzas. Folk-blues singers construct their songs in the moment, from a stock of traditional lyrics, melodies, and guitar parts, often building from what Evans terms a “blues core” to produce a song. This compositional method gives rise to lyrics that seem disjointed or only loosely connected. Contrast and association often serve as logical structures or techniques that roughly organize what appear on the surface to be almost random sets of stanzas. Because of the deterministic relationship between the folk tradition and the actual music produced, what constitutes a song in the folk blues differs from more stable conceptions in other musical traditions. Not only do we need to adapt our notion of creativity in the normal sense of originality or self-expression in order to allow for it to be reshaped by the relationship to the tradition, but we need to shift our conception of what constitutes a song http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Music University of Illinois Press

Narrative Time in the Blues: Son House’s “Death Letter” (1965)

American Music , Volume 31 (1) – Sep 1, 2013

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Publisher
University of Illinois Press
ISSN
1945-2349

Abstract

JULIA SIMON Narrative Time in the Blues: Son House’s “Death Letter” (1965) Blues songs from the folk tradition are often characterized as lacking a coherent narrative structure. David Evans has analyzed in detail the construction of folk blues out of local tradition, emphasizing the often- arbitrary character of the relation between stanzas. Folk-blues singers construct their songs in the moment, from a stock of traditional lyrics, melodies, and guitar parts, often building from what Evans terms a “blues core” to produce a song. This compositional method gives rise to lyrics that seem disjointed or only loosely connected. Contrast and association often serve as logical structures or techniques that roughly organize what appear on the surface to be almost random sets of stanzas. Because of the deterministic relationship between the folk tradition and the actual music produced, what constitutes a song in the folk blues differs from more stable conceptions in other musical traditions. Not only do we need to adapt our notion of creativity in the normal sense of originality or self-expression in order to allow for it to be reshaped by the relationship to the tradition, but we need to shift our conception of what constitutes a song

Journal

American MusicUniversity of Illinois Press

Published: Sep 1, 2013

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