Jazz Weigel

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Dancigers, Mark

Area of Concentration

General Studies

Abstract

This thesis explores the power of the Blues and how it has the capacity to unite individuals and bring about change within society through its tradition of call and response. Call and response is explored in depth within the music itself as well as between the musicians and the audience. With the support of music philosophers Susan Langer and Leonard Meyer, I set up call and response as a communicative tool between past and present musicians and between the musician and the world. The world’s call, in this instance, would be defined as the state of society at a given point and time and the demands for change within that society whether it be in regards to race, gender, or sexuality. When t he world calls on the musician for change, the musician responds. Society responds to the musician’s musical response, which in return calls out to new musicians. New musicians continue to respond to the changed world and continue to seek further change. Angela Davis supports this idea in her book Blues Legacies And Black Feminists, in which she describes the 1920s blues women and their songs as a “cultural precursor” to the 1960s feminist and black movements. This thesis also explores the “blues consciousness” and the question that blues artists have asked throughout time -- why is man so unkind, so unjust, so prejudiced. This question is a call out to the world and the blues artists responded not with an answer or explanation but with solidarity, recognition, and reassurance that we are not alone in this struggle. Without erasing the identity and origins of blues music, I claim that blues can be unity music; with the capacity to unite not just within black culture, but within humanity, the human race.

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