Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Arts & Architecture
Jazz, blues, country and rock music all were born in the eastern USA, and
their beats permeate clubs and juke joints from north to south. New York re-
mains the dynamic heart of the theater and art worlds, while great literature
finds its voice throughout the region. In the meantime, architects in New
York and Chicago keep pushing ever higher.
Music
Blues
Willie Dixon said it best: 'The blues is the roots, and everything else is the fruits.' He
meant that all US music starts with the blues. And the blues started in the South. That's
where the genre developed out of the work songs, or 'shouts,' of black slaves and out of
black spiritual songs and their call-and-response pattern, both of which were adaptations
of African music.
By the 1920s, Delta blues typified the sound. Musicians from Memphis to Mississippi
sung passionate, plaintive melodies accompanied by a lonely slide guitar. Traveling blues
musicians, and particularly female blues singers, gained fame and employment across the
South. Early pioneers included Robert Johnson, WC Handy, Ma Rainey, Huddie Ledbetter
(aka Lead Belly) and Bessie Smith, who some consider the best blues singer who ever
lived.
After WWII many musicians headed north to Chicago, which had become a hub for
African American culture. And here the genre took a turn - it went electric. A new gener-
ation of players such as Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, BB King and John Lee Hooker
plugged in to amps, and their screaming guitars laid the groundwork for rock and roll.
Jazz
Down in New Orleans, Congo Sq, where slaves gathered to sing and dance from the late
18th century onward, is considered the birthplace of jazz. There ex-slaves adapted the
reed, horn and string instruments used by the city's multiracial Creoles - who themselves
preferred formal European music - to play their own African-influenced music. This fer-
tile cross-pollination produced a steady stream of innovative sound.
The first variation was ragtime, so-called because of its 'ragged', syncopated African
rhythms. Next came Dixieland jazz, centered on New Orleans' infamous Storyville red-
