And Frank stage diving to the fourth row.

Where'd you see them, Trudy?

So during this last group's interminable van rides, we got into a big argument about music. Perhaps unsurprising, you get a bunch of artists together, they're going to argue. But I thought the premise for this one was fascinating, and wondered if Buffistas had an opinion.

My opponent's argument was that the umbrella/root of all modern music was rock. I and my compatriot argued that it is blues.

He says that music critics (Rolling Stone?) say it is rock, and I say that the said critics are often subject to a racial bias (okay, I didn't bring up race until a good half-hour into the conversation, but still, I think it figures) that prevents them from acknowledging blues.

I think blues is much more fundamental to the various genres of music that have emerged since the era in question, influencing both form and harmonic structure. I see rock as springing from blues, along with many others.

What do you guys think? Do you see rock as a better overarching term?

Rock *was* born of the blues, so I don't really see how you can skip over it.

Blues all the way.

Rock *was* born of the blues, so I don't really see how you can skip over it.

Yeah. Without blues, there would be no rock.

All hard rock is based on the blues. Blues is, of course, also the root of Jazz.

Country music actually has a lot of blues in it also.

Of course, Gospel is also a huge influence and that rarely gets noted. But all those early uptempo R&B songs are basically gospel structures.

There's also a surprising latin influence that sort of courses through the music (the Bo Diddley beat is actually a latin beat. Same for "Louie Louie").

But yeah, blues is the big river that American music flows from.

You go back far enough and folk, blues, and gospel are pretty much the same thing.

Incidentally, I reviewed a documentary about music in the Civil Rights Movement that played on PBS's American Experience the other night called Soundtrack For A Revolution: [link]

One of the interesting facts that came out of it was that much of the music we associate with the movement was brought to some of the organizers by a couple of white folksingers. True, some of the songs were spirituals, some were folk songs, and some were blues songs, but in the early part of the 20th century, those kinds of genre distinctions were primarily made by the race of the singer and how often they mentioned Jesus.

those kinds of genre distinctions were primarily made by the race of the singer and how often they mentioned Jesus.

This dynamic was noted in the Greil Marcus edited Stranded in the chapter on the gospel songwriter Thomas Dorsey (not the Dorsey Brother), where the white writer was working for Civil Rights and some young black kid asked, "How come you keep changing the word "Jesus" to "Freedom" in all these songs?"

Ha! I've actually had Thomas Dorsey in my mix lately.

You know what you want but didn't realize it until right now?

The Clash board game. (Download it and print it out! You can play at home.)