Thx Michael. I need to look into Palmer's thought's (and maybe earlier sounds) as he was obviously a very knowledgeable bloke.
>-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 2:38 AM >To: Maxim Sullivan >Cc: [email protected] >Subject: Re: (313) Work posts and blank > > > > > > >here's a great passage from "Deep Blues" by Robert Palmer that I think can >be applied to Detroit techno & house > >Here he is addressing "blue notes" > >"This is the expressive core of the hollers, work songs, spirituals that >have not been substantially influenced by white church music, and later the >blues, especially Delta blues. You can hear it, or suggestions of it, in >African vocal music from Senegambia to the Congo, and it has special >significance among the Akan-speaking people of Ghana, who suffered the >depredations of English and American slavers through most of the period of >the slave trade. Akan is a pitch-tone language in which rising emotion is >expressed by falling pitch, and in Akan song rising emotion is often >expressed by flattening the third. There seems to be a direct continuity >between this tendency and blues singing, for blues singers habitually use >falling pitches to raise the emotional temperature of a performance. >Usually these falling pitches are thirds, but Muddy Waters and other >vocalists and guitarists from the Delta tradition also employ falling >fifths, often with shattering emotional effect." > >It's not a great leap to follow the tradition - > >MEK > >
