In Search of the B in R&B

     It is inevitable that with every R&B release someone will question whether or not the genre has moved too far away from its blues roots. While the question can be--and often is--a desire to search out the particular sonic logic of an album and artist, it always risks denying R&B the possibility of evolution. To question the presence of the blues in R&B is to understand both it and the Blues as static, knowable and permanent forms. This is particularly problematic in a genre that has traditionally found its greatest strengths in its ability to cultivate an aesthetic that responds to both the circumstances of the current moment and the tastes and interests of the Black community in the present.

    I suspect much of the problem lies in definition. Questions of this sort often conflate two distinct usages of the term Blues. Namely, genre is understood to be the same as practice. The mistake is easy to make. After all, the blues as practice and the blues genre share the same name. Worse yet, they are intertwined in such a way as to appear--at certain moments--indistinguishable from one another. Thus, a certain amount of parsing is necessary. Most generally, the blues as a genre refers to a particular form most often associated with cities and areas like Memphis, Chicago, the Delta and the Piedmont in the first half of the 20th Century.  In contrast, the blues as a practice describes a method by which a musician enters into an on going dialogue with the past so to articulate his or her present. Of these two meanings, I want to suggest that the blues in R&B functions as a practice rather than a reiteration of the genre.  To not distinguish between practice and genre is to continually search for traces that may or may not be present.

     Historically speaking, even the earliest forms of R&B did not require direct links to the blues proper. Listeners to this era will often find a unique synthesis of Gospel and secular sounds.


The Caravans:

Ray Charles:

Charles distils The Caravan's 1955 performance to its purely sonic qualities in "This Little Girl of Mine." 

And listeners to later R&B are more likely to hear allusions to songs from the era just proceeding the song than they are to hear songs that quote directly from the blues.

The Persuaders:

Lenny Williams:

R. Kelly:

Kelly takes the chords and general phrasing from The Persuaders and both quotes Lenny Williams (Oh Oh Oh) and makes use Williams' talk-over bridge (3:39 in the Williams and 1:43 in the Kelly) 

Even when songs do reach back to the blues era, however, their primary importance is the way in which they make use of the song. 

Roberta Flack: 

Eugene McDaniel's lyrics allude to the African American folk song "'Twas One Sunday Morning." 

Oscar Brown Jr.: 

From 1960, Brown's "Bid 'Em In" makes use of both sparse instrumentation and cadences that recall both the auction block and field calls.

Matana Roberts:

And in the fifth section of 2010's Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres, Roberts quotes from "Bid 'Em In."

Each of these artists offer easily identified analogues to past works. Yet, it is not their source material that place their songs within blues practice--at least not singularly. Rather, the earlier songs serve as points of reference and show how the present and the past both overlap and diverge. More pointedly, all of the artists use the discursive space constructed by their respective sources as the foundations upon which they build the realities of their current moment.

 

      In contrast to the blues as genre, then, blues practice does not oblige a direct, one to one connection to past iterations of the form. It merely demands that one employ a method and perspective that knows and responds to the proceeding tradition. In other words, whether a song responds to Gospel, as Ray Charles does in the 1950s, or to 70s fusion and funk, as Mary J. Blige does in the 1990s, the R&B perspective is grounded within a particular set of sonic, cultural and political concerns linked to the African American community. How these responses make use of previous works varies. One can counter a past work.

Roy Ayers:

Mary J. Blige:

Blige's "My Life" complicates Ayers' relatively hopeful "Everybody Loves The Sunshine" by confronting the ways in which the expectation of happiness elides more important issues.

 Or one can agree.


Ohio Players: 

Mary J. Blige:  

 The competing boasts of Puba and Blige at the beginning of "What's The 411" update The Ohio Players confrontation of the ways in which "Pride and Vanity" serve to distance men and women. 

     Like Flack, Brown, Roberts and Kelly, Mary J. Blige enters into a particular discursive space. That is to say, her use of 70s music responds to the questions, concerns and styles put forth by the artists from which she borrows by extending the conversation to her particular moment. And just as Stesasonic reminds us that "a sample is a tactic/A portion of my method, a tool," the blues as a practice uses the past as a tool through which the current moment can be articulated.  Consequently, as the temporal distance from the blues genre widens, so too do the variety of techniques that are available to current musicians. 

     This ever widening pallet does not dilute the tradition, as this post's initial question would imply; rather, its dynamic nature evidences the wide variety of conversations, concerns, disagreements and values within the tradition. What one chooses to respond to functions as an orienting force, and one's sonic and aesthetic decisions locate him or her within a particular politics. Thus, Mary J. Blige's use of samples and rappers makes clear her recognition of rap's role, value and relevance to a particular population within the African American tradition. Her choices, however, do not foreclose the possibility of other forms. In fact, Blige's synthesis of Rap and R&B construct a sonic space upon which female artists could begin to use both forms to confront and subvert misogyny. Of this, Erykah Badu's work provides one of the genre's most powerful examples.

Aaron Neville:

Biggie: 

Erykah Badu:

 Badu's chorus (0:48) quotes from Biggie's "Warning" (1:27),  which, in turn, has quoted from Neville's "Over You" (0:08).

Badu's use of Biggie on "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)" transforms the threats issued in both "Warning" and "Over You" from assertions of violent and misogynistic masculinity into a confrontation of the limited and stereotypical identities available to Black women in a post-Moynihan world. In doing so, she offers a response that negotiates a position that both refuses the identities offered by Biggie's Ready To Die--and much of rap--while also recognizing rap's political and social space as one she not only values but of which she understands herself to be member.

     In light of this, I want to suggest that the blues as a practice recognizes--responds to--the dialectical nature of both tradition and art. More plainly, R&B is a constantly evolving form that is always in a state of becoming and discarding. And one is neither obliged to make obvious references nor is he or she required to formulate a sound that is completely--and impossibly--divorced from influences outside of previous Black musicians.  Rather, an R&B artist metabolizes the full spectrum of styles in order to speak to his or her moment, to his or her demographic. Thus, a contemporary artist like Miguel can traverse a variety of sounds not immediately associated with R&B and still be firmly rooted in the R&B idiom. Indeed, his interpolation of The Zombie's "Time of the Season" on "Don't Look Back" requires listeners to ask "who's your [sonic] daddy." The question of musical parentage is at the core of blues as practice. As Miguel's allusions make clear, it's not merely who we choose that aligns us; it is also why and how we choose to use particular sounds. As such, it's not only the listener that asks Miguel who his daddy is, it is also Miguel who demands that we begin to identify the reasons and logics that go into those we name as musical foremothers and fathers.

The Zombies:

Nirvana:

Miguel:

Robert Glasper Experiment:

Miguel's interpolation of The Zombie's 1960s hit "Time of The Season" is proceeded by Miguel's decision to phrase the first 3/4s of the song in a manner reminiscent of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," a song that R&B singer Bilal and Jazz pianist Robert Glasper have also recently covered.

     This question of sonic and political inheritance is not easily answered, and asking it requires one to interrogate a variety of accepted ideas about the parameters of R&B--and, for that matter, how each of us approaches music. For example, does the continuum that connects The Caravans to Miguel allow room for The Zombies?  At what point does R&B and its requisite "daddies" [and mommies] atomize to the point of becoming something else? Or, more pointedly, is somebody like Miguel more pop than R&B? This last question, I suspect, is at the core of any search for the Blues in R&B. Nevertheless, it is problematic for three reasons.

     First, it attempts to frame pop as a distinct and aesthetically identifiable entity. Under this design, pop music possesses a common sound that unifies all its members and makes them distinct from other genres. Unfortunately, such an understanding ignores the fact that pop music is neither distinct nor aesthetically identifiable. Rather, it is a term that describes its selling potential. As such, any form of music, from Heavy Metal to R&B, has the potential to also be pop. 

    Second, even if one ignores the fluidity of the term and focuses on pop's tendency to favor an easily and immediately accessible sound, a song's generic location is far more complicated than the mere order of notes. As Jazz has demonstrated endlessly, how one interprets those notes is even more important. Thus, what is called pop in one iteration can be and often is transformed into something decidedly different in the next. 

Julie Andrews:

 John Coltrane 1961:

John Coltrane 1965:

Coltrane's transformation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things"
 into an ever more complex exploration of modes is one of the more famous examples of presentation determining the generic status of a song.

 Etta James: 

Avicii:

Flo Rida:

Inversely, Avicii's "Levels" makes use of Etta James and manages to create one of the biggest pop songs of 2011. And Flo Rida then shifts Avicii's track toward rap.

What is and is not considered pop can even be determined by contexts outside of its sonic qualities. 

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles:

Smokey Robinson on Sesame Street:

 Robinson's mere presence on Sesame Street shifts the meaning of the song.  

     The third reason concerns the implied racial status of pop music. When used to question a song's membership into R&B, pop music becomes an accusation and invokes the pernicious idea that any song that resonates with and speaks to white consumers--and particularly white, teen consumers--is necessarily outside R&B's ken. Such an outlook amounts to little more than cultural segregation. It implicitly posits the Blues as an essence rather than a practice. The consequence of this idea is twofold: it, at once, reduces the blues to some instinctual artifact, and, at the same time, it reduces the African American community to a monolith. If we are to follow the logic of this formulation, Black musicians and Black listeners understand the blues due to birthright rather than the discipline, practice and perspective that the blues both obliges and evidences. 

     Additionally, what accusations such as these fail to consider is that Black art has always functioned within a public space made private. That is to say that the Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap and R&B have always been available to listeners at two vastly different frequencies: those who have taken on the challenges of learning the traditions upon which the styles are built hear something different from those who enter the styles blindly. Thus, these songs, to use Henry Louis Gates' term, signify upon the various tropes and techniques within the African American tradition. That is, the blues practice is fundamentally a method that constructs a sonic terrain in which entry into the blues, so to speak, obliges fluency.

     Nevertheless, framing both entry and membership within the blues terrain as a matter of frequency and fluency is dangerous. Most immediately, there is the question of what constitutes fluency. Does one need to know that R. Kelly signifies on Lenny Williams in order to enter the blues terrain? To this, I remain ambivalent; that R&B--and Black music as a whole--possess the complexities and dynamics necessitating rigor is, for me, indisputable. However, how that rigor manifests is up for debate. Most certainly, the ability to produce a catalog of an artist's source material can be helpful, but it is ultimately insufficient.  And, at its worst moments, it can be the means by which erudition is used to elide both emerging and discordant concerns located within the very terrains R&B constructs. As such, I would say that the blues as a practice is one that is critical rather than dismissive; and one that obliges its members to invest in perspectives located within the African American tradition. That is to say, one need not know the whole of Black music (even if it were possible), but there is an obligation to recognize that the B in R&B places the form within a particular historical and social context.

-Lokee