By Romeo De Timmerman
“Everybody understands the blues!” That’s how Albert King opened his performance of ‘Blues Power’ on Live Wire / Blues Power (1968), and perhaps it summarizes precisely why the blues, which originated as an undeniably African American mode of expression, rapidly grew out to become an internationally successful musical genre, going beyond ethnic, geographical or social boundaries. Of course, while the blues travelled across the globe and inspired numerous artists to pick up their instruments and climb on stage, many of these international, often white, blues performers were, and often still are, questioned or criticized for their (in)ability to play the blues. But, as Rudinow argues in his 1994 article on race, ethnicity and authenticity in the blues, the problem isn’t really whether or not these artists are able to play the blues, but more so if they have the right to.
In other words, the core dilemma of this issue is the following: “what can or cannot be considered authentic blues?”. From a scientific perspective, how music is construed as (in)authentic has both intrigued and puzzled scholars from various fields, including (ethno)musicologists, anthropologists, and, perhaps surprisingly, linguists. You see, from decades of sociolinguistic research – the field which is interested in the interplay of language and society – we know that speakers use linguistic devices such as accent, pitch and word choice to continuously build and rebuild their socially meaningful identities and personae. This naturally begs the question to what extent (blues) performers also rely on identifiable linguistic devices to construe their on-stage personae.
This is precisely one of the main questions I am exploring in my PhD project on African American English and the blues. Because, if white blues performers are constantly questioned regarding their artistic authenticity, perhaps one of their strategies to address these concerns is to use features of African American English – the variety of English which is traditionally linked to the African American community – when singing. After all, the blues is unmistakably rooted in an African American tradition, so perhaps emulating the sound of original blues performers, not only in a musical but also a linguistic sense, can help these artists to position themselves within the genre as authentic performers. To explore this hypothesis, I compiled a corpus of eighty blues songs which were performed live by sixteen different artists from various time periods and social groups.
Specifically, I grouped the songs as follows: performances from the 1960s were contrasted with ones from the 2010s, while some songs were performed by African American singers, and others by non-African American artists, who were again categorized as being based in the US or not. Next, I selected five distinct sounds that are considered salient features of African American English, by laypeople and linguists alike. I then carefully listened to all eighty songs in the corpus, and every time an artist could have produced one of these five sounds, I coded whether or not they actually did. In doing so, I was able to map a comprehensive picture of the lyrical language use of sixteen different blues artists. But, what does that picture look like exactly?
To keep it short, I will leave the more complex statistical analyses to the journal article on which this blog post is based. Essentially, I found that all sixteen artists used all five of the African American English features to a strikingly high degree, which you can see visualized in the figure above. The percentages for each artist range from the upper seventies (B.B. King) to the upper nineties (Muddy Waters), which is already quite high. But, when looking at the group means, which are represented by the colored dashed lines, you can see how all four of the groups have incredibly similar scores, all nearing ninety percent. This is remarkable, as we would never expect, say, a white European artist like Tiny Legs Tim to use any of these African American English features in natural speech. So, what is going on here exactly?
Well, it is clear that all artists featured in my corpus consistently use features of African American throughout their singing. And, based on the history of the blues and the decades of sociolinguistic literature on the social meaning of linguistic features, I would argue that these artists are using such sounds as a stylistic strategy to position themselves within the genre. In other words, much like the melodic strategy to target certain ‘blue’ notes like the ♭3, ♭5 and ♭7 over major chord progressions, using these speech sounds may help contemporary performers to strengthen their artistic credibility and authenticity. So, in conclusion, while everyone may understand the blues, singing authentic blues clearly isn’t as straight-forward.
Romeo De Timmerman
Romeo De Timmerman obtained a master’s degree in English and Dutch linguistics and literature from Ghent University in 2020. Since then, he has worked as a researcher on a one-year FWO-funded research project, and as a full-time language instructor. In November 2022, he started working as a doctoral researcher at Ghent University under supervision of Prof. Dr. Stef Slembrouck (UGent) and Prof. Dr. Matthias Heyman (VUB). His PhD project focuses on the use of African American English by contemporary blues performers, and the social meanings that these stylistic-linguistic practices generate.
Contact: romeo.detimmerman@ugent.be
This blog post is based on an article recently published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, which can be accessed here.