(SOUNDBITE OF JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA & WYNTON MARSALIS' "MEMPHIS BLUES (2015)")
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The blues is a distinctly American music genre.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA & WYNTON MARSALIS' "MEMPHIS BLUES (2015)")
SHERMAN IRBY: I've been listening to the blues ever since I've been born, basically. I'm from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
RASCOE: That's Sherman Irby. He's lead alto saxophonist in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in New York City.
IRBY: The older you become, the more you start to ponder the things that you took for granted. I didn't know much about the blues. I just knew we played it. And I just started wondering, OK. What is this? Why is it so important in American music?
RASCOE: The blues grew out of the Mississippi Delta in the years after the Civil War, but has roots reaching back to the Caribbean, West Africa and Europe. Irby explores that history and evolution in new performances this week called "Birth Of The Blues." Sherman Irby joined us from our studio in New York. He said the blues are the backbone of American music.
IRBY: Because in every style of music in America, the blues is there - country music, rock and roll, R&B, jazz, of course. The blues form and style and feel is there.
RASCOE: For people like me who aren't, you know, music aficionados, you know, how do we know that there are blues in rock, in pop? How are we hearing it? How do we know when we're hearing it?
IRBY: OK. Let me give you example. Elvis Presley, "Blue Suede Shoes." That is straight-up blues.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BLUE SUEDE SHOES")
ELVIS PRESLEY: (Singing) But don't you step on my blue suede shoes. Well, you can do anything, but stay off of my blue suede shoes. Well, you can knock me down.
IRBY: "Purple Rain" is the blues.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PURPLE RAIN")
PRINCE: (Singing) I never wanted to be your weekend lover.
IRBY: The blues is three things. The blues is a sound. The blues is a feeling. And the blues is in forms. One way that we recognize the blues sound is that feeling of sorrow, love, hate. You know, all of the R&B that you listen to, most of the rock. Now, to feel - there's a feeling that you hear. Sometimes - take, for example, somebody in church. One of the deacons go (humming). All right. The blues is in that.
RASCOE: Yes.
IRBY: Because that hum means something. And you get that feeling that there's something in there, and it's primal. And then the forms - we have 12-bar blues, 16-bar blues. For a musician, we say the one-chord, going to a four-chord. As a non-musician, you may not know what that is, but you'll recognize that sound. You'll say, OK. I can tell what the form is. I can tell where the song ends and where the next part of the song begins, because you've been listening to it all of your life.
RASCOE: And what about the "St. Louis Blues"? Here's a recording of W.C. Handy's Memphis Blues Band playing "St. Louis Blues."
(SOUNDBITE OF W.C. HANDY'S MEMPHIS BLUES BAND'S "ST. LOUIS BLUES")
RASCOE: How did that sound progress in the early 20th century? And then what - is that a type of blues - St. Louis blues?
IRBY: Yeah. I mean, every city had their own type of thing. St. Louis had its own type of thing, Chicago. You basically track that with the way that African Americans kind of migrated - going north, going up the Mississippi River. It's interesting because the clip you just played, you actually showed the 12-bar blues form of that song. Now, right after that, it goes into another style of music called the habanera, which came out of the Caribbean.
(SOUNDBITE OF W.C. HANDY'S MEMPHIS BLUES BAND'S "ST. LOUIS BLUES")
IRBY: The habanera rhythms, the dance song - all that stuff influenced the way that jazz and the blues was played.
RASCOE: Well, talk to me about that because there's a new piece that you wrote that's premiering during this show called "From Segou To The Mississippi Delta." Because when you talk about the origins that go back even further, you know, you go back earlier than W.C. Handy. Talk to me about those origins in West Africa.
IRBY: Out of the empire of Segou. That feeling, that sound of the blues, was probably one of the greater influences in the beginning, out of the country of Mali. And so it went from Mali to where Africans were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean. So I started with that area. There's a song that is a pre-Islam song that's - very, very, very, very old song called "Dah-Monzon." And that was written for the greatest king of that Segou Empire.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAROUNA SIDIBE SONG, "DAH-MONZON")
IRBY: So I used that as the beginning of my piece. So people can hear that and hear the language that was being used, to get a feeling of the sound of that blues, to hear the sound from one of their instruments. That was called the ngoni. That instrument was one of the main influences of the banjo.
RASCOE: And there's even an influence from Celtic music, right?
IRBY: Right.
RASCOE: How so?
IRBY: I made sure that I included an Irish reel. So you can hear the sound of the pentatonic, which we utilize a lot in jazz music, you know, and American music - that same sound.
(SOUNDBITE OF MATT MOLLOY & DONAL LUNNY'S "MAUD MILLAR / POLL AN MADRA UISCE")
IRBY: That, with the dance song and all the other rhythms that was being used down there, it's just - it became a kill to bake it all together and create something that was kind of different.
RASCOE: The blues came from all of these sources around the world, and they were channeled through the hardships and resilience of African Americans in the South. How do you view the legacy and the future of this type of music?
IRBY: Blues music is going to stay. It is the backbone of American music. I wanted to show how all of it started, and that piece is just one part of the show. It is the birth of the blues of the show.
RASCOE: That was saxophonist Sherman Irby. His new show, "Birth Of The Blues," is premiering this week at the Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on April 17 and April 18. Sherman Irby, thank you so much for joining us.
IRBY: It's truly my pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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