A musical tour of the United States
A legend tells that the musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil himself to become the greatest bluesman of history. the crossing of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale , Mississippi, was the scene where Lucifer, in the guise of a man dressed in black, tuned Johnson's guitar for the modest price of his soul.
Since then, the musician became the ' King of the Delta Blues' and the meeting of these two paths in a place of pilgrimage.
It seems as if American roads had some music lovers and they would have decided to store in their thousands of kilometers of asphalt the best possible playlist.
The American sound cannot be limited in a single word, since the multicultural legacy with which it has grown has given rise to Some cities have spawned a certain type of music and have a unique sound.
In each of these cities is preserved the history of these musical currents keeping your heritage alive.
At this crossroads it is said that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil
From Chicago to Seattle, during the 20th century, the United States of America became a new artistic and musical paradigm that would spread across the planet.
American music is made up of a tangled compendium of European, African or Latin American influences , which have given it a large and diverse musical background in a very short time and in which a good number of cities have played an interesting role in the birth, development and expansion of these genres and currents.
This is an imaginary journey to those cities that made the musical threads of a heterogeneous nation unleash a cultural revival that changed the rhythm that, until then, music and the world followed.
To travel these routes is to travel from the country of Nashville to the jazz of New Orleans, from the techno of Detroit to the grunge of Seattle. It is soaking up the character of gospel, soul, rock and roll, house and hip hop. It is also discovering the memories of a people marked by social differences, racial segregation and the struggle for civil rights. A road trip through some of the capitals of the great music history of the United States.
music in new orleans
** CHICAGO , WHERE THE WINDS AND TRUMPETS BLOW**
Arriving in Chicago is stepping on the promised land. The city on Lake Michigan is the third largest in the country and famous for having been the cradle of house and electric blues.
The latter, popularized by local labels as famous as ChessRecords and through which blues myths have passed, but also rock, house or jazz.
In it, the wind blows as insistently as the trumpets and, therefore, it proclaims itself The city of winds'.
Chicago was one of the key destinations for southern immigrants who came from the Mississippi Delta attracted by the employment of this great industrial city, as Muddy Waters.
Considered the father of 'Chicago blues', Waters played the traditional blues that he had learned in the southern cotton fields. among whom he had grown up.
Arriving in Chicago, Waters began using amplification to play in clubs. Various southern bluesmen, like Buddy Guy, Otis Rush or Bo Diddley , discovered there the charms of the electric guitar and never separated from it. It was in Maxwell Street where rural blues was electrified.
The great city of Illinois hides, among many other things, some of the most fascinating secrets of American cultural history among its skyscrapers. Between 1920 and 1930 it became the world capital of jazz and its cabarets and theaters welcomed musicians from New Orleans.
Chicago prepared the electric guitar to make its definitive leap into the most important pages of popular music, and Chicago blues set the tone for future music. Robert Johnson couldn't be wrong when he sang that Sweet Home Chicago thing.
** DETROIT : SOUL, TECHNO AND THE NIGHTMARE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM**
For decades, the city of Detroit was synonymous with well-made vehicles, a great industrial metropolis, like Chicago, and, also, one of the most prolific cities musically speaking.
record company birthplace motown , from the ashes of a city that used to be giant, music was born that conquered the world. Where once there was the roar of engines, the Motown sound He broke racial barriers with all that this implied in the development of American black music.
Motown became the soundtrack of a generation that she was fed up with a system based on racial prejudice. His catchy songs filled the highest positions in the charts and everyone, black and white alike, danced to those songs.
In Detroit, techno was invented, it grew Aretha Franklin singing in church, too Stevie wonder and it was a platform for talents like the Jackson Five, Diana Ross or The White Stripes.
Soul, gospel, techno and, to a large extent, rock with a special attachment to strong guitars and second wave of funk they are rhythms that belong to the place where, in 1892, Henry Ford built his first prototype car and that, now, is declared bankrupt.
Detroit watched Aretha Franklin grow up
** NEW YORK, NEW YORK**
The largest city in the entire country sounds like more than just the elegant voice of Frank Sinatra or to the sweet melody of Moon River since, logically, it is one of the most active and heterogeneous.
New York has played a fundamental role in the development of many styles such as jazz, rock or latin rhythms , but, also, its boroughs (neighborhoods) have seen the birth salsa and hip hop.
It is impossible to mention music in New York without naming Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis , but neither can one be left in the dark Bob Dylan, 50 Cent or Beyonce. The neighborhoods of this city make styles resonate to which musicians come from all over.
Manhattan became the quintessential dynamizer of the jazz and musical theater capital of the world ; while, on the other side of the bridge, in brooklyn, the streets sound like R&B and hip-hop.
The queens district It was as important a place for jazz as it was for Louis Armstrong, although today it is heard Cuban, cumbia and salsa, but also hip hop. The Bronx He tells us about rhythms that need a good dance partner, bachata, meringue and salsa. The latter was born in the streets of the Bronx as hip hop and the prodigal daughter of the district: Jennifer Lopez.
Lastly, the sound of harlem comes to make us feel the Ella Fitzgerald Jazz and Latin Jazz , but, above all, if there is something that characterizes Harlem, it is the gospel
NAME NASHVILLE AND SURNAME MUSIC CITY
Country life, cowboy boots and horse farms were the ideal setting to spice up nothing with the birth of country music.
The state capital of Tennessee is the world center of country industry. Any musician of this style who wants to succeed is bound to direct his footsteps to Nashville.
They say that the music came to her across the Cumberland River , when the first settlers who landed on its shores, at the end of the 18th century, celebrated their arrival in the New World by strumming their violins and dancing. Today, Nashville is accompanied by an apt and enviable surname: 'Music City'.
The musical awakening took place in Nashville in the late 1920s, when artists were touring the radio to perform their songs live, the most decisive show was the Grand Ole Opry. The reception of the program was such that it ended up attracting the attention of record companies and labels that ended up opening their doors in Nashville.
Its most popular inhabitant is, without a doubt, Elvis Presley , but the list of gods of music that have ever passed through this city is continued Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash . Currently, headliners live there such as The Black Keys, Kesha, Kings of Leon, Taylor Swift and, of course, the one born there Miley Cyrus.
NEW ORLEANS AND THE BIG BANG
Following the course of the Mississippi River, between cotton fields and plantations, the Big Bang. New Orleans is very different from other cities in the United States, because it has a strong European heritage, especially French and Spanish.
Despite its modest size, it is the most important musical nucleus of the last century and a half , not only in the United States, but throughout the world, because there they sounded the first jazz and the first blues.
The jazz, with its fast and free style, and despite its short history, it has come to be considered music of scholars and their greatest example , the most distinguished descendant of the city, Louis Armstrong. Due to the lack of existing musical education, the locals discovered something simpler and more natural than reading sheet music: improvisation.
For its part, the blues has that nostalgia of the African-American communities and its sound goes back to the days of slavery in the cotton fields through songs of work and prayer or field cries.
Today, its impact is undeniable, among other things, because without the blues there would have been no rock. If it's about music, and that's what it's about, the atypical New Orleans is the authentic Mother of the Lamb of modern music.
Louis Armstrong, descendant of New Orleans
**LOS ANGELES AND WEST COAST ROCK**
The Hollywood city of Los Angeles is also one of the most important in the recording industry. For decades, it has embraced all kinds of musical movements , but if it has been characterized by something, it is by being dominated by the most spectacular rock.
Rock came quickly to the city of Los Angeles in the 60s and, since then, the city has not stopped its musical production. The city of Los Angeles is in charge of produce most of the hits heard on the world's playlists.
Its heyday was the years 60 and 80, with the splendor of the rock movements since, traditionally, rock musicians who wanted to succeed had to do it from L.A.
Bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eagles, The Doors or Guns N' Roses are some of the projects that shone with the Californian breeze. Many of them, especially the hard rock bands of the 1980s, have in common their interest in spectacular staging, quirky, energetic and highly visual. Undoubtedly, this enclave has been and is a launch pad for some of the most interesting musicians, such as Beck.
**THE UNDERGROUND SOUND OF SEATTLE**
Before the 90s, the sound of Seattle was associated only with the guitar of Jimi Hendrix and to the incessant rain that torments this distant and lost city in the cold northwest of the country. Until the grungy was born in Seattle and highlighted the local music scene.
rock with heavily distorted and energetic guitars , catchy and repetitive vocal melodies with letters that reflect apathy and disenchantment. An underground movement with a high load of marginality, its songs express fury, torment, and a heightened contempt for existence a.
Never before, or since, in the history of popular culture has there been a movement as suicidal as grunge. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains or Sunny Day Real Estate They were some of the bands that emerged in the city and made Seattle the musical navel of the country.
Other groups like Band of Horses or Fleet Foxes they are in charge of continuing and renewing what is known as the 'Seattle sound'.
For those music lovers who have been trapped by American music, the route does not end there, as there are still many other cities to go through to the rhythm of its songs, such as Austin, Memphis, San Francisco, Portland, Boston, or Jacksonville.
Although, without leaving home, you can continue learning about the exciting history of North American music through the blog ** _La Ruta Norteamericana (and beyond) _ ** by Fernando Navarro.