The Ethos of the Blues

In the essay, “The Ethos of the Blues,” by Larry Neal, the Blues is recognized as sad, mellow, and strong. The idea is to represent an experience that the person has encountered in the past through sentences that can be sung instead of spoken. Most of the time, hidden emotions that cannot be expressed to others verbally can be expressed musically. As Ralph Ellison stated, “I wouldn’t dare to tell, not to tell – but I would sing about them…” (Neal, 57) In other words, sometimes people are too afraid to tell their emotions but because songs are more relatable they are less ashamed to express themselves.

Slavery has had one of the biggest impacts on American society. Many African-Americans encountered slavery, and found a way to express their feelings through lyrics that reflected an image of their lives. Larry Neal expresses in this essay the ideologies that created the Blues through out the century, coming down to a statement of “The ethos of the blues, then, is the musical manifestation of one’s individual, cultural experiences in Afro-American with which members of the black community can identify.” (Neal, 59) In which the Blues serves, psychologically, as a way to help the African-Americans with their identity after loosing their voices for being oppressed by the Americans. This might show the psychoanalytical lens in which the African-American uses the Blues as a symbolic representation of their identity.

…The emphasis in blues songs is on the immediacy of life, the nature of man, and human survival in all of its physical and psychological manifestations. The blues are informed by a social history of mental and physical hardships; they lyrically address themselves to concrete life situations. And if life is perceived to be a battle of the sexes, or a quest for pleasure, that’s just the way it is. The blues singer, acting as ritual poet, merely reflects the horrible and beautiful realities of life. He didn’t make it that way, that’s just the way things are. Hardships can conquer you, or you can conquer them. Therefore, toughness of spirit is an essential aspect of the ethos of the blues. (Neal, 55)

Neal uses a persuasive tone to reflect the only idea that the Blues has that is “the horrible and beautiful realities of life.” Their lyrics work as a “manifestation” of their “psychological” minds, which the African-Americans mirror their souls through a song. No matter what “life situation” they are expressing, “that’s just the way it is.” And the use of persuasive tone is even stronger on the very last sentences where he states, “hardships can conquer you, or you can conquer them. Therefore, toughness of spirit is an essential aspect of the ethos of the blues.” The way Neal connects the two sentences with “therefore” sounds almost like “it is what it is,” reflecting that there is no other way to represent these ideologies of the blues. Also, Neal reveals “an essential aspect” of the Blues which is “toughness.” Neal mentions “toughness” as a way to portray how the Blues works correctly in the songs. Even though people are singing the tragedies that they face in their daily lives, they are still strong because of the hope that the Blues offers that they can “conquer” the “hardships.”

After loosing their voice for so many years, they found something that brought their voices back into their lives. Their identity is one of the main qualities that have created the blues, which gives this sense of hope that keeps people moving forward where tragedies can’t even stop them. These characteristics of the Blues are the elements that make people stronger from falling back to the same hole.

Reference

Neal, Larry. “The Ethos of the Blues” The Black Scholar. FIQWS Course Pack, 53-59. n.p., 1972. Print.