Time, Tradition, Performance, and the Aesthetic Object
Time, Tradition, Performance, and the Aesthetic Object
Repetition
The final chapter addresses the temporality of a genre based on tradition. Working from conceptions of tradition gleaned from the epic and historical chronicle, and of modern anxieties about the weight of the past, reveals a resonating, vibrant, multi-temporal field for the blues that employs meta-textual references to the tradition to create ironic distance. Tracing the genealogy of a riff from Robert Johnson’s “If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day” to Muddy Waters’s “Rollin’ and Tumblin’, ” through to Nick Moss and the Flip Tops’ “The Money I Make” reveals the dynamic forms of temporal simultaneity that define the blues as a genre. An investigation of improvisation foregrounds the historical rootedness of all creative expression, while the necessary interplay between tradition and reception enables a final interrogation of the relationship between individual and community in the blues.
Keywords: temporality, blues, tradition, improvisation, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Nick Moss and the Flip Tops, epic, historical chronicle
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