Blues Dictionary: Interpreting Fashion

Author: Bao Mingxin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: A slow, melancholic Southern American music with a very close kinship to jazz. It originally started as black folk songs, accompanied by instruments like the guitar, but later the proportion of instrumental music increased. After the 1970s, elements of contemporary music like rock were increasingly incorporated, making the traditional blues characteristics less prominent. It may no longer be as slow, but it becomes more ethereal. Some also translate blues as "blues," but it doesn’t convey the same sense of ethereal mystery as the term "" does. Blues is also closely tied to the culture of bars. Some say jazz is full of bourgeois sentiment, but in fact, blues goes even further. At night, people immerse themselves in blues, wallowing in self-pity, sipping slowly, and the next day, they can be full of energy to fight in the workplace. Jazz and blues are suitable for more mature people, those who are more nostalgic, and those who are a bit more refined. Lin Dongfu, a former famous TV personality in Shanghai, was such a person. He opened a bar called JazzBlues himself, first on Fenyang Road, and then moved around. The bar displayed old items that could evoke memories of 1930s and 1940s Shanghai, such as old posters, old fire hydrants, and old utility poles. He would often smoke a pipe while leaning on a cane, chatting with familiar faces and insisting on paying for their drinks. Those dancing wildly to ecstasy pills in dance clubs have no patience to appreciate the subtleties of it.