Summary Of The 'Middle Class Negro'

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Jones describes the three type of blues primitive, classic, and urban in chapters six, seven, and eight. Blues singing came into being because of the Civil War. It was an extremely personal music telling about the exploits of the singer. Blues was composed of a three-line structure, first two lines were repeated or the hollers and shouts could be a single line and repeated over again. Primitive Blues was a more formal vocal music. Jones expressed that the neo African slave chants through the primitive and classical blues all showed instances that isolated each group from the others as a social entity illustrating the dictates of African American social and psychological environment. Classic Blues was a music that could be used to entertain others formally, more of an instrumental style music. “What has been …show more content…
In chapter nine Jones express how the middle class pushed for assimilation of the negro into white America.” It was the growing black middle class who believed that the best way to survive in America would be to disappear completely, leaving no trace at all that there had ever been an Africa, or slavery, or even a black man (Jones, p.124).” They believed this was the only way to be citizens. The middle class tried to dictate this image of a whiter negro to the poorer Negros in hopes of ‘whiting’ African American culture. Although it was greatly impacted, only the negro music could survive the willful dilutions of the middle class and oblivion mainstream society because its traditions would be carried on by the lowest classes of Negros. The middle class no longer seen blues music as a reelection of their lives and seen it as just another facet of the slave negro they wish to fid of. Because of this the city began to create two separate secularities and for blues to continue to survive it would have to be equally divided among the