Uma passagem de trem para Chicago: Muddy Waters e os trilhos do blues (1940 - 1950)

Abstract

The goal of this monograph is to analyze the origins of electric blues in the 1940s and 1950s out of Muddy Waters path. As a musician and a black individual, Waters represents the migratory movements of African-Americans from the southern United States who were established in Chicago. From his path is possible to observe some aspects such as racial segregation, terrible economic conditions and the role of music as a means of social and cultural visibility of the black population. Thus, this text aims to understand what would be the factors that moved these disadvantaged groups in search of space and protagonism in American society. The sources used in this research were blues songs by Muddy Waters recorded in both the rural site of Mississippi and the urban environment of Chicago. The results of the analysis aims to identify the sound transformations perceived during the period studied. In this sense, we seek to explain to what extent the influence of the Great Migration in the first decades of the twentieth century provided the flourishing of cultural manifestations typical of the black countryside in urban life in Chicago. From this new social space, this monograph intends to identify the processes by which the acoustic sounds of blues music developed in the fields of cotton farms acquired a sound format based on the use of electric instruments by musicians like Muddy Waters, becoming a popular musical style that turned into a symbol of American culture. In addition, it is essential to understand what would be the attractions that made Chicago the main destination for black southern individuals during that period and the social, economic and cultural transformations seen in the city as a result of migration.