Ethics and the Blues

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The blues and ethics
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Moral philosophy, otherwise known as ethics, fundamentally assesses the principles of moral judgment and sheds light on problems linked to equality, justice and rights (Sahakian and Sahakian 32). In its core, ethics systematically tries to set apart good from wrong.

The field is split into three categories, which are meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics (Olson 343). Meta-ethics covers the theoretical meanings of what makes actions wrong and others right (Kelly 160).

Normative ethics explain the practical ways that can be used to arrive at a moral deed and applied ethics tries to explain how moral actions can be achieved in particular situations (Sahakian and Sahakian 32). All these methods of understanding the moral standing of an action were developed by different scholars, but who all found a point of harmony, to link all their findings.

The blues, in their origins helped in exposing the injustices that were perpetrated against the African Americans during the years of slavery and later segregation arising from racism. Over time, this genre of music has provided an appropriate platform for the release of frustration and has also provided some sense of support to help deal with the trauma, pain and suffering.

As such the blues is inherently a genre of music whose grounding is the distinction between right and wrong. It is the kind of music whose lyrics were derived from reality and whose impact would well be felt by all and sundry. Sometimes, the persons at whom the expressionism of the genre was targeted got the message and it even sunk in to allow them make some crucial changes in the way they carried themselves.

This change, depending on the person, would either take a more acceptable moral stance or would go the other way and reinforce the unfortunate deed that the singers were trying to deter them from.

This essay seeks to explain the history of the blues in view of the ethical issues that surrounded its propagation. To this end, a number of articles as well as books will be used to offer a background to the topic, with some of the theories raised by scholars of ethics used to offer insight into why some developments took a particular course.

The essay seeks to conclude that the blues and ethics are two inseparable fields, and that one can be used to adequately explain the other.

The blues and ethics

The blues are said to have first started in 1890s but the first published version of the blues came in 1912. The main reason as to why this genre of music was not given particular attention was because of the escalating racism at the time and the low level of literacy among Americans of African descent.

At the time, the blues were not given attention as worthwhile music, because of the association with African Americans. The composition of this music mostly happened in cotton farms where the African Americans worked as handy men for their white counterparts.

The African Americans, having been forced to take up these jobs, sang their hearts out as they worked, in the hope that they would obtain peace of mind, through the distraction of music. This numbness shield went in line with Stoicism, the field of ethics started by Epictetus, who posed that the greatest good that one could achieve was satisfaction with their state of life and a peace of mind.

Working in the cotton fields was by all standards difficult work, and bearing in mind that the workers who picked up this job were either forced to work with no pay, or for very little pay, they had to come up with creative ways of beating the somberness of their situation. Singing served this purpose well.

This function also best describes hedonism, which holds that the greatest ethic is the maximization of pleasure and the reduction of pain. The positive effect of singing the blues was noted in the productivity of the singers, because the act of focusing their minds away from their current problems, enabled them to work longer hours.

As the blues grew into a popular genre of music, the more educated and well-resourced section of society, almost entirely represented by the white Americans failed to take interest, as they still considered it music for the African Americans.

The thought of having it written or recorded did not cross their minds as it appeared that doing this would be giving the African Americans some sense of power and authority. This went in line with consequentialism, a category of ethics which posed that the consequences of a given action will determine whether or not it can be classified as moral.

At the time, the white Americans were considered superior human beings and the thought of them seceding power to the African Americans was by itself a psychological impossibility. Through deontological ethics, scholars can point out the motivations that led to the white Americans acting in that particular way. The power was gratifying and any method of maintaining a hold on it was subsequently welcome.

Between the 1920s and the 1950s, as the genre grew and established a presence amongst music genres, the themes also moved from cries for emancipation to smoother entertaining tunes. This goes in tandem with the ethical theories established by pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Pierce and William James, which suggested that moral correctness was a function that developed gradually and over the course of a lengthy period of time.

As such, the blues after having achieved their original purpose of short term consolation moved on to achieve another purpose, which was entertainment. It is this role that made the genre gradually attain acceptability in the musical society.

This led to more musicians adopting it for experimentation, and with time new products were born out of the blues. This growth finds meaning in the field of evolutionary ethics, which concludes that actions usually have a point of origin, which can be well traceable over a certain period of time.

The moral agent that is the blues, especially in its origins, can well be used to explain the forces that drove the individuals who partook in its growth to involve themselves in it.

This is a function of virtue ethics, a field of moral philosophy that was fronted by early philosophers including Aristotle and Socrates, amongst other great philosophers, of Greek descent.

Aristotle in his studies, came up with a theory which he appropriately named self-realizationism, which holds that when an individual becomes aware of his full potential, then he will conduct himself in such a way that he utilizes the potential to his level best.

It is this self-realization that led the African Americans to consider exploring the blues as a way of deriving pleasure rather than a way of protesting against the injustices of society only. As a result, singers cropped up and specialized in the genre, a process that eventually led to the adoption of elements of the form of music for use in more mainstream genres.

Conclusion

This essay had sought to identify the point of convergence between ethics and the genre of music that is the blues. To this end, the origins of the music type was taken for analysis with the play of ethics over the period that the genre was developing used to offer insight into why some developments took a particular course.

It has been seen that all points of the rise of the music genre had a specific ethical factor, which explained the consequences of the actions of the people. The targeted conclusion has been arrived at, with the discovery that the blues was used as a form of finding solace for the African Americans, most of whom served as slaves in cotton farms owned by their white counterparts.

It has also been concluded that the music scholars of the early 20^th century did not give particular attention to the study of the blues, because most of them considered the blues low-class music and that giving it scholarly attention would lead to the lower-class citizens getting some authority which would strain the master-slave relationship that had for a long time guaranteed the societys stability.

It has been seen that all decisions by the founders of the blues and the repressive conclusions by the members of society who found it offensive, were all inched on trying to find some ethical direction.

Works Cited

Kelly, Eugene. The basics of Western philosophy. USA: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print

Sahakian, William and Mabel Sahakian. Ideas of great philosophers. USA: Barnes and Noble, 1993. Print

Olson, Robert. Deontological ethics. London. Collier McMillan, 1967. Print.

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Ethics and the Blues

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