The banjo in the Avett Brothers is central to their music because of the heavy role it plays in bluegrass style folk music. I don't know much about chords but the banjo sounds like it is working to bring the lyrics to the front of the song instead of dominating the foreground. It supports the narrative lyrics with repetitive runs of notes that give the song a beat and allow the singers to tell the story while staying in a lyric format that sounds like a song instead of a narrative accompanied by music. Their album "The carpenter" is influenced by the blues because of the narrative lyrics that tell an emotional story. The stories the songs tell are about hardships and dealing with those challenges. The percussion, banjo and guitar music serves to back up these lyrics just like a jazz album. All of these were mentioned in class as defining characteristics of blues influenced music.
Jimmi Hendrix's album "Are You Experienced?" is heavily influenced by the blues. You can hear it in the guitar because it lays down a repetitive rhythm for the vocalist. The vocals reflect blues styles because they follow the narrative styling of blues artists and also feature the kind of up and down pitch changes that blues singers are fond of. The guitar backs up the vocalists and doesn't try to dominate the listeners attention in the song. Both these albums are focused on the narrative style of music to tell their stories of hardships and love.
I like seeing how different genres are not all that separated in their origins, if you told me there was any connection between genres like gangsta rap, country, blues and rock I would have been skeptical. but upon looking at the roots of the genres I can see how they are not a whole lot different, they have just been shaped by the environments they came to exist in.
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