Musical Slang

Musical Slang: 12-bar blues is a perfect example of slang in music. That chord progression has existed in some form for 400 years. In the 17th-century, tonic-subdominant-dominant progressions were the apex of codified musical grammar. Another “slang” or metaphor of blues is that it is “open source”, meaning you have the code freely available, from which you can make variations, and remix it with other material. The process evolves new forms, up until it runs out of energy. Blues ran out of slang energy decades ago after the British invasion. After that it was Prog (Classical fusion), and Jazz (Jazz fusion). But perhaps the “fusionability” of musical slang can be reactivated when a certain genre of music is ready for it. This is probably always happening but we never notice it because the variants are probably too numerous to notice. Jazz fusion as slang worked in the 1970s because it could be absorbed without distractions. Now there are too many variants and distractions. At some point you have to go back to grammars in order to discover new slangs. You can tell when musical slangs become grammars when they get absorbed, such as a music lesson involving the mechanical performance of ascending and descending blues scales.