• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.287-310
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• 2014

While Janis Joplin is generally known as a hippie rock star of an untimely death to Korean audience, she is more strongly evoked in the image of blues mama in American context. Blues, definitely based on African-American vernacular tradition, is defined as a matrix, which is "a point of ceaseless input and output, a web of intersecting, crisscrossing impulses always in productive transit," to borrow Houston A. Baker's expression. This article explores how her life and music can be understood in blues tradition, especially in terms of personal and social transgression for which she was criticized, focusing on her blues performance. First of all, born and growing up in southern Texas between 1940s and 1960s, she expressed her innate suspicion against segregation and white supremacy, actively embracing rich black musical heritage of the area. Second, against the normative social and moral expectation of a middle class white woman to be a suburban housewife, she sought her own desire, whether it was professional ambition or sexual possibility. Third, beyond the selling image of a heterosexually lascivious blues mama, she dared to be a homosexual and bisexual, while it was not publically acknowledged. Along with her alcohol and drug dependence, such transgressions against normative social expectation were not made without her inner conflict, leaving a trace of trauma, hesitation, and the blues. While she was "buried alive in the blues," as a sacrifice at the altar of the 1960s, she still remains "alive" provoking "fire inside of everyone of us."

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.239-245
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• 2018

In the current mainstream pop music scene, Stevie ray vaughan's status is a singer-songwriter and electric blues guitarist, who occupies a very large position despite his short period of activity. His influence has remained to the present day as the voice of many guitarists ranging from his unique sound to his explosive stage performances. Let's take a look at the technical parts of his performance, rhythm and solo performances, among the various traces of his constant reproduction. Based on one of his most famous works, 'Pride and Joy' I analyzed the solo and rhythm, scale that Stevie Ray Vaughan played. Through the African American blues, a peripheral heritage he has been trying to influence and influence, how his traces congregate in the center of today's mainstream pop music scene. This will give us little clues to appreciate before the research that will have a variety of influences and values.