Blues Traditions of Guitar Performance in Modern Scientific Idea

The relevance of the article. Blues has always been and is still one of the most popular areas of non-academic art in the period from the end of the XIX century. However, after the Second World War, the blues tradition began to be actively assimilated against the background of other stylistic trends and subcultures. In this regard, the interest of modern scientists in blues specificity, which has become an important component of many modern musical phenomena, not only increased, but also expanded the perspectives of research. Starting from the second half of the XX century, blues traditions gained rapid development due to the technical revolution in the field of guitar performance. The invention of the electric guitar directed performers to the formation of a new way of thinking, a new performance technique, and new ways of self-expression. Such directions as rhythm and blues, blues rock, rock and roll absorbed a whole array of blues traditions, which in combination with other trends of musical culture formed the image of modern non-classical guitar performance. These processes have not yet received proper scientific development, although the number of scientific publications on the blues is very extensive. The purpose of the study is to form a systematic view of the modern historiography of blues guitar performance research. The methodology. The main method is the source and textological analysis of existing publications; method of systematic analysis, which allows to classify existing sources according to their nature, direction and subject of study; a comparative method involved in comparing the views of different scientists on the same issues. The results. Contemporary (starting from around 1980) scientific publications on blues traditions of guitar performance were analyzed. It was determined that a number of aspects of modern performance are in the initial stage of development, a significant number of works are devoted to the early stage of the development of blues, mostly the material of scientific research is not musical material, but interviews, historical essays, etc. The scientific novelty. The leading scientific works of the late XX and early XIX centuries are systematized and characterized regarding blues guitar performance, the “white spots” in its study are outlined, the main directions of scientific research are determined. The practical significance. The materials of the article can be used for the further study of issues of the development of the blues tradition of guitar performance, as well as in music history courses and disciplines taught to students of the pop and jazz specialty. Conclusions. Several leading aspects of art-historical studies of the blues tradition in guitar performance are highlighted: – historical and genetic; – sociocultural; – practical and technological. An important conclusion is the definition of blues as a musical universal, which provides a certain way of thinking and its artistic reflection in music, not fixed exclusively in the purely blues direction of guitar art.