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The Blues Scale: Historical and Epistemological Considerations

ABSTRACT Today, the blues scale is familiar to most people who have studied music formally. Although there has been since 1967 a broad consensus as to what that scale is, for the first half of the twentieth century there was actually a good deal of disagreement on that point. A close look at the history of the blues scale reveals that disagreements over its content are bound up with widespread ambiguity concerning its epistemological status. This paper seeks to illuminate that epistemological confusion, proceeding in two ways: first, it historicizes today’s blues scale by laying out the main blues scales proposed between 1938 and 1967, attending to the role these scales played in the institutionalization of jazz education; second, it demonstrates that these scales differ not just in content and attitude but also in epistemological orientation. Because of its social overtones and political implications, disagreements over the nature (and even existence) of the blues scale have frequently been heated. This paper argues that these disagreements derive in part from a persistent epistemological confusion that has characterized much of the discourse surrounding this musical idea.