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- blues, secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South.
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Blues is a music genre [3] and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. [2] Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture.
Feb 21, 2024 · The originators of blues were the workers in southern fields who faced life’s hardships and newly freed slaves who used music to heal from the traumas of modern life. The music echoed this feeling of struggle, with themes of sorrow and resilience common in early and contemporary blues music.
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The blues is a form of secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South. Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is essentially a vocal form. Blues songs are usually lyrical rather than narrative because the expression of feelings is foremost.
Where did the blues get its name?
In the 19th century the English phrase blue devils referred to the upsetting hallucinations brought on by severe alcohol withdrawal. This was later shortened to the blues, which described states of depression and upset, and it was later adopted as the name for the melancholic songs that the musical genre encapsulates.
How did the blues begin as a musical genre?
The origins of the blues are poorly documented, but it is believed that after the American Civil War (1861–65), formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants created this genre while working on Southern plantations, taking inspiration from hymns, minstrel show music, work songs and field hollers, ragtime, and popular music of the Southern white population.
Why is the blues considered the “Devil’s music”?
Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the blues is essentially a vocal form. Blues songs are lyrical rather than narrative; blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories. The emotion expressed is generally one of sadness or melancholy, often due to problems of love but also oppression and hard times. To express this musically, blues performers use vocal techniques such as melisma (sustaining a single syllable across several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the neck or applying a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a whining voicelike sound.
As a musical style, the blues is characterized by expressive “microtonal” pitch inflections (blue notes), a three-line textual stanza of the form AAB, and a 12-measure form. Typically the first two and a half measures of each line are devoted to singing, the last measure and a half consisting of an instrumental “break” that repeats, answers, or complements the vocal line. In terms of functional (i.e., traditional European) harmony, the simplest blues harmonic progression is described as follows (I, IV, and V refer respectively to the first or tonic, fourth or subdominant, and fifth or dominant notes of the scale):
Phrase 1 (measures 1–4) I–I–I–I
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Phrase 2 (measures 5–8) IV–IV–I–I
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Dan Stubbs
- SONG: Robert Johnson – Crossroad Blues (1937) What it did: Popularised Johnson’s great creation myth – that his fame was the result of a deal made with the Devil at a rural crossroads.
- SONG: Lead Belly/Nirvana – Where Did You Sleep Last Night (1944/1994) What it did: Lead Belly’s 1939 recording of this tragic blues song – which he frequently called ‘Black Girl’ – combined two traditional blues songs dating back to the 1870s, showing how blues itself is rooted in folk traditions.
- SONG: Elmore James – Dust My Broom (1951) What it did: Originally written by Robert Johnson (see ‘Cross Road Blues’, above) under the name ‘I Believe I’ll Dust My Broom’, Elmore James’s version (credited as Elmo James) added a boogie rhythm and slide guitar – and was a watershed moment in the electrification and amping up of the blues sound.
- ALBUM: Etta James – At Last! (1960) What it did: As you’ll see in Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, women were at the centre of the ‘urban blues’ scene that stormed the cities in the 1920s and 30s.
Master Kora maker Alieu Suso in the Gambia. Many of these blues elements, such as the call-and-response format, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation also suggests a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and the blues.
May 9, 2018 · Although it was cultivated by the descendants of slaves, the blues was the expression of freed African Americans. The Great Migration directly influenced the blues’ many evolutions. As Black people moved from the South to northern cities, the music reflected the new urban terrain in which the people set up communities.
Nov 27, 2020 · Both in the terms of its rhythmic and lyrical patterns of call and response, blues music can be traced back to various forms of West African music, influences that were brought to America through the slave trade.
