The Blues Music Essay examples

“When first entering in America, British folk music was distinguished by three-chord tunes, sparse instrumentation (with some fiddlers), mostly male performers, improvisation, the singers’ sporadic shouts (Scottish “yips”), Christian themes served up in hundreds of hymns, and a secular collection of songs that told stories, generally about love and lost love, using metaphor and symbol to tell those stories” (Allen 101). By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British music changed and became Americanized. Vocal harmonizing slowly evolved, and fiddlers were accompanied by those who played banjo, an African American opening. “Tambourines and “bones” (tapping out rhythms using pork rib bones) were a minstrel show contribution” (Allen 102). When African Americans were forced into slavery and brought to North America in the 1600s, they brought their own musical traditions and sounds. Slaves who were on the Mississippi River Valley delta soil developed what will later be introduced as blues music. On the plantations, slaves greatly changed British American hymn singing. They took non-religious British American songs and turned it into their own forms of music that followed their culture and taste of music. Blues emerged in the early twentieth century at the same time country music became settled from its folk roots. Blues music talked about the indifferences African American slaves were going through at that time. “The blues voiced human

Blues began in the south and slowly made its way into the great cities of the North. As

BB King is undoubtedly one of the greatest blues musicians, and an equally unparalleled pioneer of guitar music. Brought up in the midst of poverty, strife, and struggle of the rural Mississippi Delta, King experienced great hardships from a young age, and used this as a source of inspiration for much of his later music (King & Ritz, 1996).

On the other hand, Blues were basically from work songs of African Americans slaves at the time. “It is a native American music, the product of the black man in this country, or, to put it more exactly the way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if the African captives had not become American captives”(pp.17), said Jones and Baraka. In Jazz – A History, Frank Tirro wisely analyzes and explains the relationship between the unique background and

Mississippi history is a sad history of slavery and oppression. It is a history of racism and refusal to let go of segregationist ideals. Mississippi history is enough to give many the blues. In fact, the Blues style music originated in Mississippi and gravitated outward from there. .Mississippi history and Blues history are intertwined. Delta Blues is a blues style that originated in the Mississippi Delta and influenced many musicians. Another musical art form, Jazz may be considered an offspring from the Blues and also started in the South. There are many Blues musicians and singers that come from Mississippi or have become linked to Mississippi for various reasons. Bessie Smith, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, and Cassandra Wilson have

The blues is a musical style of feeling, a style about playing what comes from your heart. It came from work songs, field chants, spirituals, field hollers and revivalist hymns from the African American communities. Blues is associated with the sad times

     The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and '30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of

Blues music was described as an African folk music harmonized with Western chords. It was the main influence of the development of rock and roll and basically every other sub-genre of rock and roll. Its rhythm comes from African traditions. A variety of the melodies found in this genre of music come from slave work songs, and the main source of music that was very influential to it was Southern religious music.

Elvis Presley, Macy Gray and many other players have conveyed the value of blues. They tried to attract the audience by using the devise of early blue practitioners. Blues have finally spread the globe. In Japan, Brazilian and many other countries, there are blue bands. Blue contains some properties such as honest and enduring. Since blues initiated from people’s struggling and personal identifying, it represents the American story. That is the reason that the blues is convincingly and having strong beats

Rhythm and blues, also known today as “R & B”, has been one of the most influential genres of music within the African American Culture, and has evolved over many decades in style and sound. Emerging in the late 1940's rhythm and blues, sometimes called jump blues, became dominant black popular music during and after WWII. Rhythm and blues artists often sung about love, relationships, life troubles, and sometimes focused on segregation and race struggles. Rhythm and blues helped embody what was unique about black American culture and validate it as something distinctive and valuable.

The Classic Blues were established by female vocalists like Ma Rainey, Mamie Smith, and Bessie Smith (Ferris, 2009). The Urban Blues were basically the Delta Blues but enhanced with electric guitars (Covach, 2015). This form of Blues helped to spark the Great Northern Migration. This migration resulted in many African-American musicians moving north to escape slavery and find better jobs (Covach, 2015). A few of the artists that we get in the Blues genre are B.B. King, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley (Ferris, 2009). These artists began producing music that followed the twelve bar form and mimicked the call-and-response style of old field hollers (Covach, 2015). The Blues paved the way for the up-and-coming form of the Jazz genre called Rhythm & Blues and eventually it will lead to the creation of Rock & Roll. The Blues had an influence on many of the bands and artists in the Rock & Roll era. One of the most famous being The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones are a British band that rose to fame during the British Invasion in the United States (Covach, 2015). They have referenced The Blues as being a huge influence if their music.

In contrast, Blues music originated from southern Mississippi and was first recorded in the 1920s. Blues music is further differentiated from Jazz as it was originally played as a solo using a slide guitar. This is not the case today as it has been modified and adapted by practising artists and utilises complex bands.

The songwriter W. C. Hand made the blues popukar when he made his Memphis Blues in 1912 and the St. Louis Blues in 1913. These songs created an unknown fad for the blues and the success of those who sang them it also brought the blues all over the world. The 1920s are the era of classic

The Chicago blues was a style of blues that developed, as the name suggests, in Chicago. It was a more modern type of blues and came about after the Great Migration of the 1900s. More than half a million African Americans migrated from the Mississippi Delta and headed north, towards cities like Chicago and Detroit (Public Broadcasting Service, 2015).

Blues guitar originated around the 19th century in the deep south of the United States. In the Deep South, a large black population existed and many of them succumbed to slavery and racial oppressions. In these hard times, music became a common language between them. The blacks that were being culturally oppressed expressed their emotions by playing Blues music. One of the earliest forms of blues was being formed in the Mississippi delta which is known as Delta Blues. It reflected the oppressive nature of life the blacks had. It displayed short repetitive phrases and was more percussive than melodic. The delta blues encompasses bottleneck guitar style as it utilizes tons of sliding techniques. The slides techniques were adopted by later