Blues

From ArticleWorld

Blues is a musical genre that is characterized by pentatonic scaled music and presenting twelve-bar chord progression. It appeared in USA, mainly around African slave communities, inspired by religious themes, shouts and chants.

Origins

Characteristics present in blues are present since the appearance of African American Music. Pre-based blues music appeared influenced by slave field shouts that were expanded in solo songs with high emotional content. Modern blues music is based on the European harmonic structure and the West-African tradition, which was changed into voice and guitar interplay. African music influenced blues and caused the addition of the call-and-response format and blue notes. It is also believed that Islamic music present in West and Central Africa has influenced the new genre as well. Another technique present in the same regions, which implied the playing of a kora (guitar like instrument) by using a knife. This method of playing is considered to be the antecedent of the nowadays used slide-guitar technique. Basically, African music lent many elements to the newly created blues music and the appearance of the genre is considered to be around 1900.

Lyrics

The beginning of blues music introduced personal themes that were often negative: police cruelty, lost love, hard times, white people oppression and so on. The main difference between older and newer songs is that at that time lyrics were realistic and appears with high contrast with the blues played nowadays. A new term, gut-bucket blues was used to describe these often sad songs, which in fact made the genre highly popular at the time. Religious figures started to combat it as it was believed to be sinful. The songs to come were influenced by Christianity and it remained a strong characteristic of the genre. Lyrics were mostly containing single lines that were repeated two or three times. Nowadays the standard stands in one line that is repeated and after it a single line conclusion can be heard.

Impact

As expected, blues music was controversial as it was believed to be “The Devil’s Music”, much like hip hop, jazz and rock and roll were considered when they appeared. The African American and American cultural heritage now point to the fact that blues is one of its main musical components. Nowadays blues is not that popular but several artists and influential people like Martin Scorsese are fighting to expose it to the general public.