+++Blue MusiC+++
Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States and, later, Europe and Africa. The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by and for blacks and whites, respectively.
At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the race of the performer, and even that sometimes was documented incorrectly by record companies.[22] Studies have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside slaves' exposure to their masters' Hebridean-originated gospels. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbours. However, the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression.
There are few characteristics common to all blues, because the genre takes its shape from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.However, there are some characteristics that were present long before the creation of the modern blues.
An early form of blues-like music was a call-and-response shouts, which were a "functional expression... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the West African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.
Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. Sylviane Diouf has pointed to several specific traits—such as the use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation—that suggest a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and blues.[9] Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to contend that certain elements of the blues have roots in the Islamic music of West and Central Africa.
An early form of blues-like music was a call-and-response shouts, which were a "functional expression... style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave field shouts and hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the West African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar.
Many blues elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa. Sylviane Diouf has pointed to several specific traits—such as the use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation—that suggest a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and blues.[9] Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to contend that certain elements of the blues have roots in the Islamic music of West and Central Africa.
During the first decades of the twentieth century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of a chord progression. There were many blues in 8-bar form, such as "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key to the Highway". There are also 16 bar blues, as in Ray Charles's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars", and in Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". More idiosyncratic numbers of bars are also encountered occasionally, as with the 9 bar progression in Howlin' Wolf's "Sitting on top of the World". The basic twelve-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard harmonic progression of twelve bars, in 4/4 or (rarely) 2/4 time. Slow blues are often played in 12/8 (4 beats per measure with 3 subdivisions per beat).
By the 1930s, twelve-bar blues became more standard. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme
By the 1930s, twelve-bar blues became more standard. The blues chords associated to a twelve-bar blues are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme
