Blues - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Blues music" redirects here. For other uses, see .
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 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 . Sylviane Diouf has pointed to several specific traits—such as the use of and a wavy, nasal intonation—that suggest a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and blues.
may have been the first to contend that certain elements of the blues have roots in the of West and Central Africa.
Stringed instruments (which were favored by slaves from Muslim regions of Africa…), were generally allowed because slave owners considered them akin to European instruments like the violin. So slaves who managed to cobble together a banjo or other instrument…could play more widely in public.
This solo-oriented slave music featured elements of an Arabic-Islamic song style that had been imprinted by centuries of Islam's presence in West Africa, says Gerhard Kubik.
Kubik also pointed out that the Mississippi technique of playing the guitar using a knife blade, recorded by in his autobiography, corresponds to similar musical techniques in West and Central Africa cultures. The , a homemade one-stringed instrument thought to be common throughout the American South in the early twentieth century, is an African-derived instrument that likely helped in the transferral of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary.
, a singer, contributed to the standardization of the 12-bar blues form.
Blues music later adopted elements from the " ", and , including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment.
The style also was closely related to , which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".
Blues songs from this period, such as 's or recordings, show many different structures. The , , or structure based on , and became the most common forms. What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from and appearing in African American communities throughout the region along the lower , in 's , and by white bands in .
Rock blues performed by at the in 1967. Problems playing the files? See . The was probably a single line, repeated three times. It was only later that the current, most common structure of a line, repeated once and then followed by a single line conclusion, became standard.
These lines were often sung following a pattern closer to a than to a melody.
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative. The singer voiced often his or her "personal woes in a world of harsh reality: a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, [and] hard times". Many of the oldest blues records contain gritty, realistic lyrics, in contrast to much of the popular music being recorded at the time.
For example, " " by , is about a having sex with men in an alley.
Music such as this was called "gut-bucket" blues, a term which refers to a type of homemade bass instrument made from a metal bucket used to clean pig intestines for (a dish associated with slavery). "Gut-bucket" blues songs are typically "low-down" and earthy, about rocky or steamy man-woman relationships, hard luck and hard times.
Gut-bucket blues and the rowdy juke-joint venues where it was played, earned blues music an unsavory reputation; church-goers shunned it and some preachers railed against it.
Author Ed Morales has claimed that played a part in early blues, citing 's " " as a "thinly veiled reference to , the in charge of the crossroads". However, many seminal blues artists such as , or had in their repertoire several religious songs or spirituals.
and are examples of artists often categorized as blues musicians for their music but whose lyrics clearly belongs to the spirituals.
Although the blues gained an association with misery and oppression, the blues could also be humorous and raunchy as well:
Rebecca, Rebecca, get your big legs off of me, It may be sending you baby, but it's worrying the hell out of me. In particular, blues celebrated both comedic lyrical content and a boisterious, farcical performance style.
's classic "Tight Like That" is a sly wordplay with the double meaning of being "tight" with someone coupled with a more salacious physical familiarity.
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 form, such as "How Long Blues", "Trouble in Mind", and 's "Key to the Highway".
There are also , as in 's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars", and in 's "Watermelon Man". More idiosyncratic numbers of bars are also encountered occasionally, as with the 9 bar progression in 's "Sitting on top of the World". The basic twelve-bar lyric framework of a blues composition is reflected by a standard of twelve bars, in 4/4 or (rarely) 2/4 time.
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 associated to a are typically a set of three different chords played over a twelve-bar scheme:
, blues music is marked by the use of the , and (the so-called ) of the associated .
These scale tones can replace the natural scale tones or be added to the scale, as in the case of the minor pentatonic blues scale, where the flatted third replaces the natural third, the flatted seventh replaces the natural seventh and the flatted fifth is added in between the natural fourth and natural fifth. While the twelve-bar harmonic progression had been intermittently used for centuries, the revolutionary aspect of blues was the frequent use of the flatted third, flatted seventh, and even flatted fifth in the melody, together with crushing—playing directly adjacent notes at the same time, i.e.
, diminished second—and sliding—similar to using .
Whereas a classical musician will generally play a grace note distinctly, a blues singer or harmonica player will , "crushing" the two notes and then releasing the grace note. In blues chord progressions, the tonic, subdominant and dominant chords are often played as dominant sevenths, the lowered seventh (minor seventh) being an important component of the blues scale.
Blues is also occasionally played in a . The scale differs little from the traditional minor, except for the occasional use of a flatted fifth in the tonic, often sang or played by the singer or lead instrument with the in the harmony.
's rendition of "Ball and Chain", accompanied by , provides an example of this technique. Minor-key blues is often structured in sixteen bars rather than twelve, in the style of , as in " " and 's "My Man Rocks Me." Sometimes, a is used for minor-key blues, with its minor third and seventh but major sixth.[ ] Blues reinforce the trance-like rhythm and call-and-response, and form a repetitive effect called a " ".
The simplest shuffles commonly used in many postwar , , or early were a three-note on the bass strings of the guitar. When this riff was played over the bass and the drums, the groove "feel" is created. The is another device that helps to create a "groove" .
The last bar of the chord progression is usually accompanied by a turnaround that makes the transition to the beginning of the next progression.
is often vocalized as "dow, da dow, da dow, da" or "dump, da dump, da dump, da" as it consists of uneven, or "swung", eighth notes. On a guitar this may be done as a simple steady bass or may add to that stepwise quarter note motion from the fifth to the sixth of the chord and back.
An example is provided by the following for the first four bars of a blues progression in E:
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 " " 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 " " and " " to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for 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. Studies have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside slaves' exposure to their masters' -originated gospels. African-American economist and historian also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish " " neighbours.
However, the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression.
The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known. The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with the of the slaves and the transition from slavery to sharecropping and small-scale agricultural production in the southern United States.
Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the slaves. According to , "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of 's teachings, and the rise of the blues.
" Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did."
The American publishing industry produced a great deal of music. By 1912, the sheet music industry published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by (arranged by ), "Dallas Blues" by and " " by .
Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Latin habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime; Handy's signature work was the .
In the 1920s, the blues became a major element of African American and American popular music, reaching "white" audiences via Handy's arrangements and the classic female blues performers.
The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to entertainment in theaters. Blues performances were organized by the in such as the , and , such as the bars along in Memphis. This evolution led to a notable diversification of the styles and to a clearer division between blues and jazz.
Several record companies, such as the , , and , began to record African American music.
As the recording industry grew, country blues performers like , , , , and became more popular in the African American community. Jefferson was one of the few country blues performers to record widely, and may have been the first to record the style, in which a guitar is fretted with a knife blade or the sawed-off neck of a bottle.
The slide guitar became an important part of the . The first blues recordings from the 1920s were in two categories: a traditional, rural and more polished 'city' or urban blues.
Country blues performers often improvised, either without accompaniment or with only a banjo or guitar.
There were many regional styles of country blues in the early 20th century. The (Mississippi) Delta blues was a rootsy sparse style with passionate vocals accompanied by . , who was little-recorded, combined elements of both urban and rural blues.
Along with Robert Johnson, influential performers of this style were his predecessors and . Singers such as and performed in the southeastern "delicate and lyrical" tradition, which used an elaborate guitar technique. Georgia also had an early slide tradition.
The lively style, which developed in the 1920s and 1930s around , was influenced by , such as the or the . Performers such as , , , and used a variety of unusual instruments such as , , or . Memphis Minnie was famous for her virtuoso guitar style.
Pianist began his career in Memphis, but his quite distinct style was smoother and contained some swing elements. Many blues musicians based in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s or early 1940s and became part of the urban blues movement which blended country music and electric blues.
was a very famous early blues singer.
City or urban blues styles were more codified and elaborate.
or blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them , , , and . Mamie Smith, more a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African- American to record a blues in 1920; her "Crazy Blues" sold 75,000 copies in its first month.
each song around centre tones, perhaps in order to project her voice more easily to the back of a room." Smith would "..
.sing a song in an unusual key, and her artistry in bending and stretching notes with her beautiful, powerful contralto to accommodate her own interpretation was unsurpassed". Urban male performers included popular black musicians of the era, such , and .
Before WWII, Tampa Red was sometimes referred to as "The Guitar Wizard." Carr made the then-unusual choice of accompanying himself on the piano.
Muddy Waters at a young age.
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