History of the Blues Essay

Blues Music

The Origins of Blues Music

The Blues is a type of music that comes from the Unites States of America. The history of this type of music is closely related to matters of labor, politics, economics, and ethnicity. The Blues is a distinct genre of music and within it there are other subcategories of blues music. Blues did not originate is a vacuum, with respect to musical influences and historical ties. Blues is a form of music that is connected to other musical forms of the past, the present, and the future. There are many precise details about the origins of the blues that are still unknown at this time. There is no specific year of establishment or creation of the blues. There are direct traces or connections to the blues to cultures and musical traditions in Africa, as well as to the musical traditions, predominantly coming from the cultures of enslaved Africans and their descendents in the U.S. The paper will examine the origins of the blues. There will be specific attention paid to three types of blues: Country Down Home Blues; Classic Blues; and Chicago & Urban Blues. The following is an expository and information paper, providing a brief survey of the Blues form of music with a few noteworthy subcategories.

The creation of the blues form of music is largely attributed to African-Americans approximately in the late 19th century and early 20th century.The rhythms, patterns, and topics of blues songs come from a combination of places. Many historians agree that a primary influence in the formation of the blues comes from participation in the institution of slavery. Slavery in the United States plays a vital and fundamental role in the construction of the blues. One way slaves would pass the time while they labored was to sing songs. The kinds of songs that emerged on plantations and other properties where slavery was conducted had certain kinds of patterns that emerged, such as "call and response." (Oakley, 1997)

Over time the patterns in the songs grew. Some of those patterns included content (stories, characters, etc.) related to the Bible, struggling in life, and how singing about pain some how relieves some of that pain. These patterns came together and merged to become a specific form of music called the blues. The blues was called that at approximately the turn of 20th century. The origins of the blues includes the influence of slavery, of African musical traditions that precede slavery in the U.S., and of religious texts and practices.

The Blues is an expression the experience of experiencing slavery as a slave and then after the institution was dissolved.….....