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blues

Blues

United States · 1900s
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Description

Blues is an African American musical tradition defined by expressive "blue notes," call-and-response phrasing, and a characteristic use of dominant-seventh harmony in cyclical song forms (most famously the 12‑bar blues). It is as much a feeling as a form, conveying sorrow, resilience, humor, and hard-won joy.

Musically, blues commonly employs the I–IV–V progression, swung or shuffled rhythms, and the AAB lyric stanza. Melodies lean on the minor/major third ambiguity and the flattened fifth and seventh degrees. Core instruments include voice, guitar (acoustic or electric), harmonica, piano, bass, and drums, with slide guitar, bends, and vocal melismas as signature techniques.

Over time the blues has diversified into regional and stylistic currents—Delta and Piedmont country blues, urban Chicago and Texas blues, West Coast jump and boogie-woogie—while profoundly shaping jazz, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, soul, funk, and much of modern popular music.

History
Origins (late 19th–early 20th century)

Blues emerged in the post‑Emancipation American South, especially in the Mississippi Delta and surrounding regions. It drew on African American work songs, field hollers, ring shouts, spirituals, and church music, blending West African musical aesthetics (call‑and‑response, flexible intonation, polyrhythm) with European harmonies and ballad forms. Early practitioners were itinerant singers and guitarists performing at juke joints, levee camps, turpentine camps, and house parties.

The first recordings and classic blues (1910s–1920s)

The 1920s “race records” era documented blues for the first time. Classic female blues singers like Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith recorded with small jazz ensembles, bringing the music to national audiences. In parallel, country (rural) blues artists such as Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson popularized guitar‑based solo styles and established the vocabulary of the Delta and Texas traditions.

Delta to Chicago: electrification and urban bands (1930s–1950s)

The Great Migration carried the blues to northern cities. In Chicago, amplified guitar, electric bass, harmonica, piano, and drums forged a powerful urban sound. Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Willie Dixon defined the electric Chicago blues, while T‑Bone Walker’s electric soloing catalyzed modern lead guitar. Boogie‑woogie piano and jump blues overlapped with swing and early rhythm & blues, setting the stage for rock and roll.

Global impact and the rock era (1950s–1970s)

Blues phrasing, harmony, and feel were foundational for R&B, rock and roll, and later rock. British and American blues revivals (e.g., the UK blues boom) reintroduced artists like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters to new audiences and inspired bands that transformed popular music. Blues‑rock, soul, and funk incorporated blues tonality and grooves while expanding instrumentation and production.

Contemporary blues (1980s–present)

Modern blues spans traditional acoustic styles, high‑gain electric sounds, and genre fusions with jazz, rock, gospel, hip hop, and world music. Festivals, archival reissues, and education have preserved regional variants (Delta, Piedmont, Texas, West Coast) while new artists advance technique, songwriting, and social storytelling within the idiom.

How to make a track in this genre
Form and harmony
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Start with the 12-bar blues in a key like A, E, or G. Use dominant 7th chords for I, IV, and V (e.g., A7–D7–E7).

 •   

Common layouts:

• Basic: I7 | I7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | V7 | IV7 | I7 | V7

• Quick change: I7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | V7 | IV7 | I7 | V7

• Minor blues: i7 | i7 | i7 | i7 | iv7 | iv7 | i7 | i7 | V7 | iv7 | i7 | V7

 •   

Use turnarounds (e.g., I7–VI7–II7–V7) at bar 11–12 to cycle back. 8‑bar and 16‑bar variants are also common.
Melody and phrasing
•   Build melodies from the minor pentatonic plus the “blue note” (b5): 1–b3–4–b5–5–b7. Exploit the tension between minor (b3) and major (3) over dominant chords. •   Employ expressive devices: bends, slides, vibrato, glissando, and microtonal inflections. Use call‑and‑response between voice and instrument. •   Lyric form often follows AAB: line A, repeat A with variation, then a rhymed B resolving the thought.
Rhythm and groove
•   Feel: swing/shuffle (triplet grid) or straight 8s (boogie). Typical tempos range from ~60–120 BPM; slow blues sits lower, jump blues higher. •   Drums emphasize a backbeat on 2 and 4. Guitar/piano comp with a shuffle or boogie‑woogie ostinato; bass walks or outlines roots and fifths.
Instrumentation and tone
•   Core setup: vocals, guitar (acoustic or electric), harmonica, piano/organ, bass (upright/electric), and drums. Horns appear in jump and urban styles. •   Guitar tone: from clean to mildly overdriven; use pickup selection and touch dynamics. Slide (bottleneck) on open tunings (Open G/D) for Delta flavors. •   Piano: boogie‑woogie left hand (bassline) with right‑hand riffs and fills. Harmonica uses draw bends and position playing (cross harp) for blues scales.
Arrangement and performance
•   Structure songs as intro–choruses (12‑bar cycles)–solos–vocal returns–ending/tag. Trade 12s between soloists. •   Develop dynamics: verse restrains, solos build, final chorus resolves. Leave space; phrase conversationally. •   Themes: love, hardship, work, travel, humor, double entendre—delivered with concrete imagery and plainspoken wit.
Practice template (key of A)

Chords by bar: A7 | D7 | A7 | A7 | D7 | D7 | A7 | A7 | E7 | D7 | A7 | E7

Scale palette: A minor pentatonic (A–C–D–E–G) + blue note (Eb) and occasional C# for major/minor 3rd color.

Groove: 12/8 shuffle with a swung eighth‑note triplet feel.

Main artists
Influenced by
Work Song
Work song is a functional vocal music tradition created to coordinate physical labor, set a steady pace, and build solidarity among workers. It typically features call-and-response structures, short improvised verses, and a strong, repetitive pulse aligned to the motions of the task (hammering, rowing, hauling, chopping). While versions exist in many cultures, the most documented stream is the African American work song in the United States—heard in fields, on railroads and levees, in lumber camps, and on prison farms. Closely related practices include maritime shanties, fishing chanteys, and industrial worksongs, all of which use rhythm and group participation to ease strenuous or monotonous work. Musically, work songs are commonly unaccompanied (a cappella) or use body percussion and tools as instruments. Lyrics often reference the job at hand, hardship and hope, local news, humor, or moral commentary, with leaders improvising lines answered by a chorus.
Spirituals
Spirituals are African American religious folk songs created primarily by enslaved people in the United States during the 19th century. Sung largely a cappella in group settings, they combine call-and-response leadership with communal refrains, handclaps, foot-stomps, and the ring shout—a circular, counterclockwise dance that preserves West and Central African participatory practices. Textually, spirituals draw on biblical narratives—especially Exodus, bondage and deliverance, water and journey motifs—to express both faith and coded hope for freedom. Many songs carried double meanings, functioning as worship and as veiled commentary or guidance (e.g., “Wade in the Water,” “Steal Away”). Musically, spirituals favor pentatonic and modal melodies, blue notes, heterophony and spontaneous ornamentation. Their rhythms often use off-beat clapping and polyrhythmic layering. Unlike later gospel, early spirituals were not instrument-driven or industry-composed; they were orally transmitted, fluid in form, and shaped by community improvisation. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, arrangers adapted them into concert spirituals for choirs and classically trained soloists.
Ring Shout
Ring shout is an African American sacred music-and-dance tradition rooted in the Gullah Geechee communities of the U.S. Southeast. It combines antiphonal (call-and-response) singing with a counterclockwise, shuffling ring dance, handclapping, and a percussive "shout stick" tapped on the floor. Despite its name, the classic ring shout is not a shouted vocal style but a devotional ritual. A leader "calls" lines that a chorus answers, while "shouters" circle with restrained, gliding footwork (traditionally avoiding crossing the feet) and intensifying polyrhythms. The resulting texture fuses West and Central African communal dance practices with Christian spiritual texts, producing one of the oldest continuously practiced forms of African American sacred performance.
Church Music
Church music refers to music created for Christian worship and liturgical use, ranging from ancient chant to modern congregational songs and large choral–instrumental works. It encompasses unaccompanied vocal traditions (such as chant and Renaissance polyphony), congregational hymnody and chorales, organ repertoire, Anglican anthems, Lutheran cantatas, Catholic Mass settings, and contemporary praise and worship styles. The music’s primary aims are to carry sacred texts clearly, support ritual actions, cultivate reverence, and enable the gathered assembly to participate in prayer. Typical performance forces include soloists, choirs (children, adult, or mixed SATB), organ, and occasionally chamber or orchestral ensembles, with languages historically in Latin and later in various vernaculars. Stylistically it has evolved through modal melodies, imitative counterpoint, tonal harmony, and contemporary idioms, while remaining text- and context-driven.
Ballad
A ballad is a narrative song form that tells a story in simple, singable stanzas, traditionally using quatrains in ballad meter (alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter with an ABCB rhyme scheme). Ballads typically recount dramatic events—love, betrayal, tragedy, murder, the supernatural—or notable historical incidents. Early ballads were often sung unaccompanied or with minimal accompaniment, carried by memorable, modal melodies and refrains that aided oral transmission. Over time, the term also came to describe slow, sentimental popular songs in the 20th century, but the core of the genre remains the storytelling focus and strophic, easily learned structure. Ballads are central to the English- and Scots-language folk traditions, migrated to North America where they flourished in Appalachian singing, and continue to be performed, adapted, and reinterpreted in contemporary folk and roots scenes.
Folk
Folk is a song-centered acoustic tradition rooted in community storytelling, everyday life, and social history. It emphasizes clear melodies, simple harmonies, and lyrics that foreground narrative, protest, and personal testimony. As a modern recorded genre, folk coalesced in the early-to-mid 20th century in the United States out of older ballad, work song, and rural dance traditions. It typically features acoustic instruments (guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica), strophic song forms, and participatory singing (choruses, call-and-response).
Griot
Griot (also called jeli/jali) is the hereditary West African tradition of poet-singers, historians, and musicians whose craft combines storytelling, praise-singing, genealogy, diplomacy, and music. It is centered in the Mande world of today’s Mali, Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea, and is best known for virtuosic performances on the kora (21‑string harp-lute), balafon (xylophone), and ngoni (lute), alongside powerful, ornamented vocals. Griot music is structured around cyclical ostinatos with improvisatory flourishes, call-and-response, and text that preserves communal memory—epics, lineages, and moral instruction—delivered in languages such as Mandinka and Bambara. While deeply traditional, the griot aesthetic has adapted to modern stages and studios, influencing global “world music,” West African pop, and blues-derived styles.
Northern American Music
Northern American music is an umbrella term for the diverse, syncretic musical traditions that developed across the United States and Canada. It emerged from the interaction of Indigenous musical practices, European settler and immigrant folk and sacred music, and West and Central African rhythmic and vocal traditions brought through the African diaspora. Rather than a single style, it is a landscape of practices—spirituals, work songs, fiddle tunes, shape-note hymnody, blues, jazz, country, gospel, rock and roll, R&B, and hip hop—that share core traits: narrative songwriting, emphasis on groove or backbeat, call-and-response, and a strong culture of performance and improvisation. This plural, hybrid character is the defining feature of Northern American music.
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