Blues

The blues are an African American musical genre created as the personal expression of the collective emotive response to the cultural and social experience of Africans living in America. The blues are not only musical compositions and styles of performing but also a conscious state of being. The music encompasses a wide range of styles from meditative solo performances to barrelhouse piano to sizzling dance music. Characteristic features of the blues include “blue notes”—altered pitches in a diatonic scale; special vocal effects—hums, grunts, growls, and falsetto; AAB form—a three-line stanza with statement, restatement, and concluding commentary; and a standardized chord progression in the instrumental accompaniment.

Based in oral tradition, the blues are directly linked to African musical precedents in structure and tonality, style of delivery, choice of accompanying instrument, and the role of the musician. Distinctive elements in the music performed by the djelis, praise singers, of Senegambia are so prevalent in the blues that the blues can be seen as a transformation of this African musical heritage to accommodate the experiences of Africans in America. The use of the pentatonic scale, call-and-response patterns, and special vocal effects are common in both the music performed by the djelis and the blues. The koni and xalam played by the djelis are the prototypes of the banjo that was used as an accompanying instrument in the early forms of the blues. The blues musician maintains the role of cultural historian and social commentator that is so vital to the djeli tradition.

Other early African American musical forms rooted in African tradition also contributed to the development of the blues as a genre. The early blues singers incorporated the vocal potentiality and musical resourcefulness of the cries, calls, and hollers of field workers and street vendors. Blues musicians continued the rhythmic elements and call-and-response patterns of the work songs. In addition, many blues compositions are indistinguishable from spirituals.

The blues are central to the creative and ingenious communicative dynamics in African American culture. The blues engage in a search for truth in the African American experience, thus blues songs communicate the performers' responses to the realities of life. The song texts cover a wide range of subject areas and convey an underlying theme of hope and optimism regarding the survival and progress of African Americans despite their social conditions. This message of the blues is proliferated through proverbial wisdom, philosophy, humor, satire, imagery, self-affirmation, political commentary, and protest. Some common topics found in blues texts include emotional concerns like love, loneliness, frustration, and grief, as well as social concerns like oppression, injustice, poverty, and homelessness.

Itinerant musicians who sang at social functions, railroad stations, street corners, and restaurants performed the earlier forms of the blues. They accompanied themselves on the banjo or fiddle, and their blues songs were improvisatory in nature. The banjo was eventually replaced by the guitar, which became the preferred accompanying musical instrument of the blues singer. The blues singer could adapt the guitar to produce sounds expressing a “blues” feeling by sliding a knife or bottleneck against the strings.

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