Blues

At a Glance

A secular African-American folk music of the 20th century, related to, but separate from, jazz. The term describes both a characteristic melancholy state of mind and the eight-, 12- and 32-bar harmonic progressions that form the basis for blues improvisation; the most common is 12 bars long. The other characteristic is the ‘blue note’, a microtonal flattening of the 3rd, 7th and (to a lesser extent) 5th scale degrees. Blues has had a decisive influence on Western popular music.

From obscure origins, the genre had developed by 1900 to its typical three-line stanza, with a vocal style derived from the field holler or shout of southern work songs. The migration north to Chicago during the 1920s led eventually to a new ‘urban’ blues tradition, coarser and fiercer than earlier styles. This in turn led in the late 1940s to the style known as rhythm-and-blues. All instruments were by this time amplified. Blues influenced rock and roll and other genres, including skiffle and soul music. It has continued as an independent genre, latterly performed by B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, among others.

"blues." The Concise Grove Dictionary of Music. Oxford University Press, Inc., 1994.
Answers.com 06 Dec. 2007. http://www.answers.com/topic/blues

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