What is Blues (BLUES) music

Blues music is a style of music created by black people living in the United States during their difficult lives. It originated in the delta area of ??the Mississippi River and originated in the early 20th century as a labor chant for people working in the early days. Blues was originally mainly a narration of human voices, and later added instrumental accompaniment. It has made considerable contributions to jazz, rock music, country music and Western music.

The formation of Blues

In the 1920s, Blues gradually emerged with its unique lyrics, harmonious rhythms and melancholic melodies. Blues music contains a lot of poetic language that is repeated over and over again, and then ends with a decisive line. The progression of the melody is based on chords, with three chords of I, IV, and V as the main chords, and a 12-bar pattern is repeated. In the melody, the 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes of the main key are lowered by a semitone, giving people a bittersweet and sentimental feeling. Although the lead singer is the focus in blues music, the improvisation of the instruments is also very exciting. The instrumentalist is free to go beyond the boundaries of chords, and in addition to the melancholic beauty of the melody, there are also the sounds of a knife scraping and a slide being used, and a humming imitating the lead singer's voice. Country Blues The earliest blues, known as country or delta blues, originated from the country folk of the South in the 19th century. Especially after liberation, touring singers, guitarists, and harmonica players began to consciously develop this music and incorporated the sorrow of love, freedom, sex, and life into Blues music. Important early musicians include Charlie Patton, Son House (who invented the slide) and Robert Johnson. Classical Blues As black Americans moved to cities like Memphis and New Orleans to work, Blues gradually became a more urban phenomenon. Blues that enters the city is usually performed by male or female singers accompanied by piano or jazz bands. Blues' reputation is growing. Soon, some record producers began to publish works for blues singers, such as W.C. Handy’s "St. Louis Blues" in 1914 and Mamie Smith in 1920. "Crazy Blues". With the development of blues music, jazz and pop music also began to borrow its melodies and gained a large audience. Electroacoustic Blues After World War II, the center of Blues has moved to cities like Chicago, where many famous musicians gathered. At that time, B.B. King and Buddy Guy tried to use amplified electric guitars and magnetic drums to enhance the sound. In the 1950s, this style was recognized by many white musicians. More than ten years later, Eric Clapton continued to promote Blues music. At the same time, R&B also gradually emerged and was accepted by white musicians, such as Elvis Presley and Bill Haley, who brought R&B into rock music. The famous British bands Rolling Stong and Led Zeppelin also started from blues music, and then gradually moved into heavy metal rock music. With the development of Blues music today, it has gradually been included in the ranks of mainstream music, and many of its elements are being used more in rock and pop music. But traditional Blues music still has strong strength. Musicians in this field include John Lee Hooker, Etta Baker, Junior Wells and Buddy Guy.

Blues music is also called "blues" or "grievance music". It was originally a kind of black music, but the exact year when Blues was born is almost impossible to determine.

Since the 17th century, a large number of black Africans have been sold to the Americas and become slaves. These slaves were forced to perform a lot of labor on farms or cotton plantations while humming in African languages, forming the United States. The earliest forms of black music - work songs and field trumpets, both of which are strongly influenced by the music that black people are familiar with in Africa. One of the important media of early musical contact between blacks and whites in the American South was religious music, which influenced blacks in music and formed black hymns. The emergence and development of these three types of music provided the premise for the birth of Blues.

In the second half of the 19th century, black music style developed rapidly and was also influenced by African music and traditional music brought by white Americans from Europe, forming a unique black folk song style. , from this style came Blues music. At the same time, the popularity of the guitar was one of the factors that had a profound impact on the development of blues in music. Before that, the most popular instruments in the hands of black people were fiddles and banjos, but the guitar was the most suitable instrument to accompany blues. This Because the guitar has almost the characteristics of the human voice, the player can use the string slide to make the notes go out of tune, making the guitar sound like a crying human voice.

Blues has always been an improvisational music - that is, players make up melodies as they go. Early blues singers still wrote their own lyrics and played their own guitars while playing. Therefore, blues ballads often take the form of repeating a single melody, with a new line added at the end. Some characteristics of blues reflect the influence of African music. Each vocal melody is followed by a short guitar instrumental fill. This is obviously a form of answer singing that is common in African music. Compared with the European style, the wide vocal range of the Blues singer is closer to the African style; the strong emphasis on repetition to enhance the momentum and exciting climax is also the African way of playing. Even so, Blues is not an African music, but a very independent music style formed by strong influences from Africa, Europe and the United States.

Blues songs use three types of chords (i.e. I, IV, V) connected in a certain order or in a pattern. Generally speaking, one chord (i.e. 4 beats) is matched with one measure. Usually a section has twelve bars, with three lines of melody, each line accounting for four bars; but singers often only sing the first two bars of each line of melody, and use guitar accompaniment for the last two bars. The usual structural progression is: I-I-I-I, VI-VI-I-I, V-IV-I-V. The guitar plays a very important role in Blues music, playing the role of weaving the structure and enriching the melody, but often good guitarists do not show off their skills. , just use the guitar to sing the melody in your heart appropriately, making you laugh or cry.

Blues was created to express the singer's personal emotions. It provides musicians with the opportunity to express themselves; their loves, their hates, their attitudes towards work, etc. The famous blues singer Brown Max once said: "I never use imagination to write music. Blues is not a dream, it is reality." Blues itself is a mental state, music for the common people, and music from life. And its content includes many, and it is the most true reflection; resistance to injustice, yearning for beauty and love, frustration after setbacks, emotional catharsis; at the same time humor, self-deprecation, and sometimes even tears laugh.