Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Blues is a music genre [3] and musical form that originated amongst African-Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. [2] Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture.
The historian Sylviane Diouf and ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik identify Islamic music as an influence on blues music. [11] [12] Diouf notes a striking resemblance between the Islamic call to prayer (originating from Bilal ibn Rabah, a famous Abyssinian African Muslim in the early 7th century) and 19th-century field holler music, noting that both have similar lyrics praising God, melody, note ...
Blues musicians are musical artists who are primarily recognized as writing, performing, and recording blues music. [1] They come from different eras and include styles such as ragtime - vaudeville , Delta and country blues , and urban styles from Chicago and the West Coast . [ 2 ]
Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues music is characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times.
Subsequently, the early Delta blues (as well as other genres) were extensively recorded by John Lomax and his son Alan Lomax, who crisscrossed the southern U.S. recording music played and sung by ordinary people, helping establish the canon of genres known today as American folk music.
Blues standards come from different eras and styles, such as ragtime-vaudeville, Delta and other early acoustic styles, and urban blues from Chicago and the West Coast. [3] Many blues songs were developed in American folk music traditions and individual songwriters are sometimes unidentified. [1] Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft noted:
Classic female blues was an early form of blues music, popular in the 1920s. An amalgam of traditional folk blues and urban theater music, the style is also known as vaudeville blues . Classic blues were performed by female singers accompanied by pianists or small jazz ensembles and were the first blues to be recorded.
Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial discrimination and other challenges experienced by African-Americans. Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa .