Blues

The blues (pronounced [blus], 'melancholy or 'sadness') or blus is a vocal and instrumental musical genre, based on the use of blues notes and a repetitive pattern, which usually follows a twelve-bar structure. Originating in the African-American communities of the southern United States at the beginning of the 20th century, in the 1960s this genre became one of the most important influences for the development of American and Western popular music. It is read in musical genres such as ragtime, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, funk, heavy metal, hiphop, country music and pop.

This genre developed through spirituals, prayer songs, work songs, English rhymes, narrated Scottish and Irish ballads, and country hollers. The use of blues notes and the importance of call and response patterns, both in music and lyrics, are indicative of the West African heritage of this genre. A characteristic feature of the blues is the extensive use of "expressive" guitar (bend, vibrato, slide) and harmonica (cross harp), which would later influence solo styles such as rock. Blues songs are more lyrical than narrative; the singer tries to express feelings instead of telling stories, where emotions such as sadness or melancholy are usually manifested, often due to problems in love. This is accomplished musically, using vocal techniques such as "melisma" (sustaining a single syllable through several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and instrumental techniques such as choking or bending guitar strings across the neck or applying a metal slide or neck. from bottle to guitar strings.

Etymology

The phrase the blues refers to blue devils, depression and sadness. One of the earliest references to the blues can be found in the farce Blue Devils, a farce in one act (1798) by George Colman.

Although the phrase, in African-American music, may have an older meaning, it was attested that in 1912, in Memphis (Tennessee) the musician W. C. Handy already used (in his song "Memphis Blues") the term the blues to refer to a depressed mood.

Main features

Every blues song features a guitar moment either long or short; singing is optional. The genres associated with the blues share a small number of similar characteristics, as this musical genre takes its shape from the personal characteristics of each artist who performs it. However, there are a number of characteristics that were present long before its creation. of modern blues.

One of the earliest known forms of music that bears similarity to blues, corresponds to the call and response shouts (music), which were defined as "functional expressions of a style with accompaniment or harmony and far from the formality of any musical structure”. A form of this pre-blues style could be heard in laments, or slave camp screams, which took the form of "single-player songs with emotional content".

The blues, today, can be defined as a musical genre based on both a European harmonic structure and the West African tradition of call and response and transformed into an interplay between voice and guitar.

Many of the elements of blues, such as the call and response pattern and the use of blues notes, can be found in the roots of African music; Sylviane Diouf points out some defining characteristics of blues, such as the use of melismas and nasal intonation, which may suggest a connection between West African music and blues. The ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik may have been the first to claim that certain elements of the blues have their roots in the Islamic music of central and western Africa.

The string instruments (the ones preferred by slaves from the Muslim regions of Africa) were generally permitted since slave owners considered that such instruments were similar to other European instruments, such as the violin. Because of this, those slaves who were able to play a banjo, or another string instrument, could do it more freely. This type of solitary slave music shows elements of an Arab-Islamic style based on the footprint that Islam has printed for centuries in West Africa

Gehard Kubik

Kubik also noted that the Mississippi technique of playing the guitar, using a sharp blade (used by W. C. Handy), corresponds to a similar type of musical technique used in certain West and Central African cultures. The diddley bow—thought to have been common throughout the southern United States during the early years of the 20th century—is a derivative of an African instrument, most likely It will help in the transfer of techniques in the early beginnings of blues.

Blues music later adopted elements of ethiopian airs, minstrel shows, and black spirituals, including instrumentation and harmonic accompaniment. it is also related to ragtime, which developed around the same time, although blues "better preserved the melodic patterns of African music".

Blues songs from this period, such as those by Leadbelly or Henry Thomas, display a wide variety of structures, with twelve, eight, or sixteen bar musical forms being the most common, based on the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords. The roots of what is known today as the twelve-bar blues structure are documented in oral history and sheet music from African-American communities that they inhabited the lower Mississippi regions, on Beale Street in Memphis, and in the white gangs of New Orleans.

Letters

The original form of the blues letters probably consisted of a single line repeated three times. Later, the current structure, based on a single repetition of a line followed by a final line, became standard. These lines were often sung in a pattern closer to rhythmic conversation than melody.

The early blues often took the form of a narrative which used to convey through the singer's voice his personal sorrows in a world of stark reality: "a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, the oppression of whites and hard times". Much of the older blues contains more realistic lyrics as opposed to most popular music being recorded at the time; For example, the song "Down in the Alley" by Memphis Minnie is about a prostitute who has sex with a man in an alley.

This type of music was called gut-bucket blues, a term that referred to a homemade musical instrument (bass-shaped) made from a metal cube which was used to cleaning the intestines of pigs to prepare chinchulín (a type of food that was associated with slavery). The gut-bucket blues were usually depressive and about rough and difficult relationships, bad luck and bad times; Due to this type of songs, and the streets where they were performed, blues music acquired a bad reputation, coming to be criticized by preachers and parishioners.

Although the blues used to be associated with misery and oppression, it can also take on comedic or humorous overtones, and in many cases, sexual connotations.

Author Ed Morales asserts that Yoruba mythology played an important role in early blues, citing musician Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" as a "thinly veiled reference to Eleguá, the orisha in charge of the roads". Tobias Gullo However, some prolific blues artists, such as Son House or Skip James had several Christian religious or spiritual-style songs in their repertoire. Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are some examples of artists who are often categorized by their music as blues musicians, despite the fact that the lyrics of their songs clearly correspond to spirituals.

From style to genre

During the first decades of the 20th century, blues music was not clearly defined in chord progression terms. There were a lot of blues songs that used an eight-bar structure, like "How Long Blues," "Trouble in Mind," and "Key to the Highway" by musician Big Bill Broonzy. One could also find blues tracks with a sixteen-bar structure, as in Ray Charles's instrumental "Sweet 16 Bars" and Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man". Less frequent bar structures could also be found, such as the nine-bar progression of the Howlin' theme; Wolf "Sitting on Top of the World." The basic development of a twelve-bar blues composition is reflected in the standard twelve-bar harmonic progression, in 4/4 time, or (rarely) in 2/4 time. Slow blues songs are usually played in 12/8 time (4 beats per bar, with 3 subdivisions per beat).

By the 1930s, blues with a twelve-bar structure became standardized. The blues chords associated with a twelve-bar blues structure are usually made up of three different chords, which are played through a twelve-bar scheme:

In the graphic above, Roman numerals indicate degrees of progression; In the case that it is interpreted in a key of fa, the chords would be the following:

In the example above, fa is the tonic chord and sib is the subdominant chord. Most of the time each chord is played within the dominant seventh structure. Frequently, the last chord is the dominant turnaround (in the previous examples it corresponds to the V or do) creating the transition to the beginning of the following progression.

Lyrics on blues tunes generally end on the last beat of the tenth bar or the first beat of the eleventh bar, with the last two bars being a moment of instrumental break; the harmony of these breaking measures, the turnaround, can be extremely complex, sometimes consisting of single notes that modify the analysis of the theme entirely. The final hit, unlike the previous ones, is almost always positioned firmly in the dominant seventh, to provide tension for the next verse of the theme.

Musical score of "Saint Louis Blues" composed of W. C. Handy (1914).

Melodically, blues music is marked by the use of minor thirds, diminished fifths, and minor sevenths (so-called blues notes) of the corresponding major scale. These tones of the scales can replace the natural tones of the scales or added to the scales themselves, as in the case of the blues minor pentatonic scale, where the minor third and seventh replace the major ones and the diminished fifth are added between the perfect fourth and fifth. While the harmonic progression of the twelve-bar structure has been used for centuries, one of the most revolutionary aspects of blues was the frequent use of thirds, sevenths and even fifths in the melody., along with crushing (playing two adjacent notes at the same time, for example as diminished seconds) and sliding (similar to grace notes).

Whereas a classical musician will often play a grace note distinctively, a blues singer, or harmonica player, will play glissando, "strike the two notes to then release the 'grace note'" ». In blues chord progressions, root, subdominant, and dominant chords are often played as dominant sevenths, with the minor seventh being an important component of the scale. The blues is occasionally played in a minor scale, this differing from the traditional minor scale in the occasional use of the fifth in the root (sung by the player or by the lead instrumentalist with the perfect fifth in the harmony).

• The theme of Big Mama Thornton "Ball and Chain", played by Janis Joplin accompanied by Big Brother and the Holding Company, shows an example of this technique.
• The blues in smaller scales is usually structured in sixteen compases instead of twelve, in the style of the musical genre góspel, as can be seen in the theme "St. James Infirmary Blues" and in the theme of Trixie Smith "My Man Rocks Me".
• Sometimes a rhetoric scale is used for blues of smaller scales, being the lower note the third and seventh but the largest corresponding to the sixth.

Blues shuffles reinforce the rhythm and pattern of call and response, forming a repeating effect called a groove. The simplest shuffles, widely used in electric blues, rock and roll or early postwar bepop, consisted of a >riff of three notes from the low strings of the guitar; the groove effect was created when this riff was played with bass and drums. Also, the walking bass was another device that allowed to create groove effects.

The shuffle rhythm is often vocalized as “dow, da dow, da dow, da” or “ dump, da dump, da dump, da» and consists of eight notes. An example of this can be found in the following tablature showing the first four bars of a blues progression in e:

 Mi7 La7 Mi7 Mi7
My.
If Δ--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sol Δ-------------------IND--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Re Δ-------------------IND2--2-4-4-2--2-4-4
The UD2--2-4--4-2--4-4-OSE0--0-0-0--0-0-0--0US2--2-4-2-4-2-4-2-4-4-2-4-2-4-2-4-2-4-2-4OS
My UD0--0-0--0-0--0-0--0US---------------------US$0--0-0--0-0--0--0--0--0--0--0-0--0-0--0--0--0--0.

The blues in jazz differs greatly from the blues in other types of music genres (such as rock and roll , rhythm and blues, soul or funk). Jazz blues is usually played on the V chord through bars 9 and 10, emphasizing the tonic structure of traditional blues (tonic resolution over the subdominant). This final V-I chord cadence carries with it a large number of variations, the most basic being the ii-V-I chord progression in bars 9, 10 and 11. From this point on, the dominant approach (ii chords -V) and resolution (I chord) can be altered and substituted almost indefinitely, including for example the complete omission of the I chord (bars 9-12: ii | V | iii, iv | ii, V |). In this case, bars 11 and 12 function as an extension of the turn-around for the following chorus.

Recommendations for recognizing instrumental blues solos.

The blues pentatonic scale always includes a diminished 5th and resolves to the perfect 5th of the key in which the progression is playing (shuffle); It is important to emphasize that the execution of this scale is for the improvisation of instrumental solos, mostly on guitar.

History of the different genres of blues

Origins

The blues has evolved from unaccompanied vocal music, performed by poor black workers, to a wide variety of subgenres and styles, with regional varieties throughout the United States and, later, of Europe and West Africa. The musical structures and styles that are considered today as the blues, as well as modern country music, originated in the same regions of the southern United States during the XIX. You can find recordings of blues and country dating back to the 1920s, a period in which the recording industry created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music." » to sell songs to blacks and whites, respectively.

In that period, there was no clear musical distinction between the blues and country genres, except for the performer's race and even on certain occasions this detail used to be documented incorrectly by record companies.

As blues emerged from African-American culture, some blues musicians were already known worldwide. Some studies locate the origin of the black spiritual in the exposure that the slaves had to the gospel, (originally from the Hebrides) of their masters. African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell points out that the southern, black, ex-slave population was dispersed among their Scottish/Irish redneck neighbors. However, the discoveries of Kubik and other scholars clearly show the African essence of many vital aspects in the expression of the blues.

The social and economic reasons for the start of blues are not fully known. the emancipation of slaves and the transition from slavery to small-scale agriculture in the southern United States. Paul Oliver cites a text by Charlotte Forten, from 1862, in which she already speaks of blues as a state of mind and how some work songs were sung in a special way, to overcome the blues .

Some researchers associate the development of blues in the early years of the XX century as a movement from a group of interpretations towards a more individualized genre, arguing that the development of blues is associated with the new condition of freedom for slaves. According to Lawrence Levine, there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis on the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues. Levine notes that "psychologically, socially, and economically, blacks were culturally disaggregated in ways that would not have been possible during slavery, and it is astonishingly difficult that their secular music reflected this fact as much as their religious music did."

Prewar Blues

The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, this industry published three compositions associated with the blues, precipitating the adoption of blues elements by Tin Pan Alley: "Baby Seals' Blues" by Baby F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand, and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.

Handy was a well-educated musician, composer and arranger who helped popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating it in almost any symphonic genre, with groups and singers. He became a famous and prolific songwriter, calling himself the "father of the blues"; however, his compositions can be defined as a mixture of ragtime with jazz (a mixture facilitated by the use of the Latin habanera rhythm, which has been present in ragtime for a long time).. One of Handy's main songs was "St. Louis Blues».

In the 1920s, blues became a major element of African-American culture and American popular music, even reaching white audiences through Handy's arrangements and performances. of female classical blues singers. The blues evolved from informal performances in bars to a form of entertainment in theaters. The blues shows were organized by the Theater Owners Bookers Association in clubs like the Cotton Club and in juke joints such as could be found on Beale Street in Memphis; Due to this evolution, the path was paved towards an important diversification of styles and an even clearer distinction between blues and jazz. It was in this period that record companies, such as the American Record Corporation, Okeh Records, and Paramount Records, began recording African-American music.

Rural blues developed primarily in three regions, Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi. The blues of Georgia and the Carolinas was distinguished by its clarity and regularity in rhythm; it was influenced by ragtime and white folk music, making it more melodic. The Texas blues is characterized by a high and clear singing accompanied by soft guitar lines with arpejos chosen from a single string instead of strummed chords, among the representatives of this style is Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller.

The first recordings of blues were made by women during the 1920s, some of them were Ma Rainey, Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith. The latter was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920, with the album "Crazy Blues" which sold 75,000 copies in its first month. These performers were mainly singers accompanied by jazz bands; and this style is known as classical blues. The Great Depression and the world wars caused the geographic dispersion of the South towards the cities of the North, which made the blues adapt to an urban environment, the lyrics took themes from society and instruments were added. such as the piano, harmonica, bass, and drums; intensifying the rhythm and emotion of the music.

Among the cities where the blues took root were Atlanta, Memphis and St. Louis. John Lee Hooker settled in Detroit, and on the West Coast Aaron ("T-Bone") Walker developed a style later adopted by Riley ("B.B.") King. It was Chicago, however, that played the most important role in the development of urban blues. In the 1920s and 1930s Memphis Minnie, Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, and John Lee Williamson were popular Chicago artists. After World War II they were replaced by a new generation of bluesmen that included Chester Arthur Burnett (Howlin' Wolf), Elmore James, Little Walter Jacobs, Buddy Guy and Koko Taylor.

As the recording industry grew, country blues performers such as Charlie Patton, Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, Son House and Blind Blake gained notoriety in African-American communities. Jefferson was one of the few country blues players to record prolifically and may have been the first to record with the slide guitar technique, a technique that would become a important element of delta blues. In the 1920s, early blues recordings fell into two categories: country blues, more traditional) and a more polished and urban blues.

Country blues players used to improvise, sometimes without accompaniment and sometimes using a bass or guitar. In the early years of the 20th century there was a wide variety of regional styles in country blues; Mississippi Delta Blues was a deeply rooted style with passionate vocals accompanied by steel guitar. Robert Johnson, who recorded very few songs, combined elements of both urban and rural blues. Along with Robert Johnson, influential performers of this genre were his predecessors Charlie Patton and Son House. Singers such as Blind Willie McTell and Blind Boy Fuller interpreted the "delicate and lyrical" southern tradition of Piedmont blues, a style that used an elaborate technique of guitar playing without a pick. Georgia also had an early tradition towards slides.

Bessie Smith was a famous singer at the beginning of the blues.

Memphis blues, which developed during the 1920s and 1930s around Memphis, Tennessee, was influenced by bands like the Memphis Jug Band or Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers. Performers such as Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Robert Wilkins, Joe McCoy or Memphis Minnie (the latter famous for her virtuosity when it comes to playing the guitar) used a wide variety of atypical instruments such as the kazoo, violin or mandolin. Pianist Memphis Slim began his career in Memphis, but his distinctive, quiet style was much softer and already contained some elements of swing. Many of the blues musicians who lived in Memphis moved to Chicago in the late 1930s and early 1940s, becoming part of the urban blues movement that would unite country music. /i> with electric blues.

Urban styles of blues were more codified and elaborate. Female classical blues and vaudeville blues singers were famous in the twenties, featuring performers such as Mamie Smith, Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, who was more of a vaudeville performer than a blues artist, was the first African-American to record a blues in 1920; her "Crazy Blues" sold 75,000 copies in the first month.

Ma Rainey (called the Mother of the Blues) and Bessie Smith sang "... each song around center tones, perhaps to project their voices more easily towards the back of the room." Smith "...sang a song in an unusual tuning, and his quality as an artist blended and stretched the notes with his beautiful, powerful contralto voice to accommodate the performance in a way that was second to none." Among the male performers of blues included popular black musicians of the day such as Tampa Red (occasionally referred to as the Guitar Wizard), Big Bill Broonzy and Leroy Carr, the latter making the unusual decision to accompany himself on piano..

A typical low boogie-woogie line.

The boogie-woogie was another important genre of urban blues in the 1930s and early 1940s. While the genre is often associated with a single piano, boogie-woogie used to be performed with female singers as backing in some marching bands. This style was characterized by a figure in the form of a bass, an ostinato or riff and a change of level in the left hand, elaborating each chord and creating ornaments with the right hand. The boogie-woogie was developed primarily by Chicago musician Jimmy Yancey and the boogie-woogie trio (Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis). Players of this genre in Chicago included Clarence Pine Top Smith and Earl Hines, who "linked the left-hand rhythms of ragtime pianists with melodic figures similar to those played by Louis Armstrong." with the right hand."

In the forties the jump blues genre began to develop, which was influenced by big band music, using the saxophone or other wind instruments, as well as the guitar, in the rhythmic sections to create a jazz sound and out of time with clearly marked vocals. The jump blues melodies of Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner, from Kansas City, influenced the development of later genres such as rhythm and blues and from there, with some contribution from the white country music, to the rock and roll of the fifties. Both Professor Longhair's smooth Louisiana style and Dr. John's more recent blended classical rhythm with blues genres.

Early Postwar Blues

After World War II, and in the 1950s, African-Americans moved to the cities of the northern United States and new musical genres (such as electric blues) became popular in cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City. Electric blues used electrically amplified guitars, electric basses, drums, and harmonicas. Chicago became the center of this genre in the early 1950s.

Chicago blues is largely influenced by the Delta Blues genre, due to the migration of performers from the state of Mississippi. Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, and Jimmy Reed were born in Mississippi and moved to Chicago during the Great African-American Migration, between the 1920s and 1930s. Their style was characterized by the use of the electric guitar, the steel guitar, harmonica, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. J. T. Brown, who played in the bands of Elmore James or J. B. Lenoir, also used saxophones, but in a secondary way instead of using them as main instruments.

Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson II, famous harmonica players (called harp in slang for blues musicians), belong to the early days of blues Chicago. Other harmonica players like Big Walter Horton also played an important role at that stage. Muddy Waters and Elmore James were known for their innovative use of the electric steel guitar. B. B. King and Freddie King, did not use the steel guitar but were influential guitarists in the Chicago blues genre. Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were also known for their deep, bassy voices.

Bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon played an important role in the Chicago blues scene; he composed and wrote many standard blues numbers of that period, including "Hoochie Coochie Man," "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (both written for Muddy Waters), "Wang Dang Doodle" (written for Koko Taylor, and "Back Door Man" (composed for Howlin' Wolf) Most Chicago blues artists recorded their records for Chicago's Chess Records record label, founded in 1947.

In the 1950s, blues had a major influence on mainstream popular music in the US. While popular musicians such as Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry were influenced by Chicago blues, their Enthusiastic style of playing clearly differentiated itself from the melancholic aspects of blues and managed to pigeonhole them within the world of rock and roll. Precisely, the way Diddley and Berry played was one of the influential factors in the transition from blues to rock and roll. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley were more influenced by jump blues, boogie-woogie and country , popularizing rock and roll within the white population segment of those times. Chicago blues also influenced Louisiana zydeco music, in which Clifton Chenier used blues accents. Musicians of the zydeco genre used electric guitars and Cajun arrangements based on blues standards.

Other blues artists, such as T-Bone Walker and John Lee Hooker, were not directly influenced by the Chicago subgenre. Born in Dallas, T-Bone Walker is often associated with West Coast blues, which is softer than Chicago blues and offers a transition between Chicago blues, blues i>jump blues and swing, with a certain influence on jazz guitars. John Lee Hooker's blues is more personal, based on his deep voice and the only accompaniment of electric guitar and double bass; despite not being directly influenced by boogie-woogie, the genre is often referred to as guitar boogie. His first hit "Boogie Chillen" reached No. 1 on the R&B charts in 1949.

Towards the end of the 1950s, swamp blues developed near Baton Rouge, with players such as Slim Harpo, Sam Myers and Jerry McCain. This genre had a slower rhythm and used the harmonica in a more simplified way than the interpretations made by Chicago blues artists such as Little Walter or Muddy Waters. Some songs in this genre are "Scratch my Back", "She's Tough" and "I'm a King Bee" by Slim Harpo.

Also in the late 1950s, West Side blues emerged in Chicago with Magic Sam, Magic Slim and Otis Rush; its main characteristic was being based on a rhythmic support provided by a rhythm guitar, an electric bass and drums. Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Luther Allison were components of this genre, which was dominated by an amplified lead electric guitar.

Blues in the sixties and seventies

At the beginning of the 1960s, musical genres influenced by African-American music, such as rock and roll and soul, were already part of American popular music.. Caucasian performers had brought African-American music to new audiences, both in the United States and around the world. In the UK, marching bands emulated American blues legends, and throughout the decade English blues played an important role in reviving African-American singers by bringing them to Europe and reinterpret their classic themes.

A blues legend, B. B. King, with his guitar Lucille.

Bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters continued to play for their enthusiastic fans and inspire new artists in the field of traditional blues, such as the New York-born musician York, Taj Mahal. John Lee Hooker mixed his blues style with elements of rock and began playing with young white musicians, creating a genre of music that can be heard on the 1971 record Endless Boogie . B. B. King's virtuoso technique earned him the nickname King of the Blues. Unlike the Chicago subgenre, King's band used wind support (in the form of saxophone, trumpet, and trombone), rather than solely using steel guitar and harmonica. Tennessee singer Bobby 'Blue' Bland, like B.B. King, also mixed the musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues.

The music of the civil rights and free speech movements fueled a revival of interest in the roots of American music and early African-American music in the United States. Music festivals, such as the Newport Folk Festival, brought traditional blues to new audiences, and revived interest in pre-war acoustic blues and recordings. from performers like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Reverend Gary Davis; many of these recordings were reissued, among others, by the record company Yazoo Records. J. B. Lenoir, a member of the Chicago blues movement of the 1950s, recorded several vinyls with acoustic guitars, in which he had the occasional accompaniment of Willie Dixon on acoustic bass or drums; His songs talked about political problems like racism or the Vietnam War, which was not very usual at that time. The recording of his song Alabama blues says the following:

I never will go back to Alabama, that is not the place for me. [2x]

You know they killed my sister and my brother,

and the whole world let them peoples go down there free.

Original in English

I'll never go back to Alabama, that's not the place for me [bis]

You know they killed my sister and my brother,

And the whole world let that crowd go free.

Spanish translation

The interest of Caucasian audiences in blues during the 1960s increased due to the movement led by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and by British Blues (British Blues). This genre, promoted mainly by Alexis Korner, developed in the United Kingdom, where groups such as the Graham Bond Organization, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, Cream, and Irish band Them performed classic blues songs from the Delta blues and Chicago blues subgenres.

The British blues musicians of the early 1960s in turn inspired a number of American blues rock performers, including Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band, and Ry Cooder. Much of British group Led Zeppelin's early hits were tributes to traditional blues songs, which is not unusual considering that their guitarist Jimmy Page hailed from the Yardbirds. The Rolling Stones, for their part, have always expressed the great influence that blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley and especially Muddy Waters, to whom they owe the name they chose for the band for their song Rollin'; Stone A blues rock performer originally from Seattle, Jimi Hendrix was a rarity in his camp at the time: a black man who played psychedelic rock; Hendrix was a virtuoso guitarist and a pioneer in the use of distortion and 'feedback' in his music.Through these and other artists, blues music influenced the development of rock music.

The Argentine trio Manal, was the first group blues in Spanish.

In 1970 the Manal trio established the bases of blues sung in Spanish in Argentina. Influenced poetically by tango and the Beatnik generation, and musically by blues, rock, jazz and Afro music from the Río de la Plata, the trio made up of Alejandro Medina, Javier Martínez and Claudio Gabis created music that fused the roots of a genre born in the Mississippi Delta with elements of the local idiosyncrasy and geography of Porteña.

Blues from the eighties to today

Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence in interest in blues by a certain sector of the African-American population, mainly in the Jackson area and other regions of the ' deep south'. Soul blues, commonly referred to as southern soul, found unexpected success thanks to two recordings by the Jackson-based Malaco record label: Z. Z. Hill's "Down Home Blues" (1982) and Little Milton "The Blues is Alright" (1984). Contemporary African-American performers who worked for this revival include Bobby Rush, Denise LaSalle, Sir Charles Jones, Bettye LaVette, Marvin Sease, Peggy Scott-Adams, Billy Soul Bonds, T.K. Soul, Mel Waiters, and Willie Clayton. The US Blues Radio Network, founded by Rip Daniels (a black Mississippi citizen), featured soul blues on its broadcasts and featured radio personalities such as Duane DDT Tanner and Nikki deMarks.

Since 1980, blues has continued both in its traditional form and giving way to new genres. Texas blues was born with the use of guitars for both rhythmic and solo roles. Unlike West Coast blues, the Tejano genre is mainly influenced by the British rock blues movement. Renowned Texas blues artists include Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and ZZ Top. The 1980s also saw a resurgence in popularity for John Lee Hooker, collaborating with Carlos Santana, Miles Davis, Robert Cray, and Bonnie Raitt, among others. Eric Clapton, famous for his performances with John Mayall & amp; the Bluesbreakers, Cream or Derek and the Dominos, recorded their album MTV Unplugged in the 1990s, in which he performed several blues songs with an acoustic guitar. Since then he has paid tribute to this style with albums that can be considered totally blues, such as From the Cradle or Me and Mr. Johnson, and that have brought the genre closer to the general public.

In the 1980s and 1990s, blues publications such as Living Blues and Blues Revue began to be distributed, forming blues associations in major cities, open-air blues festivals and increasing the number of nightclubs and buildings associated with blues.

In the 1990s, blues performers explored a wide range of musical genres, as can be seen in nominations for the annual Blues Music Awards, formerly named W.C. Handy Awards, or in the nominations for the Grammy Awards in the categories of Best Contemporary Blues Album and Best Traditional Blues Album. Contemporary blues music is represented by various record labels such as Alligator Records, Blind Pig Records, MCA, Delmark Records, Delta Groove Music, NorthernBlues Music and Vanguard Records, some of the most famous being rediscovered and remastered blues rarities by Arhoolie Records, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Yazoo Records, and Document Records.

Today, young blues artists are exploring all aspects of this musical genre, from classic Delta blues to the more blues orientated blues. rock; artists born from the 1970s such as Shemekia Copeland, Jonny Lang, Corey Harris, John Mayer, the Vargas Blues Band, Susan Tedeschi, and the North Mississippi Allstars have developed their own styles.

Musical impact

The musical genres of blues, their structures, melodies and the blues scale have influenced many other musical genres such as jazz, rock and roll i> and pop music. Renowned jazz, folk or rock and roll artists such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan have to their credit several important blues recordings. The blues scale is often used in popular songs like Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night," blues ballads like "Since I Fell for You" and "Please Send Me Someone to Love," and even in orchestral works like the works of George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F.

The blues scale is present in much of modern popular music, especially the progression of thirds used in rock music (for example on the track "A Hard Day's Night" by The Beatles). The blues structures are used in the headlines of television series such as the hit «Turn Me Loose» by teen idol Fabián in the series Batman, in country songs like those performed by Jimmie Rodgers and even famous songs by guitarists or vocalists like Tracy Chapman's "Give Me One Reason".

The blues can be danced as a type of swing, without fixed patterns of movement and focusing on sensuality, body contact and improvisation. Most blues dance moves are inspired by traditional blues music. Although blues dancing is usually performed to blues themes, it can be performed to any music that has a slow 4/4 beat.

The origin of rhythm and blues can be traced back to spirituals and blues. Musically, the spirituals were descendants of the New England choral tradition, particularly the hymns of Isaac Watts and the blending of African rhythms along with call-and-response musical patterns. The spirituals, or religious songs, of African-American communities are more and better documented than the blues low-down (or depressive blues). Spiritual singing was developed because African-American communities could thus bring more people together in their meetings, which were called encuentros en el campo.

Duke Ellington, despite being an artist jazz, used the structures of blues extensively.

The early country bluesmen, in addition to being influenced by spiritual singing, performed country music and urban blues; some of these musicians include Skip James, Charlie Patton and Georgia Tom Dorsey. Dorsey helped popularize gospel music, a genre that developed in the 1930s thanks to the Golden Gate Quartet. In the fifties, soul music (with artists such as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and James Brown) already used elements of gospel and blues. In the 1960s and 1970s, gospel and blues merged into soul blues music. The funk genre of the 1970s had major influences from soul; Likewise, funk can be considered as the predecessor of hip hop and contemporary rhythm and blues.

Before World War II, the boundaries between jazz and blues were unclear. Generally, jazz used different harmonic structures than the twelve-bar structure associated with blues, however, the jump blues subgenre of the 1940s combined both genders. After World War II, blues had a major influence on jazz: bebop classics, such as Charlie Parker's "Now&# 39;s the Time”, used the blues structures with the pentatonic scale and the blues notes.

Bebop marked a major shift in the role of jazz, turning it from a popular music genre to dance to a "high degree," "less accessible and cerebral music for the musicians. The audience for both genres, jazz and blues, was divided and the distinction between the two genres was clearly defined. Artists who move between the border between jazz and blues are included within the subgenre called jazz blues.

The twelve-bar structure and the blues scale were a major influence on rock and roll. A clear example of this is Elvis Presley's song Hound Dog (a blues song turned into a rock and roll song), which maintains a twelve-bar structure (both in harmony and lyrics) and a melody centered on the third of the tonic (as well as the seventh of the subdominant).

Many early rock and roll songs are based on the blues: "Johnny B. Goode", "Blue Suede Shoes", "Whole Lotta' Shakin' Going On," "Tutti-Frutti," "Shake, Rattle, and Roll," "What'd I Say," and "Long Tall Sally"; Likewise, a large part of these themes retained the sexual theme and the innuendos of blues music and even the argument of the song "Hound Dog" contains hidden sexual references between the lyrics and double meanings in some of them. his words. Some examples of this topic are:

Got a gal named Sue, she knows just what to do

(“Tutti Frutti” by Little Richard). Original in English

I have a girl named Sue; she knows exactly what to do

Spanish translation

See the girl with the red dress on, she knows how to do it all night long

("What I'd say" by Ray Charles). Original in English

Look at the girl in the red dress, she knows how to do it all night.

Spanish translation

Later, more mature white rock rock borrowed the structure and harmonies of blues, despite less sexual frankness and poor harmonic creativity (for example Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"). Many of the white musicians who played songs by black artists changed certain words of the lyrics: an example corresponds to the change that Pat Boone introduced, in his interpretation of the song "Tutti Frutti", modifying the original letter ("Tutti frutti, loose booty... a wop bop a lu bop, a good Goddamn») for a more moderate version.

Social impact

Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal and hip hop, the blues has been accused of being "devil's music" and of inciting violence and all kinds of criminal behavior. blues music) this genre enjoyed a bad reputation, with W. C. Handy being the first musician to improve the image of blues to non-Americans. blacks.

Today, blues is one of the main components of African-American culture and of the American cultural heritage in general, its importance being reflected not only in university studies but also in films such as Sounder, The Blues Brothers, Crossroads and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (film in the which appears characterized, with certain licences, by blues guitarist Robert Johnson). The films of The Blues Brothers, in which various musical genres related to blues such as rhythm & blues or zydeco, have had a huge impact on the image of blues music (even though the music from the most famous movie, the first one, is mostly rhythm and blues); Likewise, these films promoted the traditional blues song "Sweet Home Chicago", using the best-known version attributed to Robert Johnson, to the status of unofficial anthem of the city of Chicago.

In 2003, Martin Scorsese made a major effort to promote the blues, asking famous film directors, such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders, to star in a series of films called The Blues. Scorsese also participated in a tribute to the most important artists of the blues through the edition of several compact discs of music.