Little is known about the exact origins of the music we now know as the blues.^[1] No specific year can be cited as the origin of the blues, largely because the style evolved over a long period of time and existed in something approaching its modern form before the term blues was introduced, before the style was thoroughly documented. One important early reference to something probably closely resembling the blues comes from 1901, when an archaeologist in Mississippi described the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues.^[2] Blues music redirects here. ... Year 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... This article is about the U.S. state. ... Languages Predominantly American English Religions Protestantism (chiefly Baptist and Methodist); Roman Catholicism; Islam Related ethnic groups Sub-Saharan Africans and other African groups, some with Native American groups. ...

Influence of spirituals

A watercolor painting of a camp meeting circa 1839 (New Bedford Whaling Museum).

The most important direct antecedent of the blues was the spiritual, a form of religious song with its roots in the camp meetings of the Great Awakening of the early 19th century. Spirituals were a passionate song form, that "convey(ed) to listeners the same feeling of rootlessness and misery" as the blues.^[3] Spirituals, however, were less specifically concerning the performer, instead about the general loneliness of mankind, and were more figurative than direct in their lyrics.^[4] Despite these differences, the two forms are similar enough that they can not be easily separated — many spirituals would probably have been called blues had that word been in wide use at the time.^[5] Image File history File links Religious_Camp_Meeting_(Burbank_1839). ... Image File history File links Religious_Camp_Meeting_(Burbank_1839). ... Watercolor is a painting technique making use of water-soluble pigments that are either transparent or opaque and are formulated with gum to bond the pigment to the paper. ... 1839 (MDCCCXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... == Historical background on spiritual music Spirituals were often expressions of religious faith, although they may also have served as socio-political protests veiled as assimilation to white, American culture. ... A watercolor painting of a camp meeting circa 1839 (New Bedford Whaling Museum). ... The Great Awakenings refer to several periods of dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history. ...

African origins

Aside from the spirituals, African American work songs were an important precursor to the modern blues; these included the songs sung by laborers like stevedores and roustabouts, and the field hollers of slaves.^[6] This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Stevedores on a New York dock loading barrels of corn syrup onto a barge on the Hudson River. ... Roustabout is a 1964 musical movie starring Elvis Presley. ... Field Hollers as well as work songs were African American styles of music from before the Civil War, this style of music is close related to Spirituals in the sense that it expressed religious feelings and included subtle hints about ways of escaping slavery, among other things. ...

There are few characteristics common to all blues, as the genre takes its shape from the peculiarities of each individual performance.^[7] Some characteristics, however, have been a presence since prior to the creation of the modern blues, and are common to most styles of African American music. The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure".^[8] This pre-blues music was adapted from the field shouts and hollers performed during slave times, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content".^[9] This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... In music, a call and response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. ...

Master Kora maker Alieu Suso in the Gambia

Many of these blues elements, such as the call-and-response format, can be traced back to the music of Africa. The use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation also suggests a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and the blues. Image File history File links Gambia_kora_havard. ... Image File history File links Gambia_kora_havard. ... Hand drumming is significant throughtout Africa The music of Africa is as vast and varied as the continents many regions, nations and ethnic groups. ... In music, melisma (commonly known as vocal runs or simply runs) is the technique of changing the note (pitch) of a syllable of text while it is being sung. ...

African American composer W. C. Handy wrote in his autobiography of the experience of sleeping on a train traveling through (or stopping at the station of) Tutwiler, Mississippi, and being awakened by: William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician, often known as the Father of the Blues. ... Tutwiler is a town located in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. ...

... a lean, loose-jointed Negro [who] had commenced plucking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar. ... The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly. . .. The singer repeated the line ("Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog") three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.

The Jola akonting folk lute

Perhaps the most compelling African instrument that is a predecessor to an African-American instrument is the "Akonting," a folk lute of the Jola tribe of Senegambia. It is a clear predecessor to the American banjo in its playing style, the construction of the instrument itself and in its social role as a folk instrument. The Kora is played by a professional caste of praise singers for the rich and aristocracy (called griots or jalis) and is not considered folk music. Jola music was actually not influenced much by Islam and North African/Middle Eastern music, and this may give us an important clue as to how African American music does not, according to many scholars such as Sam Charters, bear hardly any relation to kora music. Rather, African-American music may reflect a hold over from a pre-Islamicized form of African music. The music of the Akonting and that played by on the banjo by elder African-American banjo players, even into the mid 20th century is easily identified as being very similar. The akonting is perhaps the most important and concrete link that exists between African and African-American music. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Akonting (also spelled Ekonting, perhaps better in terms of how it is really pronounced) The Akonting (also known by a couple of other names depending on the locality) is a spike lute played by amateur/folk musicians of the Jola tribe, primarily rice farmers who live in rural areas of... The Diola are a people living in The Gambia, Senegal (Casamance), and Guinea-Bissau. ... The name also refers to the geographic region around the two countries, covering the watershed of the Senegal River and Gambia River. ... For other uses, see Banjo (disambiguation) The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by enslaved Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments. ... This page is about the West African poets. ... Samuel Charters (born Samuel Barclay Charters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1929; his name also appears as Sam Charters) is an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. ...

However, while the findings of Kubik and others also clearly attest to the essential Africanness of many essential aspects of blues expression, studies by Willie Ruff and others have situated the origin of "black" spiritual music inside enslaved peoples' exposure to their masters' Hebridean-originated gospels.^[1] African-American economist and historian Thomas Sowell also notes that the southern, black, ex-slave population was acculturated to a considerable degree by and among their Scots-Irish "redneck" neighbours. Willie Ruff is the hornist and bassist of the Mitchell-Ruff Duo (with pianist Dwike Mitchell) and one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival. ... This article is about the Hebrides islands in Scotland. ... Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930), is an American economist, political writer, and commentator. ... This article is about a stereotypical description. ...

Social and economic aspects

Emancipation from Freedmen's viewpoint; illustration from Harper's Weekly 1865

The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are not fully known.^[2] Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States. The first appearance of the blues is not well defined and is often dated between 1870 and 1900, a period that coincides with the emancipation of the slaves and the transition from slavery to sharecropping and small-scale agricultural production in the southern United States. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1126x795, 247 KB) Summary 1863 US poster Licensing This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly other jurisdictions. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1126x795, 247 KB) Summary 1863 US poster Licensing This image is in the public domain in the United States and possibly other jurisdictions. ... Teresa Bagioli Sickles confession, 1859 Harpers Weekly (A Journal of Civilization) was an American political magazine based in New York City. ... This article is about the abolition of slavery. ...

Several scholars characterize the early 1900s development of blues music as a move from group performances to a more individualized style. They argue that the development of the blues is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the slaves. According to Lawrence Levine,^[3] "there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphasis upon the individual, the popularity of Booker T. Washington's teachings, and the rise of the blues." Levine states that "psychologically, socially, and economically, Negroes were being acculturated in a way that would have been impossible during slavery, and it is hardly surprising that their secular music reflected this as much as their religious music did." Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author and leader of the African American community. ...

An important reason for the lack of certain knowledge about the origins of the blues is the earliest blues musicians' tendency to wander through communities, leaving little or no record of precisely what sort of music they played or where it came from. Blues was generally regarded as lower-class music, unfit for documentation, study or enjoyment by the upper- and middle-classes.^[10]

Blues around 1900

Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, 1843

Blues later adopted elements from the "Ethiopian (here, meaning "black") airs" of minstrel shows and Negro spirituals, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment.^[11] The style also was closely related to ragtime, which developed at about the same time, though the blues better preserved "the original melodic patterns of African music".^[12] Songs from this early period had many different structures. A testimony of those times can be found for instance in Henry Thomas' recordings. However the twelve-, eight-bar, or sixteen-bar structure based on tonic, subdominant and dominant chords became the most common.^[13] Melodically, blues music is marked by the use of the lowered third and dominant seventh (so-called blue notes) of the associated major scale.^[14] What is now recognizable as the standard 12-bar blues form is documented from oral history and sheet music as appearing in African-American communities throughout the region along the lower Mississippi River during the decade of the 1900s (and performed by white bands in New Orleans at least since 1908). One of these early sites of blues evolution was along Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. However, author Eileen Southern has pointed out several contrasting statements by old-time musicians. She cites Eubie Blake as saying "Blues in Baltimore? Why, Baltimore is the blues!" and Bunk Johnson as claiming that the blues was around in his childhood, in the 1880s.^[15] Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1000x817, 783 KB) Summary Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, arranged by Th. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1000x817, 783 KB) Summary Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, arranged by Th. ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... Detail from cover of The Celebrated Negro Melodies, as Sung by the Virginia Minstrels, 1843 The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the American Civil War, African Americans in blackface. ... A spiritual is a African-American song, usually with a religious text. ... Look up ragtime in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Henry Thomas (1874-1950s?). Henry (Ragtime Texas) Thomas was a major pre-war country blues singer and musician. ... The 12-bar blues has a distinctive form in both lyrics and chord structure. ... An eight bar blues is a typical blues chord progression, taking eight 4/4 bars to the verse. ... Sixteen-bar blues is a blues chord progression very similar to the eight bar blues form, except that blues is not traditionally associated with any set notation so sometimes it can be called sixteen bars instead of eight. ... The tonic is the first note of a musical scale, and in the tonal method of music composition it is extremely important. ... In music, the subdominant is the technical name for the fourth degree of the scale. ... In music, the dominant is the fifth degree of the scale. ... A seventh chord is a chord or triad which has a note the seventh above the tonic in it. ... In jazz and blues notes added to the major scale for expressive quality, loosely defined by musicians to be an alteration to a scale or chord that makes it sound like the blues. ... In music theory, the major scale is one of the diatonic scales. ... Oral history is an account of something passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another. ... Sheet music is written representation of music. ... For the river in Canada, see Mississippi River (Ontario). ... This article is about the decade starting in 1900 and ending in 1909. ... New Orleans is the largest city in the state of Louisiana, United States of America. ... Year 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Beale Street is a street in Memphis, Tennessee and a significant location in African-American history and the history of the blues. ... For other uses, see Memphis (disambiguation). ... Eileen Jackson Southern (born 1920 in Minneapolis - died October 13, 2002 in Port Charlotte, Florida) was an African American musicologist, reasearcher, author and teacher. ... James Hubert Blake (February 7, 1887 – February 12, 1983), was a composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. ... Willie Gary Bunk Johnson ( 1879/1889–July 7, 1949) was a prominent early New Orleans jazz trumpet player in the early years of the 20th century who enjoyed a revived career in the 1940s. ... // Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ...

Okahumkee On The Ocklawaha, 1890s photo of the tourist steamer out of Palatka in Florida with guitar toting blacks

Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

Early commercialization

Mamie Smith on the sleeve of volume 1 of the Complete Recorded Works reissue collection

The American sheet music publishing industry produced a great deal of ragtime music. By 1912, the sheet music industry published three popular blues-like compositions, precipitating the Tin Pan Alley adoption of blues elements: "Baby Seals' Blues" by "Baby" F. Seals (arranged by Artie Matthews), "Dallas Blues" by Hart Wand and "Memphis Blues" by W. C. Handy.^[4] Image File history File links Cover of Volume 1 of Mamie Smith collection Complete Recorded Works, taken from Amazon. ... Sheet music is written representation of music. ... Look up ragtime in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. ... Artie Matthews (November 15, 1888 _ October 25, 1958) was a songwriter, pianist, and ragtime composer. ... Hart A. Wand was an early white American blues musician and composer from Oklahoma City. ... The Memphis blues is a style of blues music that was created in 1920s and 1930s by Memphis-area musicians like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. ... William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a blues composer and musician, often known as the Father of the Blues. ...

Handy was a formally trained musician, composer and arranger who helped to popularize the blues by transcribing and orchestrating blues in an almost symphonic style, with bands and singers. He became a popular and prolific composer, and billed himself as the "Father of the Blues"; however, his compositions can be described as a fusion of blues with ragtime and jazz, a merger facilitated using the Latin habanera rhythm that had long been a part of ragtime;^[5][6] Handy's signature work was the St. Louis Blues. St. ...

One of the first professional blues singers was Ma Rainey, who claimed to have coined the term blues. Classic female urban or vaudeville blues singers were popular in the 1920s, among them Mamie Smith, Gertrude Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Victoria Spivey. Mamie Smith, more 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 its first month.^[7] Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey, better known as Ma Rainey (September, 1882 – December 22, 1939), was one of the earliest known professional blues singers and one of the first generation of such singers to record. ... The Classic female blues spanned from 1920 to 1929 with its peak from 1923 to 1925. ... This article is about the musical variety theatre. ... Mamie Smith on the sleeve of volume 1 of the Complete Recorded Works reissue collection Mamie Smith (May 26, 1883 - September 16, 1946) was a vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, and appeared in several motion pictures late in her career. ... This article includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... Victoria Spivey (died 1976) was an American female blues singer. ...

The musical forms and styles that are now considered the "blues" as well as modern "country music" arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called "race music" and "hillbilly music" to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites respectively. At the time, there was no clear musical division between "blues" and "country," except for the race of the performer, and even that sometimes was documented incorrectly by record companies.^[8] country music, see Country music (disambiguation) Country music, the first half of Billboards country and western music category, is a blend of popular musical forms originally found in the Southern United States. ... African American music (also called black music, formerly known as race music) is an umbrella term given to a range of musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large ethnic minority of the population of the United States. ... Old-time music, a traditional style of American music, has roots in Irish, Scottish and African folk music. ...

References

• Southern, Eileen (1997). The Music of Black Americans. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-393-03843-2. 
• Garofalo, Reebee (1997). Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN 0-205-13703-2. 
• Ferris, Jean (1993). America's Musical Landscape. Brown & Benchmark. ISBN 0-697-12516-5. 
• [[16] Muslim Roots of the Blues]. SFGate. Retrieved on August 24, 2005.
• Schuller, Gunther (1968). Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504043-0. 
• Ewen, David (1957). Panorama of American Popular Music. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-648360-7. 
• Oliver, Paul (1970). Savannah syncopators : African retentions in the blues. Studio Vista. ISBN 0-289-79828-0. 

The headquarters of the Cambridge University Press, in Trumpington Street, Cambridge. ... Oxford University Press (OUP) is a highly-respected publishing house and a department of the University of Oxford in England. ... is the 236th day of the year (237th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Paul Oliver is a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development. ...

Notes

1. ^  Southern, pg. 332
2. ^  Southern, pg. 334
3. ^  Southern, pg. 333
4. ^  Southern, pg. 333
5. ^  Southern, pg. 333-334
6. ^  Southern, pg. 334
7. ^  Southern, pg. 333
8. ^  Garofalo, pg. 44
9. ^  Ferris, pg. 229
10. ^  SFGate
11. ^  Garofalo, pg. 44 Gradually, instrumental and harmonic accompaniment were added, reflecting increasing cross-cultural contact. Garofalo goes on to cite others mentioning the "Ethiopian airs" and "Negro spirituals".
12. ^  Schuller, cited in Garofalo, pg. 27
13. ^  Garofalo, pgs. 46-47
14. ^  Ewen, pg. 143
15. ^  Southern, pg. 332
16. ^  Southern, 332-333
17. ^  Southern, pg. 336 Southern does not specify which bluesmen and scholars have made this claim, but does note see also in regard to Joe Turner in Evans, Big Road Blues, pp. 46-47

External links

• Cora Connection -- Information on the kora and related Manding folk music