I Got The Blues

Blues music came about during the 1800s in Mississippi. It was initially a folk  music popular among former slaves living in the Mississippi Delta, the flat plain between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. With the Great Migration of black workers that began around that time the Blues spread around the south and the rest of the United States.

Musicians mostly played Blues in “tent shows: while accompanying traveling doctors, magicians and circuses. The typical blues used flattened notes and was taken up by New Orleans Jazz musicians. Unlike Jazz, blues didn’t spread across the country  from the South to the Midwest until the 1930s and 1940s. When blues left Mississippi and went to Urban areas it evolved into electrified Chicago blues. Most blues music is composed of 12 measures.

Popular Blues artist are B.B. King, Ray Charles, and Eta James

Following Radical Reconstruction, blues was spread across the country by the black freedman who made the journey north; this is how artists like Mick Jagger and Elvis Presley were introduced to the music that made them such a success. Blues music had a big influence on gospel music. Thomas A. Dorsey, who is considered the “father of gospel music,” was a former blues pianist and songwriter. I personally don’t like listening to blues music because it is very sad and makes me think about the hard struggles of black people.

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