Blues

MUSIC
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Blues, secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th
century, originally in the South. The simple but expressive forms of the
blues became by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the
development of popular music throughout the United States.

Form
Although instrumental accompaniment is almost universal in the blues, the
blues is essentially a vocal form. Blues songs are lyrical rather than
narrative; blues singers are expressing feelings rather than telling stories.
The emotion expressed is generally one of sadness or melancholy, often
due to problems in love. To express this musically, blues performers use
vocal techniques such as melisma (sustaining a single syllable across
several pitches), rhythmic techniques such as syncopation, and
instrumental techniques such as “choking” or bending guitar strings on the
neck or applying a metal slide or bottleneck to the guitar strings to create a
whining, voice-like sound.
As a musical style, the blues is characterized by expressive
“microtonal” pitch inflections (blue notes), a three-line textual stanza of the
form AAB, and a 12-measure form. Typically the first two and a half
measures of each line are devoted to singing, the last measure and a half
consisting of an instrumental “break” that repeats, answers, or
complements the vocal line. In terms of functional (i.e., traditional
European) harmony, the simplest blues harmonic progression is described
as follows (I, IV, and V refer respectively to the first or tonic, fourth or
subdominant, and fifth or dominant notes of the scale):

Phrase 1 (measures 1–4) I–I–I–I

Phrase 2 (measures 5–8) IV–IV–I–I

Phrase 3 (measures 9–12) V–V–I–I

African influences are apparent in the blues tonality, the call-and-response

pattern of the repeated refrain structure of the blues stanza,
the falsetto break in the vocal style, and the imitation of vocal idioms by
instruments, especially the guitar and harmonica.

Influence
The blues have influenced many other musical styles. Blues and jazz are
closely related; such seminal jazzmen as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis
Armstrong employed blues elements in their music. Soul music and rhythm
and blues also show obvious blues tonalities and forms. The blues have
had their greatest influence on rock music. Early rock singers such as Elvis
Presley often used blues material. British rock musicians in the 1960s,
especially the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall, were strongly
influenced by the blues, as were such American rock musicians as Mike
Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, and the Allman Brothers Band.