Blues Journey: Got Them Blues - A History

As enslaved people toiled in the fields, they often sang to communicate with each other and pass the time. These work songs, spirituals, and field hollers formed the basis of blues music as it became an important sound of the American South in the early 20th century. In the 1930s, faced with extreme poverty and laws that discriminated against and segregated them, thousands of African Americans migrated to northern cities, taking the blues with them— where both the songs and the singers adapted to their new urban environment.

The story of the blues travels from the coasts of Africa, through the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta, across the hills of Appalachia, to the streets of Chicago and beyond. The roots of blues can be found in slave songs, spirituals, and field hollers of the American South; its sound can be heard in early rock-and-roll, and in today's alternative and hip hop landscapes. Journey with us to learn about the influences and impact the blues has had on musical culture.

[Bloodgod]

It's amazing how many people don't know that basically all modern popular music - including all forms of music descended from rock, go back to blues, which go back to slave songs and hollers, which in major part go back to west African traditional music.
Plastic pop, Viking metal, gabber, progressive trance... all of it carries the musical DNA of African traditional music in it, even if deeply buried under many layers of subsequent diversification and experimentation.

[garygrinkevich]

Very concise and informative, i enjoyed all the original audio clips . Blues music is a living testament to the difficulties the ex slaves faced when trying to assimilate into a culture with no education and only homemade instruments, music, cooking, singing and dancing as a means to bridge cultural gaps, profit, and survive in an (at best) indifferent capitalist society, and at worst open hatred and violence at the hands of the kkk and other conservative groups. LBJ's later signing the civil rights act drove most of the overt white racists to the conservative movement which was embraced with "southern strategy" politics, in the 60's and since have been well received and their signal boosted in the trump era. This is important context for anyone wishing to understand how power, privilege, and prestige reinforce themselves amongst the owning class in society, and an intro into the major political realignment the parties underwent from the civil war.

[enithkarimquispeespinoza]

Hello I´m Peruvian and I´ve been learning a little about Blue´s History. Thanks

[brianharris]

This perpetuates many of the myths about the blues.
The myth that the blues originated in the Mississippi delta has resulted in a distortion of the understanding of black music culture in general and of the female blues singers’ contribution to this culture in particular. Starting from the previous century’s ideological discussion about what is good and bad music – and from the schism between the concepts of popular music/folk music – a white vision of the blues was constructed, a vision that is still very much alive and kicking up until today. This vision, however, reveals a blindness towards black culture, a patronisation of black voices, and implicitly a discrimination of female blues artists.

[znnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn]

What is the song called at the beginning

[raneads]

Coming out of WWI and then a pandemic (reverse order repeated 2024) everybody was fed up to their necks with GAD (general anxiety disorders) and in that double-bind turned to jazz, blues and dance. The dancing was copied from an african "happy step forward, then backwards arms flailing" popularized in a hub city of slavery in South Carolina. Yes yes, the city is Charleston, naming the step everyone soon adopted! Issuing in big band and jazz and couples dancing with none other than Frankie Manning with his (jitterbug) Lindy Hop.

[mr.yellowstrat]

Although blues (as it is now known) can be seen as a musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the African call-and-response tradition that transformed into an interplay of voice and guitar, the blues form itself bears no resemblance to the melodic styles of the West African griots. Additionally, there are theories that the four-beats-per-measure structure of the blues might have its origins in the Native American tradition of pow wow drumming.

[nquerosaber]

never thought this way, but blues is technically north american folk music

[miceskin]

Hi, I'm trustworthy white guy, here's a history of the blacks and their music

[riffraffactual]

The million dollar question… would you, at the cost of Blues music, rather slavery had NOT happened?

[mr.yellowstrat]

The only contribution to blues music that blacks brought was the call and response vocal technique and the blue note. The 4/4 beat comes from Native pow-wows and the chords and structure came from Europe. It's a melting pot genre and the media has just assigned blacks as the progenitors as a form of propaganda that goes back decades. They use it to pander to you but it's not real history.

[pcos]

The blues may have been invented in the Deep South American but THE Rolling STONES perfected the blues

[FrancesGreen-mv]

The million dollar question… would you, at the cost of Blues music, rather slavery had NOT happened?