the.com/blues
the sound of misery so well-organized it becomes joy you can dance to
means A genre of African American folk music born in the Deep South, marked by mournful melodies, bent notes, and a distinctive twelve-bar form — and, more loosely, a state of low-spirited sadness.
from From the older English phrase 'the blue devils,' meaning the agitated melancholy of low spirits — already shortened to 'the blues' by the early 1800s. The color blue had long carried a tinge of sorrow in English (a 'blue' mood). When the musical form crystallized among Black musicians in the American South around the turn of the 20th century, it took this older name for sadness and made it a noun for the sound of singing through it.
- birthplace
- Mississippi Delta cotton fields, late 1800s
- twelve bars
- a chord pattern that built rock and roll
- blue note
- the flattened pitch that sounds beautifully wrong
- crossroads myth
- Robert Johnson allegedly traded his soul for it
- call response
- borrowed straight from African work songs
memphis blues — music genre from memphis, tennessee in the 1890s featuring guitar-based storytelling
chicago blues — electric blues style developed by migrants in chicago from 1940s onward, featuring muddy waters and howlin' wolf