Blues (English Blues, translated as blue, also transliterated as blues) is a kind of vocal and instrumental music based on the pentatonic scale. Another feature of it is its special harmony. Blues originated from the soul music, hymns, labor songs, shouts and hymns of African American slaves in the past. The blues sounds used in the blues and the way it is sung show its West African origins. Blues had a great influence on later American and Western pop music. Ragtime, jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock music, country music and ordinary pop songs, and even modern classical music all contain blues elements or elements. Developed from the blues. In poetry, the word is often used to describe melancholy. The word blues has the same meaning as blue devils, which means low-key mood, sadness and melancholy. As early as 1798, George Corman wrote a farce called "The Blue Devil, a Farce." In the 19th century the word was used to refer to delirium tremens and police. The use of the term in African American music may be older. "Memphis Blues" by William Christopher Handy in Memphis in 1912 is the earliest written record of the term in music.
Blues music began in the southern United States in the early twentieth century. It is also mixed with the rhythm and rhyme similar to the recital form in the church.
This kind of music has an obvious special style, which is to use the "one call and one response" form similar to Chinese folk songs, which is called Call and Response in English. At first, the musical phrase will give people a feeling of tension, crying, and helplessness, and then the subsequent musical phrase will seem to comfort and relieve the suffering people. It’s like a suffering person crying to God, and then receiving God’s comfort and response!
So blues music places great emphasis on the catharsis of self-emotions and originality or improvisation. This improvisational playing method later slowly evolved into various types of music, such as Rock and Roll, Swing, Jazz, etc., so blues is also the root of modern pop music.
The harmonica has been widely used in blues music since about the mid-1920s. At that time, many street performers performed music in the United States. Their commonly used instruments were banjo, drums, and one. A type of wind instrument called pan quill pipes. Since guitars and harmonicas have better performance than these traditional instruments and are more suitable for performing in rough places, harmonicas are gradually used to play blues music.
In the 1930s, many black people moved to the big city of Chicago. Blues music and blues harmonica also spread in Chicago, and later formed a genre of their own called Chicago Blues.
When listening to blues music, you will find that they all seem to follow the same musical form.
The reason is that a standard form is commonly used in blues concerts, called 12 Bar Blues