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Blues Historians
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure ...
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Plantation-era Songs
A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a form of work, either sung while conducting a task (usually to coordinate timing) or a song linked to a task which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song. Definitions and categories Records of work songs are as old as historical records, and anthropological evidence suggests that most agrarian societies tend to have them. Most modern commentators on work songs have included both songs sung while working as well as songs about work since the two categories are seen as interconnected. Norm Cohen divided collected work songs into domestic, agricultural or pastoral, sea shanties, African-American work songs, songs and chants of direction, and street cries. Ted Gioia further divided agricultural and pastoral songs into hunting, cultivation and herding songs, and highlighted the industrial or proto-industrial songs of Textile industry, cloth workers (see Waulking song), factory workers, Sailor, seamen, lumberjack ...
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Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music—a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos. This trope goes back to early blues recordings and is used from time to time in modern American blues and blues rock. An example of hokum lyrics is this sample from "Meat Balls", by Lil Johnson, recorded about 1937: Technique In a general sense, hokum was a style of comedic farce, spoken, sung and spoofed, while masked in both risqué innuendo and "tomfoolery". It is one of the many legacies and techniques of 19th century blackface minstrelsy. Like so many other elements of the minstrel show, stereotypes of racial, ethnic and sexual fools were the stock in trade of hokum. Hokum was stagecraft, gags and routines for embracing farce. It was so broad that there was no mistaking its ludicrousness. Hokum also encompassed dances like the cakewalk and the buzzard lope in skits that unfolded through spoken narrative and song. W. C. H ...
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Kansas City Blues (music)
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure ...
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Hill Country Blues
Hill country blues (also known as North Mississippi hill country blues or North Mississippi blues) is a regional style of country blues. It is characterized by a strong emphasis on rhythm and percussion, steady guitar riffs, few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and heavy emphasis on the "groove", which has been characterized as the "hypnotic boogie". The hill country is a region of northern Mississippi bordering Tennessee. It lies in the counties of Desoto, Marshall, Panola, Tate, Tippah, and Lafayette and straddles the ecoregions of the North Hilly Plain (Red Clay Hills or North Central Hills), the Loess Plains, and Bluff Hills. The hills have poor agricultural soil and wide forested areas, which led to the development of a lumber industry but only small farms. Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi, are often cited as centers of hill country music. The style is regarded as distinct from the blues of the Mississippi Delta, which lies west of the hill country. An an ...
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Detroit Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure ...
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Chicago Blues
Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth century. Key features that distinguish Chicago blues from the earlier traditions, such as the Delta blues, is the prominent use of electrified instruments, especially the electric guitar, and especially the use of electronic effects such as distortion and overdrive. Muddy Waters, a colleague of Delta blues musicians Son House and Robert Johnson, migrated to Chicago in 1943, joining the established Big Bill Broonzy, where they developed a distinctive style of blues music. Joined by artists such as Willie Dixon, Howlin' Wolf, and John Lee Hooker, Chicago Blues reached an international audience by the late 1950s and early 1960s, directly influencing not only the development of early rock and roll musicians such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, bu ...
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Canadian Blues
Canadian blues is the blues and blues-related music (e.g., blues rock) performed by blues bands and performers in Canada. Canadian blues artists include singers, players of the main blues instruments: guitar ( acoustic and electric), harmonica ("blues harp"), keyboards (piano and Hammond organ), bass and drums, songwriters and music producers. In many cases, blues artists take on multiple roles. For example, the Canadian blues artist Steve Marriner is a singer, harmonica player, guitarist, songwriter and record producer. Due to Canada's long shared border with the birthplace of the blues, the United States, there has always been collaboration and contact between Canadian blues artists and their US counterparts. Top Canadian blues artists perform at major US blues bars and festivals and travel to the US to play and record with influential US blues artists. Similarly, US blues bands routinely play in Canadian clubs and blues festivals, and perform and record with Canadian blues art ...
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British Blues
British blues is a form of music derived from American blues that originated in the late 1950s, and reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s. In Britain, it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin. Origins American blues became known in Britain from the 1930s onwards through a number of routes, including records brought to Britain, particularly by African-American GIs stationed there in the Second World War and Cold War, merchant seamen visiting ports such as London, Liverpool, Newcastle upon Tyne and Belfast, and through a trickle of (illegal) imports. Blues music was relatively well known to British jazz musicians and fans, particularly in the works of figures like female singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and the blues-influenced boogie-woogie of Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Wa ...
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Soul Blues
Soul blues is a style of blues music developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s that combines elements of soul music and urban contemporary music. Origin African American singers and musicians who grew up listening to the electric blues by artists such as Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, and Elmore James, and soul singers such as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and Otis Redding fused blues and soul music. Bobby Bland was one of the pioneers of this style. See also * List of soul-blues musicians * Soul music * Blues * R&B * Gospel music * Doo wop * Funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ... References {{Soulmusic Soul music genres Blues music genres ...
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Punk Blues
Punk blues (or blues punk) is a rock music genre that mixes elements of punk rock and blues. Punk Blues Genre AMG Allmusic.com, Retrieved on May 21, 2008 Punk blues musicians and bands usually incorporate elements of related styles, such as protopunk and blues rock. Its origins lie strongly within the garage rock sound of the 1960s and 1970s. Punk blues can be said to favor the common rawness, simplicity and emotion shared between the punk and blues genres. Chet Weise, singer/guitarist of the Immortal Lee County Killers stated, "Punk and blues are both honest reactions to life. It's blues, it's our blues. It's just a bit turned up and a bit faster." Origins Before the beginning of the punk movement of the late 1970s, several important forerunners such as the MC5, the Stooges, the Who, the Sonics, Captain Beefheart, and the New York Dolls displayed a fascination with American blues. AllMusic states that punk blues draws on the influence of the "garage rock sound of the mid-'6 ...
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Gospel Blues
Gospel blues (or holy blues) is a form of blues-based gospel music that has been around since the inception of blues music. It combines evangelistic lyrics with blues instrumentation, often blues guitar accompaniment. According to musician and historian Stefan Grossman, "holy blues" was coined to originally describe Reverend Gary Davis's style of traditional blues playing with lyrics conveying a religious message. Davis and Blind Willie Johnson are considered the genre's two dominant performers, according to Dick Weissman. Other notable gospel-blues performers include Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Washington Phillips. Blues musicians who became devout, or even practicing clergy, include Reverend Robert Wilkins and Ishman Bracey.Wardlow, G., and Komara, E. M. (1998). ''Chasin' That Devil Music: Searching for the Blues''. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books. pp. 43, 45. . Bluesmen such as Boyd Rivers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Sam Collins, Josh White, Blind Boy Fulle ...
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Desert Blues
Tishoumaren (ⵜⵉⵛⵓⵎⴰⵔⴻⵏ in Neo-Tifinagh script) or assouf, internationally known as desert blues, is a style of music from the Sahara region of northern and west Africa. Critics describe the music as a fusion of blues and rock music with Tuareg, Malian or North African music. Various other terms are used to describe it including desert rock, Saharan rock, Takamba, Mali blues, Tuareg rock or simply "guitar music". The style has been pioneered by Tuareg musicians in the Sahara region, particularly in Mali, Niger, Libya, Western Sahara, Algeria, Burkina Faso and others. The musical style took shape as an expression of the culture of the traditionally nomadic Tuareg people, amid their difficult sociopolitical situation, including rebellions, widespread displacement and exile in post-colonial Africa. The word ''Tishoumaren'' is derived from the French word ''chômeur'', meaning "the unemployed". The genre was first pioneered by and popularized outside of Africa b ...
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