Music History

The Origins of Blues

Little is known about the exact origins of the music now known as the blues.

No specific year can be cited as the origin of the blues; largely because the style evolved over a long period of time and existed in approaching its modern form before the term blues was introduced; before the style was thoroughly documented. However, it is thought that the blues were brought from Africa to America by slaves. One important early reference to something closely resembling the blues comes from 1901; when an archaeologist in Mississippi describe the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues. The basics of the Blues were mostly influenced by African-American culture. The use of flatted notes comes from the indigenous music of West Africa, although it's also used in Enlgish and Irish folk music.

The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style type of music. Many of the blues elements can be traced back to the music of Africa performed during slave times, expanded into simple solo songs laden with emotional content. According to Sanders, the instruments most associated with the blues are: guitar, piano, and harmonica which are not African in origin, but they come from Europe. The use of melisma and a wavy, nasal intonation type of blues music suggests a connection between the music of West and Central Africa and the blues. A product of America's cultural melting pot, it originated in the American South before spreading and evolving to other parts of the country and around the world. Blues recordings were some of the earliest popular records sold in the United States, thus distributing the blues far and wide and making it accessible to many new musicians who would eventually contribute to its growth.

The Origins of Country Music

The term country music began to be used in the 1940s when the earlier term hillbilly music was deemed to be degrading, and the term was widely embraced in the 1970s, while country and western has declined in use since that time. Country music is one of the most popular genres of music, normally outsold only by pop and rock genres. The origins of modern country music can be traced to two seminal influences and a remarkable coincidence. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are widely considered to be the founders of country music. Their songs were first captured at a historic recording session in Bristol, Tennessee/ Bristol, Virginia on August 1, 1927; where Ralph Peer was the talent scout and sound recordist. Country music is actually a catch-all category that embraces several different genres of music: Nashville sound, bluegrass, fast mandolin, banjo and fiddle-based music popularized by Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs, Western which