Blues

Blues is a style of music that grew out of the African American experience in the Deep South during the 1860s. Its roots draw from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and simple rhymed ballads that were part of African American culture. The blues form shows up across jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and it is built on a call-and-response pattern, a specific blues scale, and certain chord progressions—most famously the twelve-bar blues. A key part of the sound comes from "blue notes," which are thirds, fifths, or sevenths that are flattened in pitch, sometimes called "worried notes." The rhythm is often driven by a blues shuffle or walking bass line, creating a trance-like, repetitive groove.

The term "blues" likely comes from "blue devils," a phrase for melancholy and sadness. This usage appears in George Colman's 1798 farce *Blue Devils*, and may trace back to a 1600s British term for hallucinations from severe alcohol withdrawal. Over time, the phrase lost the devil reference and came to mean agitation or depression. By the 1800s in the U.S., "blues" was linked to drinking alcohol—a meaning that survives in "blue law," which bans Sunday alcohol sales. In 1827, John James Audubon wrote to his wife that he "had the blues," using the term for a sad state of mind. Henry David Thoreau mentioned "the blues" in his 1854 book *Walden*, based on his 1845 solitude. On December 14, 1862, Charlotte Forten, a 25-year-old free Black woman teaching in South Carolina, wrote in her diary that she "came home with the blues" because she felt lonesome. She later noted songs like "Poor Rosy" among slaves, saying they "can't be sung without a full heart and a troubled spirit." The phrase in African American music may be older, but it first appeared in print in 1912 with Hart Wand's "Dallas Blues," the first copyrighted blues composition. In lyrics, "blues" often describes a depressed mood.

Early blues lyrics were often a single line repeated four times. By the early 1900s, the now-standard AAB pattern emerged: a line sung over the first four bars, repeated over the next four, then a longer concluding line over the last bars. This structure appears in early published songs like "Dallas Blues" (1912) and "Saint Louis Blues" (1914). W.C. Handy said the AAB pattern was adopted to avoid the monotony of three repeated lines. The lyrics are often delivered in a rhythmic talk style, similar to talking blues. Early blues told loose narratives about personal hardships—lost love, police cruelty, oppression by white people, and hard times. This melancholy has led some to suggest an Igbo origin for blues, given the Igbo's reputation for melancholic music and outlook on plantations in the Americas, though other historians disagree.

The blues form is also tied to the religious music of African Americans, known as spirituals. The first appearance of blues is usually dated to after slavery ended, with juke joints developing later, and it is linked to the new freedom of former slaves. Chroniclers began reporting on blues at the start of the 20th century, and the first blues sheet music was published in 1908. From unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions, blues has grown into many styles and subgenres, including country blues, Delta blues, Piedmont blues, and urban styles like Chicago blues and West Coast blues. World War II marked a shift from acoustic to electric blues, opening the music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid called blues rock emerged, blending blues with rock music.