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Country blues Essay Blues evolved from an unaccompanied vocal music and oral tradition of African-American slaves and rural blacks in to a wide variety of styles and subgenres with regional variations across United States and later Europe and Africa. The musical forms and styles arose in the same region during the nineteenth century in the southern United States The country blues has been given several names such as folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or down home blues. Blues is a choral and instrumental form of composition which is based on the use of the blue notes. This style originated in the Africa – American (Black Americans) communities of the United States. This kind of music transverse wide range of emotions and musical style . feeling blue is expressed in songs whose verses laments injustice or express longing for better life lost loves, jobs, and money. The central concept of blues performance is to be able to enable one to overcome sadness and lose the blues. Historically, the blues’ popularity coincides with the rise of the commercial recording industry, the introduction of race records aimed at black record –buyers after the year 1920, and the emigration of the black- Americans from the rural south to the modern urban North. (Philip, 1999) The country blues is usually considered to be an earlier form of the genre was first record in the mid-1920s . to day, there are several regional styles of country blues, which includes delta blues from the Mississippi delta. Texas blues and piedmont blues from the southeast . originally, country blues was usually recorded by a single singer, accompanied on the guitar or piano, with perhaps an accompanying harmonica, simple percussion. Starting year of 1930s, blues musicians fell under the influence of the urban cultures thus including the music and jazz. After the Second World War, the instruments were improvised hence electrified one were now in use . these included saxophones and amplified harmonicas. Especially in Chicago which is a prominent centre of blues recording Country blues were constructed from a much more diverse fluid musical field participated in by black and some white people. The use of blue notes and the performance of call-and response pattern in the music and lyrics art h indicators of African influences. The blues influenced the Americans and westerns popular music and then become integrated n to the genre of jazz, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, hip- hop and other popular music form. There are a few characteristics common to all blues due to the integration of other forms of music . some of the characteristic that were present long before the creation of the modern blues are cal –and response shouts which were functional expression. This was heard in slave fields shout sand holler, expanded into simple solo song laden with emotional content. The blues is nowadays known and seen musical style for both Europeans harmonic structure and the West Africa. Call-and responds tradition, transformed into interplay of voice and guitar. (Philip, 1999) The diddled bow ,which is a homemade one- stringed instrument was found in parts of America south in the early twenties century and Are African derived instrument that has assisted in the transferring of African performance techniques into the early blues instrumental vocabulary. also in the continued development of the blues music ,they adopted elements from Ethiopian and negro, including instrumental and harmonic accompaniment . he blues were loosely relate to ragtime but they preserved better the original melodic pattern of African music. ’ blues songs nowadays show many different structures which are based on tonic dominant chords and subdominant chords. These are all common in music the standard 12-bars is now recognized and documented form of blues from oral history and sheet music in African American communities through region along the lower Mississippi river. Original lyric form if blues was a single line repeated four times. The current most common structure is the repetition off one line once and this is followed by a single line conclusion. Early blues often were in the form of lose narrative where the singer expressed his or her personal woes in a world of harsh reality like a lost love, the cruelty of police officers, oppression at the hands of white folk, and hard times therefore the most oldest blues are records of gritty realistic information’s as it is in contrast with much popular music recorded at the time. Studies shows that the origin of blues spirituals was inside the exposure of slaves to their whites hence gospels origination. (Tony, 2004) The development of the blues was also triggered by the acculturation of the ex-slave population there was however ,essential africannesss in many aspects of the blues expression the social economic reasons for the appearance of the blues is that there was a transition from the slavery to sharecropping ,small-scale agricultural production and the blues have acted as a source of encouragement to them through the relief of third burdens through the interest that other communities have development, they get encourage to be the pioneers of impacting and framed kid f music thus they used in themes way in advertisements. The early 1900s development from group performance to more individualized style was associated with the newly acquired freedom of the enslaved people and again there was, according to Lawrence, there was a direct relationship between the national ideological emphases upon the individual teaching. Such developments were increased due to high perfumers had brought African-American music to new audiences both within the u. s and abroad. Great performers’ in19960s like John Lee Hooker continued to perform at enthusiastic audiences thus inspiring new artists in the traditional blues. Many compilations of classical prewar blues were published and together with music festivals, these brought blues to new audiences. White audiences’ interest in the blues also increased due to Chicago based movement in 1980s, blues to The resent both traditional and new genres are still being popular blue styles forms ,melodies and the blues scale have given a profound impact to the black community and the world ethnic groups as whole . First, these blue musical styles, forms and melodies have influenced many other genres of music. their scale has been everywhere in the popular music forms and informs many modal frames especially the ladder of the thirds used in the music . blues are also used by the community to pass their message to oppressors which I believed has lead the release of slave and the total banning of slavery and racism in the United State. (Davis, 1995) The most important direct predecessor of the blues was the spiritual, a form of religious song with its roots in the camp meeting of the great awakening of the early 19th century. So blues songs Spirituals were passionate song forms, which convey to listeners the same feeling of rootless ness and misery as the blues. This acts as a reminder of there past historical events hence their pasts grieves, . i. e. , Spirituals, however, were less specifically concerning the performer, instead about the general loneliness of mankind, and were more figurative than direct in their lyrics. Despite the earlier differences of the African- Americans and the Americans races have been brought together to interact by the interesting blues music. Blues have played important role of bring unity between the two enemies. The blues form styles acts as way of maintaining the vulture of Africans. This is evidence from the past records which still are much thrilling to many musicians. Though the different forms of blues are similar enough that they can not be easily separated many spirituals would probably have been called blues had that word been in wide use at the time. The social and economic reasons for the appearance of the blues are also important factors. This is because they brought a change in the economic development through the emergence of publishing industry. Blues has evolved from an unaccompanied vocal. Music of poor black laborers into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, with regional variations across the United States and this has been commercialized. (Davis, 1995) References Davis, F. (1995): the History of the Blues. New York: Hyperion Garofalo, R. (1997): Rockin Out: Popular Music in the USA. Allyn Bacon Lawrence W. L. (1977): Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom, Oxford University Press Philip, V. B. (1999): Immigrant, folk, and regional music in the twentieth century, in The Cambridge History of American Music, ed. David Nicholls Cambridge University Press Tony, B. (2004): Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture University of Illinois Press