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Article: Blues
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BLUES
BLUES
as a musical term can describe an oral tradition of African American poetry set to music using blues form (typically three-line stanzas with the first two lines being similar, set to a twelve-bar harmonic framework called a blues progression); the form of the poetry and/or the music; and an aesthetic that remains an ideal for Jazz performance in general.
Blues originated as an expression of the individual and interactive social tradition of a displaced African American population. It began with the African American agrarian working class of the Mississippi Delta and combined African American and European American traditions, particularly hollers (field work songs) and ...