Blues artists biography for kids

The origin of the blues.

Famous blues musicians

Little is known about the origin of the music known as the blues. No year can be cited as the origin, because the style evolved over a long period. Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik traces the roots of many of its elements back to the African continent, the "cradle of the blues". One early mention comes from , when an archaeologist in Mississippi described the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues.

There are few characteristics common to all blues. The genre takes its shape from the peculiarities of each individual performance. Some characteristics are common to most styles of African American music. The earliest blues-like music was a "functional expression, rendered in a call-and-response style without accompaniment or harmony and unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure".

This pre-blues music was adapted from the field shouts and hollers performed during slave times, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional content". Many of these blues elements, such as the call-and-response format, can be traced back to the music of Africa. When Africans were taken to North America as slaves, they took their musical traditions with them.