Blues

music genre · African American history · rhythm and groove

Born in the Deep South. Blues grew out of African-American communities in the Deep South around the 1860s, drawing from spirituals, work songs, and field hollers that people sang during their daily lives.

Special musical tricks. Blues uses a special scale with bent notes called blue notes, plus a steady twelve-bar pattern that repeats and creates a hypnotic groove that makes you want to move.

Call and response magic. A key feature of blues is call-and-response, where one person sings a line and another answers back, just like having a musical conversation.

The groove ripples outward. The walking bass and shuffling rhythm of blues create a trance-like feeling that other musicians loved so much they built jazz, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues right on top of it.