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9 paź 2024 · Blues, secular folk music created by African Americans in the early 20th century, originally in the South. The simple but expressive forms of the blues became by the 1960s one of the most important influences on the development of popular music. Learn more about blues, including notable musicians.
Paul Oliver, probably the world’s foremost scholar of the blues, first heard African-American vernacular music during World War II when a friend brought him to listen to black servicemen stationed in England singing work songs they had brought with them from the fields and lumber camps of the Deep South.
Blues rock gained international recognition in the 1960s thanks to British performers like Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, and The Rolling Stones. One of the most famous guitarists in history, Jimi Hendrix, combined rock and blues to produce a groundbreaking sound that pioneered both styles.
In this exploration, we invite you on a fascinating journey through time. We’ll trace the footprints of blues music from its early days in the 1920s, following its evolution and influence into the 2000s. Each decade reflects the blues’ impact on and by the cultural, social, and political landscapes.
The birth of the blues refers to the emergence of a distinct musical genre that originated in the African American communities of the Deep South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
For most of the time period in question, the prevailing works on blues music were framed by questions of authenticity, race, and political ideology. However, it seems that as the twentieth century came to a close and the number of publications on blues music increased, writers favored more varied and narrow subfields.
As the public appetite for this new genre grew, professional singers backed by small bands began performing the blues, a sound sometimes called classic blues. Mamie Smith’s 1920 “ Crazy Blues ,” the first blues song recorded by a black female vocalist, became a hit.
