Why is the blues, the “blues”?

Compiled from a few sources, here’s a quick look at the blues — its origins, its meaning and its form. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don’t really know much about music myself, so I hope this bit (Ed: quite a “bit”, really), which I’ve put together with the help of Naemah, will be as interesting for you as it was for me.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz states that the “term ‘blues’ has a number of interrelated meanings. In the 16th century the ‘Blue Devils’ referred to a fit of melancholy, an interpretation that persisted and came into popular usage in the mid-19th century (Blues: Origins).

Musically, the blues, as Bob Porter observes, “is the music of black Americans” (64). Porter notes the development of the blues as such:

Originating in the South and first discovered in Mississippi, it is music that developed from field hollers, work songs, religious music, and folk melodies. Undergoing continuous change through the years, it has kept its characteristics throughout. The blues means different things to different people. Simultaneously a form and a feeling, it has provided inspiration for singers and musicians for over a century [and] blues influence can be heard in each form of American popular music (64).

Here, I find it very interesting how the quality of “interrelated meanings” in the term “blues” manifests itself in its musical form. Let’s see how Porter describes the blues again: It “means different things to different people”, but at the same time, it possesses certain inherent characteristics that have been kept through years of change.

This seems to me a key point about the blues, and I try to think of a way to describe its essence. “Flexible constant”? Kinda oxymoronic (Ed: and not a little lame, I might add) I know, but look at how Scott Yanow talks about the “irony” of the blues:

“The irony of the blues is that the word means both a sad feeling (having the blues); and a style of music that is meant to dispel the blues and make listeners happy, even when the subject matter deals with the singer’s bad luck” (xxvi).

So I’m guessing at any given time, the blues is always one thing, yet another; it is always two things, if not more, at once. And I think this is how the music enriches itself, through its own fluid movements across variegating meanings founded upon its own term(s), its name, the blues.

As Timothy Berg tells us, the blues “emerged in its mature form after the turn of the twentieth century”, but unfortunately, “no one knows who the first singers or musicians were that put this style together into its now familiar form, as the music evolved before the invention of recording technology”. Berg goes on to detail the blues as a musical style:

[The] blues is centered around a 12-bar form with three lines of four bars each. And, while it does use standard chords and instrumentation, it is an innovative music known for the off-pitch “blue notes” which give the music its deeper feeling.

These blue notes are produced by bending tones, and the need to produce these tones made certain instruments key to playing blues music: the guitar, the harmonica, and the human voice. It is a rather informal music, with plenty of room for singers and musicians to express themselves in unique ways. Thus, the music has given the world a wide variety of unique blues artists whose styles are not easily replicated (Blues).

As we learn here, while the blues can be, and I gather, is, notated to a more or less formal arrangement, there is a lot of room for both music and performer to “breathe”, so to say. This is thanks to the use of blue notes (Ed: You can read more about them, here) and the spontaneous nature of the music that almost demands improvisation.

Just how flexible is this music?

With a humourous touch, David Evans delivers the perfect riposte: “Blues is such a protean and flexible mode of expression that it almost defies any attempt to pin it down with a concise definition. One can’t, for example, even state with any finality whether the word “blues” is singular or plural (1)!”

And that’s the gist of it. (^_^)

List of Works Cited

* To see catalogue details of references, please click on the links in blue.

• Berg, Timothy. Blues. “St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.” Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 1. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. 290-293. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale. National Library Board Singapore. 14 Apr. 2008 <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/
  start.do?p=GVRL&u=sgnlb >.

* You can access Gale Virtual Reference Library by signing up for a FREE Digital Library Membership with NLB. For details, please go here.

• Blues: Origins. “The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.” New York; London: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.

• Evans, David. “NPR Curious Listener’s Guide to Blues.” New York: Perigee Books, 2005.

• Porter, Bob. The Blues in Jazz. “The Oxford Companion to Jazz.” Ed. Bill Kirchner. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 64-77.

• Yanow, Scott. “Jazz - A Regional Exploration.” Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2005.