The Blues
Chicago has been branded as the “Blues Capital of the World”, with nearly all of the genre’s most prominent and clever musicians as either natives of Chicago or securing their careers once moving to the city. However, Chicago is not the origin of the Blues. Though the exact derivation of the Blues was on no account confirmed, customarily, it is acknowledged that it was sustained in the North Mississippi River Delta in the late nineteenth century following the Civil War. The imaginative Delta Blues were profoundly subjective, serving as the spirit of African music, as well as their daily existence, articulating thoughts of optimism and misery, sovereignty and oppression. Many affirm that the Blues originated in the fields, as working slaves chanted field hollers and spirituals amongst each other, designing rhythms by stomping their feet and clapping their hands. With blues primarily as a vocal narrative style featuring solo voice with instrumental accompaniment, it has contributed significantly to the development of jazz, rock and roll, and country and western music. …show more content…
Blues lyrics incorporate three-line rhymed verses or stanzas, in which every verse consists of a line of verse that is reiterated and then concluded with a closing line. Each stanza of content is assigned to one, twelve-bar chorus, varying from four to eight stanzas in duration. Blues notes have a bittersweet affecting impression. While vocals are the spotlight, musicians typically improvise instrumental solos over harmonic blues progressions. For instance, the "bottleneck slide" method of guitar playing, consisting of scraping a knife or glass bottleneck up the guitar fingerboard, stimulates vocal