London Blue: London Blues
The origin of the blues is not known. Some researchers think that the blues can be traced to East Africa in the seventeenth century, but its first published reference appeared in 1847 in the United States.
We do not know for sure what triggered its initial popularity in America. First, the musical innovation was much appreciated by white businessmen who were going through hard times. They found that people who felt sad and desperate could be cheered up by listening to a popular music genre called "Dixieland". The first recordings of American jazz were played by New Orleans musicians who knew the Dixieland style. A second factor was the enormous growth of the railway system that enabled travellers to take advantage of the long-distance transport of moving music. Traveling musicians spread the word about the new sound that they had encountered in America and made it possible for it to reach other parts of the world. So the blues was first popular in the American South and then spread to other parts of the country. Finally, the technological revolution in recording, which enabled each musician to record his own music, added a new dimension to the genre.
Most blues are in the minor key and have a minor chord. The blues are often considered to be folk music that emerged from a poor white rural background. However, they are closely associated with jazz and swing. At the beginning, the blues were almost exclusively played by African American musicians. However, they also spread outside the United States to other countries, first in Great Britain, where they were called the "London blues", and then to other countries in Europe and the Caribbean. The blues became popular in the United States when the three great white recording companies, Columbia, Victor and Okeh, started recording American blues artists.
The blues were well received in the 1940s by audiences who appreciated their melancholy and their poetic expressions about the inner life. However, the 1950s brought a different mood. The United States were at war with Japan and the Korean War was still going on. The US black population had been discriminated against and was under constant surveillance. They were being harassed, beaten and put in prisons and reform schools. In many cities in the South, the segregation laws were still in effect. So the blues brought sadness and despair. Today, the blues have become associated with the popular rock music, which, of course, includes a number of blues songs.
Fig.1 A illustration of the origin of the word "blues". (Cliquet
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