Jazz, Hip-Hop, Blues

Jazz, Hip-Hop, Blues
By Sharon White

America, the big melting pot, has always been influencing the music of the whole world. It gave birth to many different styles and music traditions. Jazz, Hip-Hop and Blues are the three most known and most popular traditions that also originated in the US.

One of the most famous of musical traditions is that of the Blues. It has also been one of the most influential, paving the way for many other new styles of music. Blues, a distinct style of music, began to emerge around the 1860's. After the civil war, the newly freed Afro-American people were presented with a new difficulty. They had been removed from the lives that they had previously known and thrown into a new life, a life of segregation and contempt. The American culture could no longer condone the use of slavery, but it was not ready to accept the new free men and women into their society either. Many had to travel the country in search of work. These people were mostly men and those of whom music appealed to most took up instruments such as the guitar and harmonica because these instruments were cheap and easy to travel with. It was in this setting of a sense of deep segregation that the blues was born.

The distinction that made Blues so different from other music was it's clear roots from the work song of the olden days. The early blues artists and even the later Jazz musicians used their instruments as extensions of their voice. The rhythms that they made were in the same non-syncopated form as the work song had been and the sounds were meant to mimic the human voice. It was in this way that the blues became even more significant and even more successful in their effort to convey emotion.

Travelling Blues shows, Minstrelsies, began to tour the country. As a result, Blues began to be heard everywhere, and it began to influence more and more people. It was still primarily black music listened to by black people, but that soon began to change.