Story of the Blues

Published Nov 3, 2017

In this film “The Story of the Blues”, we trace through the geographical spaces and musicians who helped create the distinctive sound of the blues.

This all began with the movement of abolishing slavery after President Lincoln was assinated. Slaves were free to cross the country. Many tried to work for themselves but could not survive. Secret terror groups became activated and blacks were defensless and in danger.

The blues sounds like its telling a story. They sang the story of their lives and what theyve been through both individually and as a community. They sang about traveling, working all day, hiding, being in fear, the way they are treated, and so much more. The themes were varied form love, loss, jealousy, sarcastic sense of humor, prison, death desperation. Everything was possible w the blues.

This music was sung all over the deep south. They were mostly concentrated in the Mississippi delta but traveld all over the place from NOLA, Memphis and St. Louis.

There was no specific structure or fixed rules to the songs to begin with, but by the end of the nineteenth century it had gained a difinitive rule of 12 beats, known as 12 bar blues. It is made up of three stanzas, each having four beats and always in the major key.

What stood out personally to me in the film was learning the origin of the blues. I had no idea when the blues had begun or, for that matter, why. I think it is so fascinating that the blues tells a story every single time and that it originiated from the stories of many diffent black men and that lives that they lived and was later able to evolve into a race-wide, gender-wide genere of music.