Forms And Blues Music

A friend recently sent me a Buddy Guy quote "They wanted pure blues when there ain't such thing. Blues always been a gumbo where you throw everything in the pot."

I understand some folks don't care about the multiple sorts/kinds/styles of blues music and hybrids but I want to make this point right here: as there are many types of people there are also many types of music and when you really study such things you realize what noted veteran Buddy Guy said about blues totally corresponds to the vast human cultures, sub and sub-sub cultures all over this planet.

As for blues music itself, consider just some of the variations and hybrids.

It began in the late 1800's in the harshness of Black slavery, sharecropping, poverty and eventually spread among poor and then not-as-poor whites in the American South. Via Black migration blues music moved throughout the U.S. and over time, the wide world.

THE BASICS

urban (electric) blues

-deeper still-

Chicago

St. Louis

Memphis

New Orleans

(and more)

-deeper still-

country (acoustic) blues

Delta

North Mississippi blues

Piedmont

Bentonia School

Texas

(and more)

AND FROM THE BASICS

jump blues

swing blues

soul blues

blues rock

(and more)

Then there are blues derivatives including jug band, Gospel, ragtime, bluegrass, jazz, rhythm and blues, country, rock (and more) as well as variations of all of these and cross-pollination.

See, both in blues as a category of music and life in general the human race isn't monocultural. It ain't only corn, or beans... it's corn, beans, radishes, beets and okra and that's just the beginning!

To demand every expression be exactly what YOU like, love best, appreciate is not only impossible for others, it's as wrong as if any of them demanded the exact same from you.

I'm not saying "anything goes", "everybody gotta dig another person's chili" (mine would be laced with peppers so hot you'd likely run out the door) but am indeed saying God didn't create us all to be penguins, pop bottles who look, sound and find comfort and appreciation of other's styles whether in music or other areas of culture and life.

Until you can roll with that you'll likely consider others "the least of these" to the extent that loving and reflecting Jesus to them (if you're truly a follower of His) isn't going to happen via you. That, my friends, is a deep problem.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Yours in the Lord and the blues, -Glenn