本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛The easiest and probably the better way for this discussion is simply quote Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
"In its early years the blues was wholly African American. It has been suggested that it existed before the Civil War, but this view has no supporting evidence. Influential in its development were the collective unaccompanied work-songs of the plantation culture, which followed a responsorial ‘leader-and-chorus’ form that can be traced not only to pre-Civil War origins but to African sources. Responsorial work-songs diminished when the plantations were broken up, but persisted in the southern penitentiary farms until the 1950s. After the Reconstruction era, black workers either engaged in seasonal collective labour in the South or tended smallholdings leased to them under the system of debt-serfdom known as sharecropping. Work-songs therefore increasingly took the form of solo calls or ‘hollers’, comparatively free in form but close to blues in feeling. The vocal style of the blues probably derived from the holler (see Field holler).
Blues instrumental style shows tenuous links with African music. Drumming was forbidden on slave plantations, but the playing of string instruments was often permitted and even encouraged, so the musicians among slaves from the savanna regions, with their strong traditions of string playing, predominated. The jelli, or griots – professional musicians who also acted as their tribe’s historians and social commentators – performed roles not unlike those of the later blues singers, while the banjo is thought to be a direct descendant of their banza or xalam.
In the 1890s the post-Reconstruction bitterness of southern white Americans towards the black community hardened into segregation laws; this in a sense forced the latter to recognize their own identity, and a flowering of black sacred and secular music followed. Ballads in traditional British form extolling the exploits of black heroes (e.g. John Henry, John Hardy, Po’ Lazarus and Duncan and Brady) were part of this musical expansion, and blues emerged from the combination of freely expressive hollers with the music of these ballads. Few blues were noted by early 20th-century collectors, but those collected frequently had a four-line or rhyming-couplet form. Some of the ballads popular among black singers, for example Railroad Bill, Frankie and Albert, Duncan and Brady and Stack O’Lee, had a single couplet with a rhyming third line as a refrain. In blues the ‘couplet’ consisted of one repeated line; See, See Rider, Joe Turner Blues and Hesitating Blues were among the earliest songs of this type.
At first the blues was probably only a new song form in the repertory of the black songster (see Songster (ii)), the titles providing a theme for a loose arrangement of verses (e.g. Florida Blues, Atlanta Blues and Railroad Blues). Many songsters and early blues singers in the South worked in medicine shows, street entertainments promoted by vendors of patent medicines. Their travels helped to spread the blues, as did those of wandering singers who sang and played for a living. They followed the example of the street evangelists who at that time were popularizing gospel songs. Preferring the guitar to the banjo as an accompanying instrument, the songsters represent a link between the older black song tradition and the blues. By the 1920s the blues singer, who sang and played only blues, began to replace the songster.
Blues songs had no fixed number of stanzas, and the inevitable return to the tonic after the stanza’s third line gave shape to long improvisations. The ballad singers had concentrated on the exploits of legendary black heroes, but blues singers sang of themselves and those who shared their experiences. Many stanzas rapidly became traditional and certain images or lines entered the stock-in-trade of every blues singer. But the inventive singer expressed his anxieties, frustrations, hopes or resignation through his songs. Some blues described disasters or personal accidents; themes of crime, prostitution, gambling, alcohol and imprisonment are prominent in early examples and have persisted ever since. Some blues are tender but few reveal a response to nature; far more express a desire to move or escape by train or road to an imagined better land. Many are aggressively sexual, and there is much that is consciously and subconsciously symbolic of frustration and oppression."
A simpler and maybe more clear way is by googling:
"Blues
This genre created by African Americans is one of the few new art forms of modern times. Developed at the turn of the century, ex-slaves sang work songs filled with irony, imagery, and love - relief from the tensions of their lives. Many blues singers were recorded by talent scouts as they sang in the fields. " from http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/music-2.html
Regarding Chicago and Blues, again, from Groves Dictionary
"Urban blues.
In Chicago the tough conditions of the 1930s stimulated a more defiant, extrovert blues sound and collective performance. Tampa Red recorded some 200 titles in the decade, augmenting his plangent guitar with the heavier sound of his Chicago Five band. Its personnel varied but generally included Black Bob or Blind John Davis playing the piano, with other instruments such as tenor saxophone or trumpet taking the lead. A new departure in blues, it was followed by Big Bill Broonzy, the undisputed leader of Chicago folk music in the 1930s. Broonzy’s groups were always subordinate to his singing and immaculate guitar playing, but he was the centre of a school of urban singers of southern origin, including his reputed half-brother Robert Brown, known as Washboard Sam. Sam’s washboard playing was matched by his loud, rough voice, and he and Broonzy often played in groups. They were frequently joined by John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, a highly influential harmonica player with a distinctive ‘tongue-tied’ voice who recorded extensively under his own name, and William ‘Jazz’ Gillum, who also played the harmonica. Together they created an outgoing, topical form of blues that did not lose its sense of contact with those newly arrived from the South, though the sound was essentially that of Southside Chicago.
In contrast to these developments in urban blues, a new generation of ‘down-home’ singers from Mississippi, with a style firmly rooted in the Patton-House tradition, began to be recorded as the decade came to a close. Their blues were coarser and fiercer than that of their predecessors and provided a powerful stimulus for the blues in the early 1940s, when the Jive music of Louis Jordan and his contemporaries was shifting the emphasis of the blues with humorous novelty pieces intended only as entertainment. These later Mississippi singers included Tommy McClennan, Robert Petway, Bukka White and above all Robert Johnson (iii), who had the most lasting influence on the evolution of the blues. While still in his early 20s (1936–7) he recorded some 30 titles shortly before his death; these highly introverted, sometimes obsessive blues, with a whining guitar sound and throbbing beat, made a profound impression even on singers who recorded more than 20 years later. If one artist epitomized the range of performance and attitudes of the blues in the 1930s it was probably Broonzy, but the most memorable creations came from the singing and playing of Carr and Johnson."更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net
"In its early years the blues was wholly African American. It has been suggested that it existed before the Civil War, but this view has no supporting evidence. Influential in its development were the collective unaccompanied work-songs of the plantation culture, which followed a responsorial ‘leader-and-chorus’ form that can be traced not only to pre-Civil War origins but to African sources. Responsorial work-songs diminished when the plantations were broken up, but persisted in the southern penitentiary farms until the 1950s. After the Reconstruction era, black workers either engaged in seasonal collective labour in the South or tended smallholdings leased to them under the system of debt-serfdom known as sharecropping. Work-songs therefore increasingly took the form of solo calls or ‘hollers’, comparatively free in form but close to blues in feeling. The vocal style of the blues probably derived from the holler (see Field holler).
Blues instrumental style shows tenuous links with African music. Drumming was forbidden on slave plantations, but the playing of string instruments was often permitted and even encouraged, so the musicians among slaves from the savanna regions, with their strong traditions of string playing, predominated. The jelli, or griots – professional musicians who also acted as their tribe’s historians and social commentators – performed roles not unlike those of the later blues singers, while the banjo is thought to be a direct descendant of their banza or xalam.
In the 1890s the post-Reconstruction bitterness of southern white Americans towards the black community hardened into segregation laws; this in a sense forced the latter to recognize their own identity, and a flowering of black sacred and secular music followed. Ballads in traditional British form extolling the exploits of black heroes (e.g. John Henry, John Hardy, Po’ Lazarus and Duncan and Brady) were part of this musical expansion, and blues emerged from the combination of freely expressive hollers with the music of these ballads. Few blues were noted by early 20th-century collectors, but those collected frequently had a four-line or rhyming-couplet form. Some of the ballads popular among black singers, for example Railroad Bill, Frankie and Albert, Duncan and Brady and Stack O’Lee, had a single couplet with a rhyming third line as a refrain. In blues the ‘couplet’ consisted of one repeated line; See, See Rider, Joe Turner Blues and Hesitating Blues were among the earliest songs of this type.
At first the blues was probably only a new song form in the repertory of the black songster (see Songster (ii)), the titles providing a theme for a loose arrangement of verses (e.g. Florida Blues, Atlanta Blues and Railroad Blues). Many songsters and early blues singers in the South worked in medicine shows, street entertainments promoted by vendors of patent medicines. Their travels helped to spread the blues, as did those of wandering singers who sang and played for a living. They followed the example of the street evangelists who at that time were popularizing gospel songs. Preferring the guitar to the banjo as an accompanying instrument, the songsters represent a link between the older black song tradition and the blues. By the 1920s the blues singer, who sang and played only blues, began to replace the songster.
Blues songs had no fixed number of stanzas, and the inevitable return to the tonic after the stanza’s third line gave shape to long improvisations. The ballad singers had concentrated on the exploits of legendary black heroes, but blues singers sang of themselves and those who shared their experiences. Many stanzas rapidly became traditional and certain images or lines entered the stock-in-trade of every blues singer. But the inventive singer expressed his anxieties, frustrations, hopes or resignation through his songs. Some blues described disasters or personal accidents; themes of crime, prostitution, gambling, alcohol and imprisonment are prominent in early examples and have persisted ever since. Some blues are tender but few reveal a response to nature; far more express a desire to move or escape by train or road to an imagined better land. Many are aggressively sexual, and there is much that is consciously and subconsciously symbolic of frustration and oppression."
A simpler and maybe more clear way is by googling:
"Blues
This genre created by African Americans is one of the few new art forms of modern times. Developed at the turn of the century, ex-slaves sang work songs filled with irony, imagery, and love - relief from the tensions of their lives. Many blues singers were recorded by talent scouts as they sang in the fields. " from http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/music-2.html
Regarding Chicago and Blues, again, from Groves Dictionary
"Urban blues.
In Chicago the tough conditions of the 1930s stimulated a more defiant, extrovert blues sound and collective performance. Tampa Red recorded some 200 titles in the decade, augmenting his plangent guitar with the heavier sound of his Chicago Five band. Its personnel varied but generally included Black Bob or Blind John Davis playing the piano, with other instruments such as tenor saxophone or trumpet taking the lead. A new departure in blues, it was followed by Big Bill Broonzy, the undisputed leader of Chicago folk music in the 1930s. Broonzy’s groups were always subordinate to his singing and immaculate guitar playing, but he was the centre of a school of urban singers of southern origin, including his reputed half-brother Robert Brown, known as Washboard Sam. Sam’s washboard playing was matched by his loud, rough voice, and he and Broonzy often played in groups. They were frequently joined by John Lee ‘Sonny Boy’ Williamson, a highly influential harmonica player with a distinctive ‘tongue-tied’ voice who recorded extensively under his own name, and William ‘Jazz’ Gillum, who also played the harmonica. Together they created an outgoing, topical form of blues that did not lose its sense of contact with those newly arrived from the South, though the sound was essentially that of Southside Chicago.
In contrast to these developments in urban blues, a new generation of ‘down-home’ singers from Mississippi, with a style firmly rooted in the Patton-House tradition, began to be recorded as the decade came to a close. Their blues were coarser and fiercer than that of their predecessors and provided a powerful stimulus for the blues in the early 1940s, when the Jive music of Louis Jordan and his contemporaries was shifting the emphasis of the blues with humorous novelty pieces intended only as entertainment. These later Mississippi singers included Tommy McClennan, Robert Petway, Bukka White and above all Robert Johnson (iii), who had the most lasting influence on the evolution of the blues. While still in his early 20s (1936–7) he recorded some 30 titles shortly before his death; these highly introverted, sometimes obsessive blues, with a whining guitar sound and throbbing beat, made a profound impression even on singers who recorded more than 20 years later. If one artist epitomized the range of performance and attitudes of the blues in the 1930s it was probably Broonzy, but the most memorable creations came from the singing and playing of Carr and Johnson."更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net