THE STORY OF THE BLUES

Blues is a type of music that was created by African slaves, as they worked on Southern plantations in America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During their long days picking cotton and doing other hard farm work, they sang to relieve their oppression. They sang chants from Africa, field hollers and made up songs about their lives and their friends.

This was the only way that they could keep a record of their history as they were forbidden to learn to read or write by most slave owners. Louisiana even passed a law making it illegal to teach slaves to read.

The music that slaves sang evolved over the years into what is called the Blues. The earliest Blues were mostly sad songs about hard work, unhappy love affairs and being poor, but songs about happier times came to be included in the Blues.

At first, Blues were sung and played only by black African-Americans, but now Blues has spread around the world and is performed by all nationalities and races.

Blues gave birth to most other kinds of American popular music including: Jazz, Rock & Roll, Zydeco, Rhythm & Blues and others.