History Of The Blues There are few characteristics common to all
blues, because the origin of the blues takes its shape and it's
evolution from the idiosyncrasies of individual performances.
However, there are some characteristics that were present long
before the creation of the modern blues. An early blues-like
music was call-and-response shouts, which was a "functional
expression... style without accompaniment or harmony and
unbounded by the formality of any particular musical structure."
A form of this pre-blues was heard in slave field shouts and
hollers, expanded into "simple solo songs laden with emotional
content". The blues, as it is now known, can be seen as a
musical style based on both European harmonic structure and the
African call-and-response tradition, transformed into an
interplay of voice and guitar. Blues has several sub-genres,
mostly based on the regions that the music originates from and
the variations in style that eminate from those regions. (Boogie
woogie, British blues, Chicago blue