Answer the following questions. You should include sources for your answers and it should be in your own words. 1. Describe the origin and history of blues music. How did it develop? What cultures or people influenced it?

2. What instruments were/are used in blues music?

3. Blues music has had a large influence on popular music even up until today. How has it influenced more contemporary (modern) music such as hip hop, r&b and rock?

4. Write about form in blues music. (What is the standard structure of a blues song?). What notes and/or scales are used in blues?

1 The origins of the blues are poorly documented, but it is believed that after the American Civil War (1861–65), formerly enslaved African Americans and their descendants created this genre while working on Southern plantations, taking inspiration from hymns, minstrel show music, work songs and field hollers, ragtime.

2 brass instruments - often heard playing with mutes.

saxophone.

acoustic and electric guitar.

Dixieland drum kit.

double bass - a walking bass line is a common harmonic device in which the bass will play notes of the chord and notes leading to the next chord.

3  The blues have influenced many other musical styles. Blues and jazz are closely related; such seminal jazzmen as Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong employed blues elements in their music. Soul music and rhythm and blues also show obvious blues tonalities and forms.

4

three chords based on the first (written as I), fourth (IV), and fifth (V) notes of an eight-note scale  

Explanation: