A Short History Of The Blues Essay -- Music, Blues, Communication, Ni

The late 19th century marked a great deal of change in the United States as well as the rest of the world. World war one had begun and reeked great havoc on the entire world. Nikola Tesla and the fathers of communications had made major scientific breakthroughs in the communications field and modern radio programming was right around the corner. Slavery had been abolished for over thirty years but segregation was still an enormous factor amongst the African-American people in the U.S. One of the most segregated states in the entire country, Mississippi, was on the brink of one of the most influential forms of modern music that the world had ever seen or heard: the blues. What the blues did for music is reflective in almost every piece of modern music heard throughout the world today. From rock and roll to country music, all the way to hip hop, the blues is deep down inside shining like a beautiful light that makes that music glow forever. Weather a person is happy or sad, compa ssionate or indifferent; the blues will always be there to light the way. Right at the turn of the century a man by the name of W.C. Handy was about to stumble upon a sound that would change the world of music forever. The year was 1903. The summer sun was beating down ferociously and a man named William Christopher Handy, who happened to be catching a train heading north, found himself in a town called Tutwiler Mississippi which lies smack-dab in the middle of the Mississippi delta between Clarksdale Mississippi and Greenwood Mississippi. Handy, a former bandleader of â€Å"a black orchestra that mostly plays dance music and popular standards of the day, is a learned musician who understands theory and the conventions of good, respectable music’’ sudden... ... America the civil rights movement had begun and a new type of blues called soul music was introduced. Traditional country blues was making its way into college towns and it was only a matter of time before electric blues would follow. As the fifties came to a close, the most musically influential time period in the history of popular music, the sixties, would come roaring in with bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Jimmie Hendrix all of which were heavily influenced by the blues. After the 1960’s through the seventies and the eighties the blues and its wonderful history would help to shape almost every form of modern music. In 2002 the United States Congress passed a resolution making 2003 â€Å"the year of the blues.† Without the development of the great pioneers of the blues genre music would be in a totally different place, as we know it today.