Origins, evolution & impact of musical form associated with Southern black musicians & singers. Major artists & songs, styles, themes, forms (classic & rural), social functions, blues culture, exploitation.
According to Clyde Woods in his book Development Arrested, the blues was born in the rural South of the United States amid the socio-economic dislocations following the abolition of slavery and later the end of Reconstruction. The blues epistemology involves a long-standing tradition of explaining reality and change. The blues was a culturally acceptable, alternative way for black Americans to lament, observe, comment, criticize, parody and ridicule the plantation regime and society at large, as well as the problems and inequities that they faced in an…