Blues
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 Blues facts

• The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs and European-American folk music
• Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads
• The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common
• Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound
• Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove
• Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation
• Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times
• It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure became standard: the AAB pattern, consisting of a line sung over the four first bars, its repetition over the next four, and then a longer concluding line over the last bars
• Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society
• Many elements, such as the call-and-response format and the use of blue notes, can be traced back to the music of Africa