The Blues, The Blues

The blues is a unique American poetic form with roots in oral performance and musical improvisation. The form was thought to have evolved from late 19th century rural field hollers and work songs structured on African verbal and musical patterns, and later became influenced by Hawaiian and European instruments. The form quickly gained attention by wandering blues performers, who spread the music from plantations all the way to town and city street corners across the South.

The “classic” blues lyric stanza, popularized by compositions like that of Handy’s “Saint Louis Blues”, was composed of “three lines of iambic pentameter, rhymed AAa each with a caesura” (Patterson 188). The first line makes a statement which is repeated in the second line, sometimes with slight moderation, oftentimes to give improvisators time to think of a successful response. The third line provides a rhymed response to the statement made in the previous lines, bringing the stanza to a close.

The blues form commonly depicts an autobiographical story of catatstrophe expressed lyrically, intending to give human emotions “a local habitation and a name” (Patterson 190). Commonly known for being sad or heavy, the blues is an attempt to keep the painful details of an experience alive in an individual’s mind. Common themes include unhappy love, difficult times, and fruitless labor, all enhanced by the blues form.

“Oakland Blues” written by Ishmael Reed (193) provides a great example of an altered blues form, while still holding constant to the idea of despair and personal tragedy. Though altering the “classic” blues stanza, Reed details the tragedy of the loss of his father, and the pain brought to him by the circumstance:

“Well, they told you of the sickness

almost eighteen months ago… (repeated)

You went down fighting, daddy. Yes

You fought death toe to toe”

While each stanza regards a different point in Reed’s father’s sickness and death, the repetition of lines serves to emphasize the current state the author is explaining with the following response. Also by reinstating these lines, the seriousness of the situation and the sickness at hand is emphasized, being sure to be mentioned more than once and alluding to the feelings being experienced by the speaker.

Throughout the history of the blues, it has undergone various transformations and evolutions, changing the techniques and rules used within a stanza. Originally being denied serious literary consideration, the blues continued to grow as a form poetically and culturally to get to the point it is today. Despite these changes, the main purpose of the blues has remained the same, to keep tragedy and despair of a personal experience alive within the mind.

Patterson, Raymond R. “The Blues.” An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. Eds. Anne Finch and Kathrine Varnes. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 2002.