Emotions Associated With The Blues In The 19th Century

The blues, like any music genre, is a representation of emotion. Most of the time the emotion that is associated with the blues is well feeling blue. When a person gets laid off or someone close dies, they feel blue. If one starts to listen to some of the artist of the blues genre; however, one can see quickly that there are other emotions that can be associated with the blues. One can view that the blues is also about overcoming those hard times or letting go of those emotions that are making them lag. It is amazing how wide the spectrum of emotion that the blues genre brings to one.
The late 19th century changed much of the United States including the great majority of the world. World war one which began in 1914 had created much stress on the all …show more content…
Handy was traveling through Mississippi when he came across a town named Tutwiler Mississippi. Handy, who had recently been leader of a band, so he understands music and knows a good tune when it comes around. Handy is on a train when he hears a delicate sound coming from across the train car. The man sitting across from him was playing his guitar in a way that was interestingly new to Handy. Robert Santelli explains in his article A Century of the Blues, “He doesn’t finger the strings normally, instead, he presses a pocketknife against them, sliding it up and down to create a slinky sound. The technique that the man was using was called slide guitar, because instead of picking the guitar with a pick or finger, he was sliding his pocket knife across the strings. It was not the sound of the guitar that struck Handy, it was the strength of the words that were going along with the sound. Although this is considered by most to be the earliest glimpse of the blues, it is not the birth of it. Experts are unable to pinpoint an exact location of the birthplace of blues. However, there seems to be enough evidence that the birthplace of the blues is in the vicinity of the Mississippi