Falling Down Like Hail: A Brief History of the Blues

Whether you are musically inclined or not, you have known the blues. You have known the blues even if you have not known that you have known the blues. The word is used to describe feelings of sadness, longing, and loss, to describe hurt, betrayal, and unrequited love. If you have been let down or been passed up for another, you know the blues. If you have lost a love or missed a bus, you know the blues. If you have done the right thing but been punished for no fault of yours, you know the blues.

The word is derived from the genre of music called the blues. Almost all of blues music revolves around these general themes of loss and emotional pain. Yet the funny thing about the blues is that it actually liberates you from the pain and helps you to rise above the loss and go forward with hope and cheer. Most people who are fond of contemporary music enjoy their rock and R&B and jazz. However, what many contemporary listeners may not be familiar with is that the roots of all these genres can be tracked back to the blues. In addition, the blues have a great significance in the history of modern society, and this significance is universal, as the conditions that led to the birth of the blues exist within every society, every individual and can be found in every time and age including our own.

In this post, being written on the birthday of the man who is believed to have sold his soul to the devil in return for his bluesman skills, I will try and share my understanding of this amazing form of music and how it relates to us as human beings. This entails looking at things a little differently than we are ordinarily encouraged to, along with small doses of objective analysis of history and the evolving human condition. This post will need to bring in ideas, let them ferment, add new ideas, and brew the concoction till it tastes just right. This post is written for the general reader and assumes no in-depth knowledge of any form of music. You may, however, come across names and concepts that you are unfamiliar with that I have not attempted to explain. I have deliberately done this so that you can cherish your discoveries as you investigate those ideas. Disclaimer: You may change the way you look at music, society, capitalism and human rights after you read this post, so if you wish to remain comfortably numb, read no further.
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