The History of the Blues

This volume in The Music Library offers a brand new volume on The Blues. The author describes this quintessentially American music, charting its evolution out of African American field hollers, slave songs, and spirituals in the late nineteenth century, its emergence from the South and spreading through the U.S. in the early twentieth century, and its influence on later forms of music, including R&B, and Rock&Roll. The author offers much discussion about how this form of music was born out of the African American experience in the U.S. but also talks about its universal appeal to people of all cultures.