TTCM's posting has appeared in the Mudcat at least twice--I believe I was the first to post it, but it wasn't original with me, either. I got it from one of the people I play music with regularly, a couple of years ago. (speaking of TTCM, if he waddles and quacks, he's a duck)

About a year ago I started a thread wondering about the African origins of the blues, specifically about the classic 12 bar structure and the poetic structure, and it seemed to disappear about the time I had my first major hard drive crash and was off line for a while--it never seemed to go in the direction I was hoping: has any African ethnomusicologist found purely African origins for the harmonic and poetic structures we know of as the blues?

Another thing: whistlestop is right regarding the major/minor aspect of blues: while the rhythm instruments are playing major chords and dominant seventh chords, the lead instrument--guitar, voice, harmonica, trumpet, sax, whatever, or right hand over rhythm left hand on the piano--is playing minor runs. The lead figures for blues on guitar are minor: when the rhythm guitarist plays E-A7-E-E7-A7-A7-E-E-B7-A7-E-B7, the lead guitarist is working on runs built on the Eminor scale--or a pentatonic or hexatonic version of it. Of course, the flatted seventh of the IV7 chord (A7 in E) is the flatted third of the key scale, that is, the note that makes a scale minor.

Still one more thing: while blues and bluegrass share a lot, there is one place where they intersect little--bluegrass, like most music based on European traditions, is essentially well-tempered. Bent notes, Scruggs/Keith tuners aside, are not a major part of the bluegrass sound. But blues without choked guitar strings, bent harmonica reeds, voices slurring from one note to another, just ain't the blues.

--seed