Blues

Blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes. It emerged as an accessible form of self-expression in African-American communities of the United States from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of African influence. The blues influenced later American and Western popular music as it became the roots of jazz, rhythm and blues, and bluegrass.

During the blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s, acoustic blues artist Taj Mahal and legendary Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins wrote and performed music that figured prominently in the popularly and critically acclaimed film "Sounder" (1972). The film earned Mahal a Grammy nomination for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture and a BAFTA nomination. Almost 30 years later, Mahal wrote blues for, and performed a banjo composition, claw-hammer style, in the 2001 movie release "Song Catcher," which focused on the story of the preservation of the roots music of Appalachia.

In 2003, Martin Scorsese made significant efforts to promote the blues to a larger audience. He asked several famous directors such as Clint Eastwood and Wim Wenders to participate in a series of documentary films for PBS called "The Blues". He also participated in the rendition of compilations of major blues artists in a series of high-quality CDs. Grammy-winning blues guitarist and vocalist Keb' Mo' performed his blues rendition of "America, the Beautiful" in 2006 to close out the final season of the television series "The West Wing".

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Blues".