Often sad, lonely, and mournful, but in other cases fully energized and bursting with electric-guitar-fueled vigor, blues is one of the most powerful, influential, and popular musical styles to have risen during the last few centuries. Its origins are based in Africa, and it arrived on American shores during the slave trade. It's a music strongly associated with the American South, where field hollers, spirituals, and folk stories turned into full-fledged songs, with banjo and then guitar and piano as their main accompaniment. The song structure is simple--much of classic blues is based around a three-chord, 12-bar progression that leaves room for boundless improvisation--and it serves as a foundation for much of today's popular music. Acoustic country blues, often from the Mississippi Delta, blossomed during the 1920s, while during the '40s the electric guitar took the music in wild new directions (including north to Chicago). Today it's still being picked on the front porches of tar-paper shacks, but it's just as frequently fired up loud and proud in front of a barroom (or for that matter stadium) crowd. In either case, though, it remains a music that reflects hardship, trouble, and strife, but also perseverence and strength of character--to know the blues is to be in touch with your true spirit and soul.

Notable Artists: Robert Johnson, Skip James, Muddy Waters, B.B. King