659 What Is "The Blues"? Not What You Think!
Class | Registration opens 8/4/2025 12:00 AM
This 3-part course is intended to explore the earliest beginnings of “the blues” art form extending to its impact on modern music world-wide and why.
The word “blues” as “I’ve got the blues”, or “I feel blue today” traditionally is associated with personal sadness or discomfort. What evolved to be a valued indigenous American art form, “blues music” began in times of early slavery in the Mississippi Delta cotton and tobacco fields, work crews mining gold and silver, in forests harvesting trees for lumber, and in prison chain gangs. Field “hollars”, chants utilizing “call and response” became a source of expression, a sharing of hardship and strife. Story-telling and the mysterious use of double entendre were all creatively used to distract from the pain and suffering at hand, ultimately uplifting the spirit and attitude of those participating.
What began as an impromptu unique way of unifying and sharing through primitive means in fields and elsewhere evolved to a “feel good” or at least a “feel better” experience that became a musical genre and the foundation of all post-war modern music world-wide. Blues music in all forms is documented as a remedy for having the “blues”. Blues music has been called magical, mysterious, mythical and remains so today.
Bonita Tallman
BONNIE TALLMAN has worked within the music industry for nearly 40 years. Owner of a professional artist management company (BCP Inc.), a record label (Emit Doog Music), she is also a publicist, agent, blues music events producer, including for the Billtown Blues Festival for 35 years. Bonnie is a co-founder of the non-profit Billtown Blues Association, providing musicians with performance opportunities locally, regionally, and nationally. An educator for musicians of all levels and others within the music industry, she has led her own programs (Beyond the Music, You’re the CEO), workshops around the country and 16-week courses at the Uptown Music Collective in Williamsport PA. Bonnie was the 2004 recipient of a “Keeping the Blues Alive” award for artist management presented by the Blues Foundation in Memphis TN, and she remains active offering mentoring and guidance as a musician’s advocate.