Blues
Blues is one of the sources of modern music which is still amazingly popular among millions of people thanks to its melodic and beautiful character. Initially blues meant solo lyrical song of Afro-Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century, and later this word began to denote a separate music style. Although blues emerged in the USA in the nineteenth century, the so called classical blues, or city blues was formed in the beginning of the twentieth century. The greatest popularization of blues took place in the 50's. In the beginning the word blues was used to denote exclusively "black" music played by black people for black people. It was performed with banjos, guitars, later - piano and a whole band of musicians. Subsequently blues merged with traditional music of white settlers in USA (the style called "country" which in its turn was rooted in Celtic music), as well as some other genres, and was in fact divided into several separate branches itself. After the tremendous success of the new music in the South, it spread all over the whole country. Thus new variations like Detroit blues, Chicago blues, western blues, Kansas blues, Atlanta blues, Texas blues, East Coast blues, Piedmont blues, Louisiana blues, Saint Louis blues, Memphis blues, New Orleans blues, and some others emerged. As for lyrics, many songs were written about social or racial oppression of black people.
Today blues is still among the most popular music styles in the world having acquired various new forms.