Origins of the blues

Little is known about the exact origin of the music now known as the blues.^[1] No specific year can be cited as its origin, largely because the style evolved over a long period but blues is inarguably a Black American art form as it is noted "it is impossible to say exactly how old blues is - certainly no older than the presence of Negroes in the United States. It is native American Music, the product of the Black in this Country or to put it more exactly the way I have come to think about it, blues could not exist if African Captives had not become American Captives.^[2] Ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik traces the roots of many of the elements that were to develop into the blues back to the African continent, the "cradle of the blues".^[3] One important early mention of something closely resembling the blues comes from 1901, when an archaeologist in Mississippi described the songs of black workers which had lyrical themes and technical elements in common with the blues.^[4]