The term Blues may have come from "blue devils", meaning melancholy and sadness; an early use of the term in this sense is in George Colman's one-act farce Blue Devils (1798). The phrase blue devils may also have been derived from

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The lyrics of early traditional blues versesprobably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current structure

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The blues form is a cyclic musical form in which a repeating progression of chords mirrors the call and responsescheme commonly found in African and African-American music. During the first decades of the 20th century blues music was not clearly defined in terms of

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Blues musical styles, forms (12-bar blues), melodies, and the blues scale have influenced many other genres of music, such as rock and roll, jazz, and popular music. Prominent jazz,

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Like jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal music, hip hop music, reggae, country music, Latin music, funk, and pop music, blues has been accused of being the "devil's music" and of inciting violence and other poor behavior. In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable,

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• Blues portal
• List of blues festivals
• List of blues musicians
• List of blues standards

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Origins
The first publication of blues sheet music may have been "I Got the Blues", published by New Orleans musician Antonio Maggio in 1908 and described as

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