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When was brought to Chicago it became a more powerful, hard-edged type of music, but kept its original form. This consisted of the two basic kinds of traditional blues: the Slow Blues and the Fast Blues. The names do not define the tempo of the two, because both ....

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.... that all have origins in West African musical traditions. Cross-rhythms are multitudinously used in and are the foundation of West African drumming. The most common way of creating this beat was by separating the melodic line from the groundbeat, putting the two in rhythmic conflict. To do so, the musician would sing or play in a manner that emphasized the off beat. The second main innovation was the way musicians expressed rising emotions with falling pitch by bending or flattening certain notes with one’s voice or instruments. This technique produced “blue notes”, which were also practiced by the Akan people of Ghana. The final innovat ....