After America's Civil War, itinerant songsters ai travelling minstrel show troupes spread their mt and wide. Early forms of music that would becoi blues began to develop not only on the plantatii where former slaves and their descendants now as sharecroppers, but also in towns and cities ale Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and elsewhere. The makers' repertoires variously included 'jump-ups (unrelated lines sung over simple chorded accompaniments), ditties, old plantation melodi breakdowns (uptempo dance pieces), church soi man or folk hero ballads and derogatory 'coon s< (sung in minstrel shows by blackface performers as popular white music, show tunes and - in son as black musicians acquired formal training - cli works. The jubilee singing of black spiritual ensi drew national and international attention, and ragtime craze that swept the country from the 1 the First World War established America's fascii with the secular music of African-Americans.
The blues drew from many sources to gr to an African-American identity. The lyrics of expressed a desire to move on to a better place better mate; songs of 1 and mistreatment some had a double meaning as codified protests or commentary secretly c towards the white bos and his social order. R sexual double entendr abounded, as blues inl the vulgar side of ragt early notoriety as low-and disreputable, den< by churchgoers as the music'. It may have b<