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蓝调音乐起源于密西西比河三角洲，是从爵士乐和蓝草乐到摇滚乐和嘻哈乐等大多数美国流行音乐风格的起源。

华盛顿——蓝调音乐有意取名于压抑或忧郁的情感状态。对于表演者和听众来说，蓝调音乐的目的都是克服这种情感并振奋精神。正如传奇蓝调吉他手B.B.金（B.B. King）所言：“蓝调就是痛苦，但这是一种能够带来喜悦的痛苦。”

蓝调音乐植根于密西西比河三角洲（Mississippi River Delta）的美国黑奴文化，是美国当代音乐的源头，为爵士乐、福音歌、摇滚乐、乡村音乐、蓝草音乐、嘻哈乐和节奏布鲁斯（R&B）注入了升华精神的能量。

居住在纽约的爵士和蓝调钢琴家埃利·雅民（Eli Yamin）说：“这是一种神奇的音乐，能够抚慰伤痛的音乐。它具有广泛的吸引力，因为无论您来自何种背景，每个人都有忧郁的时候，我们通过演奏蓝调音乐来以愁消愁。”

雅民曾以国务院文化大使的身份巡游世界许多地方，表演、创作和讲授爵士乐和蓝调音乐。他对蓝调音乐的喜爱可追溯到芝加哥（Chicago）鼓手沃尔特·珀金斯（Walter Perkins）来到纽约地区的时候，那时雅民19岁，他加入了珀金斯的乐队。珀金斯曾与芝加哥传奇人物约翰·李·胡克（John Lee Hooker）、马迪·沃特斯（Muddy Waters）和孟菲斯·斯利姆（Memphis Slim）等同台演出。雅民网站上的传记中说，由于珀金斯的影响，“蓝调音乐渗透其每一个细胞”。

在他们定期于纽约皇后区云雀休息厅（Skylark Lounge）举行的演唱会上，珀金斯会激励雅民进行现场创作。他会说：“女士们，先生们，下一首歌的歌名是‘红豆和大米’（Red Beans and Rice）。”然后这位鼓手会立即宣布开始。

雅民说：“我只好敲打琴键，编一首名为‘红豆和大米’的歌出来。”雅民回忆说，而珀金斯“会全身心投入”，和他一起演奏，就像“魔咒附身”一样。

由于将自己的灵魂融入表演所产生的魔力，雅民将蓝调定义为“魔咒和打击乐”。他说：“如果你试图给我施法术……你就得集中你的全副身心，以便让法术灵验，而蓝调音乐的演奏达到极致时，你正是处于这种状态。当你和为蓝调入痴的人一起演奏时，就好象是完全超越了时空，令人不可思议。”

据传当他还是一个生活在密西西比河畔种植园中的年轻人时，吉他手罗伯特·约翰逊（Robert Johnson）为了成为一位蓝调大师，就把自己的灵魂出卖给了魔鬼。蓝调的神秘力量仍然存在于其发源地密西西比河三角洲，但雅民说，对于访客而言，那里的景观地貌可能会造成假象。

他说：“你看到的是田野，农场。从外表看很简单，也许那是一种极好的比喻”，因为蓝调似乎是一种简单的艺术形式，但是，“它的确反映了人类的丰富经历和巨大痛苦，也反映了人们相依为命、以坚韧不拔的精神去战胜痛苦。”

蓝调音乐的许多灵感来自于美国的奴隶制度，来自奴隶们将他们的痛苦和屈辱转变为一种自我表达的途径的愿望。蓝调音乐继续以黑人遭受种族隔离、歧视和贫困的经历为源泉，但是，随着密西西比河三角洲的音乐家迁往芝加哥和堪萨斯（Kansas）等大城市，蓝调音乐在整个美国得以流传。

雅民说，即使在今天，蓝调音乐依然使人百感交集，灵魂震颤。每个人都曾经历过生活中的某种挑战，“你必须敞开心扉，将此作为艺术的源泉”，因为当人们欣赏蓝调音乐时，他们希望“有所感受”并“体验那种力量”。

雅民的巡回演出经历表明，蓝调音乐具有普遍的吸引力。这种音乐不受乐器或文化限制，他回忆起与非洲鼓手、印度歌手、中国古筝演奏师和许多其他音乐家一起即兴演奏的经历。无论是老年听众还是年轻人，对这种声音和曲调都有似曾相识之感。

他说，早期的摇滚乐和蓝调“几乎如出一辙”，即使是最年轻的听众“也听过在黑人教会长大、具有蓝调风格的歌手的演唱，因此，当他们听到更具有古典风格的现场演奏时，很容易产生共鸣。”

雅民的埃利·雅民蓝调乐队（Eli Yamin Blues Band）于2010年智利地震后不久访问了巴西和智利，并于2011年发行了《我喜出望外》（I Feel So Glad）专辑，其内页说明中有雅民的一篇献词，题为“为什么我们现在需要蓝调”。

他问道：“我们如何能够更好地共事并相互理解？我们如何在困难的时候相互支持？对于我来说，我没有发现比蓝调音乐更好的方式。蓝调音乐在人类受难史上最黑暗的时期萌生，现在为全世界所喜爱。”

他说，我们需要蓝调音乐。不论人们的宗教信仰如何，“它都是人间的圣乐，抚慰着我们的灵魂。”雅民写道：“蓝调音乐让我们认识到共同的人性。愿我们留意其中的真谛，并在生命的每一分钟与他人分享。”

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Born in the Mississippi Delta, blues music has been at the heart of the most popular American music styles, from jazz and bluegrass to rock and hip hop.

Washington — By design, blues music takes its name from a state of feeling depressed or melancholy. Its purpose, for both the performer and the listener, is to overcome those feelings and lift spirits. As legendary blues guitarist B.B. King describes it, “The blues is pain, but it’s pain that brings joy.”

From its roots in African-American slave culture in the Mississippi River Delta, the blues is at the heart of American contemporary music, lending its soulful energy to jazz, gospel, rock and roll, country, bluegrass, hip hop and R&B.

“It’s a magical music and it’s a healing music,” New York–based jazz and blues pianist Eli Yamin said. “It has a universal appeal because no matter what background you come from, everybody has the blues at some point and we play the blues to get rid of the blues.”

Yamin, who has toured much of the world as a State Department cultural ambassador, regularly performs, composes and teaches jazz and blues music. He traces his love of the blues from the time Chicago drummer Walter Perkins came to the New York area and Yamin, then 19 years old, joined his band. Perkins had performed with Chicago legends such as John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim. Through Perkins, Yamin “absorbed the blues into every molecule of his being,” according to his website biography.

At their regular gigs at the Skylark Lounge in Queens, New York, Perkins would challenge Yamin to compose on the spot. “Ladies and gentlemen, this next song is called ‘Red Beans and Rice,’” he would say, and the drummer would immediately start counting off the beginning.

“I would just have to call out a key and make up a song called ‘Red Beans and Rice,’” Yamin said. Perkins was “completely absorbing,” he recalled, and playing with him was like “being possessed.”

Yamin defines blues as “incantation and percussion” because of the magic involved in putting your own soul into the performance. “If you’re trying to put a spell on me … you have to focus your entire being in order to put a spell to work, and when the blues is done right, that’s exactly what you do,” he said. “When you’re playing the blues with people who believe in the blues, it’s like you’ve all gone to a place beyond time and space, and it’s unbelievable.”

Legend has it that as a young man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi, guitarist Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in order to become a blues master. The mystical power of the blues remains in its Delta birthplace, but Yamin said for visitors the appearance of the landscape can be deceiving.

“You see fields, you see farms. It looks simple on the outside, and maybe that’s kind of a great metaphor” since the blues seems to be a simple art form, but “it really does represent such an amazing wealth of human experience and pain, but people overcoming that pain through their perseverance and the support of their community,” he said.

Much of its inspiration came from American slavery, and the desire of slaves to transform their suffering and humiliation into an avenue of self-expression. The blues continued to flow out of the black experience with racial segregation, discrimination and poverty, and it spread throughout the United States as musicians from the Delta moved to urban centers such as Chicago and Kansas City.

Even today, the blues is like “a container for this unbelievable range of feeling and for contacting the spirit,” Yamin said. Everyone has gone through some kind of challenge in their lives, and “you have to be open to sourcing that for your art,” because people “want to feel something” when they’re hearing the blues and “experience that power.”

From his many travels, Yamin can attest that the blues has universal appeal. The genre has no instrumental or cultural limitations, and he recalls jamming with African drummers, Indian singers, Chinese zither players and many, many others. For audiences young and old, the sounds and structures are immediately familiar.

Early rock and roll is “almost exactly the same” as the blues, he said, and even the youngest audiences “have heard singers who have grown up in the black church and who have sung in blues vocabulary, so when they hear more classic styles played right in front of them, they have no problem” relating to it.

In the liner notes for the 2011 album I Feel So Glad by the Eli Yamin Blues Band, Yamin wrote a dedication titled “Why We Need the Blues Now” following the band’s visit to Brazil and to Chile in the wake of its 2010 earthquake.

“How do we get better at working together and understanding one another? How do we support each other during hard times?” he asked. “For me, I have found no better way than the blues. Created in the darkest hour of human suffering and now embraced all over the world.”

We need the blues, he said. “It is secular sacred music and it soothes our soul,” regardless of one’s religious persuasion. “The blues makes us realize our common humanity. May we heed its message and share it with every breath,” Yamin wrote.