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"The music, the food, the new and old friends, the awesome awesome dances...all made for a super weekend."

~Lonelle from COlumbus

About Blues Music and Dance

"People should hear the pure blues - the blues we used to have when we had no money." ~ Muddy Waters

What is Blues?

America's got the Blues. In every major city across the country, unique sounds sprung up, a sound that rumbled deep with mourning, joy, sweat and everyday life. In every city it was different, but still it was the Blues.

MJBW takes a snapshot of Blues from every city it travels, so you enjoy the whole picture of Blues; from it's origins down to local flavors.

Blues Music

Blues as a music is a vocal and instrumental form evolved in communities of former African slaves from spirituals, praise songs, field hollers, shouts, and chants. The use of blue notes and the prominence of call-and-response patterns in the music and lyrics are indicative of the blues' West African pedigree. (Wikipedia)

Blues Dancing

Blues as a dance is a term that covers an entire genre of dances. Like Swing, the Blues dances originated and evolved from African rhythms and movements. However, Blues dancing was never widely practiced as a "social" or performance dance in the United States outside of the Black communities. Instead, it developed and thrived in smoky juke joints and at Blues house parties. Because Blues dance lacked wider social approval and appeal, it remained strongly entrenched in African principles of movement, not only in the motion of the hips, but in the characteristic creation of, and dancing within, a boundary.

Strongly tied to Blues music, many aspects of Blues dance (for example, call and response, emotional intensity, and tension and release) are directly related to the music to which it is danced; there are many types of blues music and therefore many types of Blues dance, all with very different nuances and emotions. (Wikipedia)

Each area of the country that Blues music went, so spread dance. As the music grew and changed in these new cities, so did the dance.

The MezzJelly Blues Weekend explores cultural and movement-based evolution of Blues dance and music as it has grown across several centuries.

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