Blues clubs and blues festivals from www.blues-fest.com

Oh, dig my grave with a silver spade,
Oh, dig my grave with a silver spade,
Oh, dig my grave with a silver spade,
You may place four diamonds on my grave.
 

One of the problems regarding defining what the blues are is the variety of authoritative opinions. The blues is neither an era in the chronological development of jazz, nor is it actually a particular style of playing or singing jazz. (Tanner 35) Some maintain (mostly musicologists) that the blues are defined by the use of blue notes (and on this point they also differ - some say that they are simply flatted thirds, fifths, and sevenths applied to a major scale [forming a pentatonic scale]; some maintain that they are microtones; and some believe that they are the third, or fifth, or seventh tones sounded simultaneously with the flatted third, or fifth, or seventh tones respectively [minor second intervals]). Others feel that the song form (twelve bars, one-four-five) is the defining feature of the blues. Some feel that the blues is a way to approach music, a philosophy, in a manner of speaking. And still others hold a much wider sociological view that the blues are an entire musical tradition rooted in the black experience of the post-war South.rb