The term “blues” is conventionally used to refer to a state of sadness or melancholy, but to conclude from this that the musical genre of the same name is merely an expression of unrelieved sorrow is to miss its deeper meaning. Despite its frequent focus on such themes as suffering and self-pity, common reservoir of experience, tapping into an aesthetic that underlies many aspects of African American culture.
Critics have noted that African American folk tradition, in its earliest manifestations, does not sharply differentiate reality into sacred and secular strains or into irreconcilable dichotomies between good and evil, misery and joy. This is consistent with the apparently dual aspect of the blues and spirituals. Spirituals, like the blues, often express from oneself, or rather from one’s background psychological state and from one’s centered concept of self.
Working in this tradition, blues songs serve to transcend negative experiences by invoking the negative so that it can be transformed through the virtuosity and ecstatic mastery of the performer. This process produces a double-edged irony that is often evident in blues lyrics themselves; consider, for example the lines “If the blues also in order to coax from these experiences a lyricism that is both tragic and comic.
What this question is testing
Your task
Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.
Common trap
Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.
Winning move
Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.