Passage 3
The blues was born on the Mississippi River Delta in the early 1900s. After the Civil War, the slaves were free but life was still not easy. They had to find new work. In the South, work camps were formed. Black people from these camps worked on farms and on building up the Mississippi River banks. During the week the people worked long and hard. They often lived alone, without their families, far from home. On the weekends, the workers got together at picnics or drinking places. Traveling black musicians with guitars entertained them. The musicians sang songs about the difficult life of the workers. These songs were called the blues.
If you have the blues it means you feel very sad. You can have the blues because you have no money, no job, no lover, no home, or no friend. You can have the St. Louis blues, the Memphis blues, or the Monday morning blues. Maybe you have had the homework blues or the examination blues. But blues songs were not always sad. Some of them were happy and many of them were funny.
Blues was a new kind of music. In blues songs some notes were flattened (降半音的).These notes were called “blue notes”. They made the music sound sad and different.
Early blues singers often had very interesting names like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Leadbelly. Sometimes the blues singers had song contests. Each singer sang new words or a new style of the blues song. They made up the music as they played. In this way they created new music. This is called improvisation (即兴演奏). Later, improvisation became a very important part of jazz music.
Blues began in the country in the South. As blacks moved into the big cities to work, the blues went with them. There, they sang about life in the cities. W.C. Handy, a black band leader from Memphis made the blues popular all over America. In 1914 he wrote the most famous blues song of all, “The St. Louis Blues”.
This passage is mainly concerned with ________.
这篇文章主要叙述了美国黑人民歌(the blues)的产生和发展过程。20世纪初，流浪黑人乐手为在密西西比河岸上劳作的黑人们演唱，歌唱他们艰难的生活，由此产生了这种忧郁的民歌。其后，随着黑人们来到大城市工作，这种民歌在全国流行起来。
Blues songs were often about ________.
由第一段中“The musicians sang songs about the difficult life of the workers. These songs were called the blues.”可知，蓝调歌唱的是黑人的艰苦生活。
In the early 1900s, black people often got together at some drinking places on weekends mainly because ________.
第一段中提到“They often lived alone, without their families, far from home.”，因此他们周末聚到一起喝酒。
According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
由第一段可知，蓝调形成于“In the South”“work camps”，也就是南方的乡村。