What's going on, everybody? I'm Kevin. I'm here to talk to you a little bit today about the impact（挤入） of blues education. Why blues education? In order to understand American music, you have to start from its root（根）. Blues didn't exist anyplace（任何地方） else.

  It was born（承担） in America. The issue（问题） with blues, a lot of times that folks（人们） carry with them is that blues was born（承担） in a dark time. Blues was born during slavery（奴隶制）. So when we talk about the blues, oftentimes for kids, they think of it as just being sad music for old people. And that concept（概念） is easily dispelled（驱散） once（一旦） you understand the power of where it came from. And so talking about the origins（起源） of blues with students, letting them know that, yes, blues was born during slavery, but it wasn't born because of slavery.

  It was born in spite（(in ～ of)不顾） of it. This music carried carried people through the darkest times. It helped them find a way. If you think about your own lives, on your best day, you listen to music. On your worst day, you listen to music. You might put your headphones on.

  Well, slaves（奴隶） didn't have headphones. In the fields, they were working, and they would sing. And this music helped to give them the strength（ 体力） to move and keep moving. Now, it started with just what they called field hollers and work songs. But eventually（终于） it got introduced to instrumentation. And as that instrumentation came to be, it started to take different shapes.

  We started to get different sonic（音速的） fingerprints, if you will. Everything from what we call Delta（三角州） Blues to Kansas City Swing to the Minneapolis（明尼苏达[美国州名]） Sound has evolved（发展） from this sea. Now, how does it get from point（指向） A to point（指向） B? It's kind（种类） of like a giant game of telephone. See, when folks were brought in and sold into slavery, brought in as slaves, and they were congregated（聚集） in places like Congo Square. And they didn't always get the opportunity. They didn't speak the same languages, but they had instruments, drums（鼓）, and those rhythms（韵律）.

  They learned how to communicate. But then they were sold, and they were sent to different places. And so everybody played what they thought they remembered, kind of like the game telephone.