That's a damn good question.
When did I first hear the Blues?
Truth is, I think I heard it the day I was born.
Maybe it was my first cry.
Now, I didn't know it was Blues, of course. A newborn baby don't know nothing about categories, record stores, or music historians. All I knew was I came into this world making noise, trying to tell somebody I was here. Ain't that some shit !
But if we're going to answer this question honestly, we have to talk about what people mean when they say "the Blues."
That's where things get muddy.
I didn't grow up hearing people say, "Boy, that's the Blues." I just heard life. I heard my mama singing in the kitchen while she cooked. I heard my granddaddy humming around the house. I heard laughter on the porch. I heard stories at family gatherings. I heard church folk singing. I heard folks shouting. I heard folks grieving and moaning.
I didn't know any of that had a name.
It was just the sound of my people living.
In fact, I was nearly grown before I started understanding what folks supposedly meant when they talked about Blues music.
Then I learned something interesting.
For a long time, if Black people recorded music, the music industry didn't care much about the style. It got shoved into a category. Before they called it Blues, they called it race records. Later, much of it became Blues.
Didn't matter if it was a dance tune, a love song, a gospel song, a work song, or something else entirely. If Black folks made it, somebody somewhere was likely to stick a label on it.
So if we're using that definition—Black expression captured on a record—then I've been hearing the Blues all my life.
It's woven into the fabric of who I am.
That's like asking a dog why it barks.
Or asking a rooster why it crows.
The answer is simple.
That's just what it does.
The Blues was around me before I knew the word for it.
Now, over the years, the music changed clothes. It morphed. It evolved. Folks started calling it soul. Then funk. Then R&B. Then hip-hop. Different sounds. Different generations. Different technology.
But underneath it all, I still hear the same heartbeat.
The same stories.
The same humor.
The same struggle.
The same joy.
The same determination to tell the truth about life.
That's why I've always found it funny when people say the Blues is only about a broke-down car or somebody's baby leaving them.
Sure, there are songs about heartbreak.
There are songs about hard times.
But that's not all the Blues is.
The Blues may be the only genre people define by an emotion instead of the music itself.
Some folks think Blues means sadness.
I don't.
To me, Blues means expression.
It's life spoken honestly.
It's a people telling their story in their own voice.
So when did I first hear the Blues?
I grew up on it.
I heard it before I knew what it was called.
I heard it in my family.
I heard it in my community.
I heard it in the voices around me.
And if I'm being truthful, I never stopped hearing it.
The Blues wasn't something I discovered.
The Blues was already there, waiting for me to recognize it.