Long before Murray started writing for publication, he believed that the good times roll in response to suffering—that the suffering in a sense generates the good times. “What the customary blues-idiom dance movement reflects is a disposition to encounter obstacle after obstacle as a matter of course”—and something more than a matter of course. In “the blues tradition” we see “the candid acknowledgment and sober acceptance of adversity as an inescapable condition of human existence—and perhaps in consequence an affirmative disposition towards all obstacles, whether urban or rural, whether political or metaphysical.”
An affirmative disposition toward all obstacles—this is the blues idiom in a phrase. Resistance and affliction as the necessary engines of creativity
an affirmative disposition towards all obstacles
Etymologies 