There are several good alternatives to the blues.
If you listen carefully, you can hear elements of the blues in several different music genres.
The most likely alternatives to the blues are Jazz, rock, soul, hip-hop, and Country.
One can listen to many songs in these types of music and you can usually hear the influence of blues music if you are familiar with blues
Jazz is an alternative to the blues
Jazz uses more sophisticated rhythms than blues.
While most blues tunes use three chords, jazz uses a wider variety of chords and usually uses a wider variety of chord variations.
Some jazz tunes are based on a blues structure and are considered blues, tunes with a blues structure are still more complex than common blues songs.
Rock is an alternative to the blues
A lot of the early rock songs used one of the blues structures.
As Rock evolved the arrangers began using more chords than the basic blues chords and started using faster and more upbeat rhythms.
Today there are many rock songs that still use the blues chord structure but are almost unrecognizable as blues.
For instance, Mississippi Queen by Mountain is a blues structure with a very upbeat tempo.
Soul is an alternative to the blues
Soul music and blues both evolved out of the type of music called Rhythm and Blues.
These genres of music developed out of the African American tradition as did all of the alternatives to blues listed here.
While Blues is mostly a heavier and slower type of music sung by a solo artist either with or without a backup band,
Soul is usually sung by a group of singers with a band or orchestra with a much more upbeat style.
Hip-Hop is an alternative to the blue
Hip-hop music is celebrating its 50-year celebration this year.
At first glance, it may be difficult to see a connection to Blues by the average person.
I had not been a fan of Hip-hop at first, but I attended a blues festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi several years ago.
One of the acts on the acoustic stage was a group that came from New Orleans.
They sang blues in the New Orleans style and right in the middle of a song went into a Rap style that fit in perfectly.
I still don’t listen to a lot of Hip-hop but I think I have a better understanding of the style.
Country is an alternative to the blues
Country music has a long association with the blues.
The early bluesmen didn’t just sing blues.
They tried to sing whatever songs their audience wanted to hear.
They might have sung pop songs, gospel songs and a lot of country songs.
Jimmy Rogers who is considered the original country singer by many sang a lot of blues songs.
Merle Travis played a style of fingerstyle guitar that has become known as Travis Picking.
He did not originate that style although he did add some of his own style in the mix.
Travis style came out of a group of white guitar players in Kentucky but the origins are said to have been learned from an African American blues singer.
These are some of the alternatives to the blues.
All of them have roots in the African American communities of the past.
There are more alternatives, but these are the most prevalent.