Hill country blues

Hill country blues (also known as North Mississippi hill country blues or North Mississippi blues) is a regional style of country blues. It is characterized by a strong emphasis on rhythm and percussion, steady guitar riffs, few chord changes, unconventional song structures, and heavy emphasis on the "groove" - more affectionately known as "the hypnotic boogie."

Hill country refers to the northern region of Mississippi bordering Tennessee. It is divided between the counties of Marshall, Panola, Tate and Lafayette, and straddles the ecoregions of North Hilly Plain (Red Clay Hills or North Central Hills), the Loess Plains, and Bluff Hills. The hills have poor agricultural soil and wide forested areas, which led to the developments of only small farms, and a lumber industry.Holly Springs and Oxford, Mississippi are often cited as centers of Hill Country music. The style is regarded as distinct from the blues of the Mississippi delta, which lays west of the hills. An annual picnic is held to celebrate the region and music.

Country blues

Country blues (also folk blues, rural blues, backwoods blues, or downhome blues) is acoustic, mainly guitar-driven forms of the blues, that mixes blues elements with characteristics of folk. After blues' birth in the Southern United States, it quickly spread throughout the country (and elsewhere), giving birth to a host of regional styles. These include Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, Texas, Piedmont, Louisiana, West Coast, St. Louis, East Coast, Swamp, New Orleans, Delta, Hill country and Kansas City blues.

When African-American musical tastes began to change in the early 1960s, moving toward soul and rhythm and blues music, country blues found renewed popularity as "folk blues" and was sold to a primarily white, college-age audience. Traditional artists like Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson II reinvented themselves as folk blues artists, while Piedmont bluesmen like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee found great success on the folk festival circuit.

Seminal compilations of pre-WWII country blues recordings assembled in the 1950s are the Anthology of American Folk Music and The Country Blues.

Hill-country (hieroglyph)

The ancient Egyptian hill-country hieroglyph is a member of the sky, earth, and water hieroglyphs. A form of the hieroglyph in color, has a green line-(banding) at the base of the hieroglyph. The hieroglyph refers to the hills, and mountains, on both sides of the Nile River, and thus the green references the verdant black farming land adjacent to the river proper.

Various colors, and patterning, may adorn the rest of the hieroglyph when the bottom is green.

Three major uses

The ancient language hilly land hieroglyph has three major uses:

The language meaning of the hieroglyph is as an idiogram or a determinative in the word khast (khaset), and is often translated as hilly land, desert, foreign land, or district.

Use as determinative

One major use of the hill-country hieroglyph is as the determinative for land, but especially the names of foreign lands. For example in the Merneptah Stele, foreign lands are mentioned, including the name of Hatti.

Partial list with land determinative

Texas Hill Country

The Texas Hill Country is a twenty-five county region of Central Texas and South Texas featuring karst topography and tall rugged hills consisting of thin layers of soil atop limestone or granite. It also includes the Llano Uplift and the second largest granite dome in the United States, Enchanted Rock. The Hill Country reaches into portions of the two major metropolitan areas, especially in San Antonio's northern suburbs and the western half of Travis County, ending southwest of Downtown Austin. The region is the eastern portion of the Edwards Plateau and is bound by the Balcones Fault on the east and the Llano Uplift to the west and north. The terrain is punctuated by a large number of limestone or granite rocks and boulders and a thin layer of topsoil, which makes the region very dry and prone to flash flooding. The Texas Hill Country is also home to several native types of vegetation, such as various yucca, prickly pear cactus, cedar scrub, and the dry Southwestern tree known as the Texas live oak.