Biblical poetry and the Blues

If Kugel and Alter are right about how biblical Hebrew parallelism works (https://map.bloomfire.com/posts/803435), then the heightened anticipation created by the first line of a parallel biblical poetic line finds an analog in the  exact or nearly exact repetition of the first two lines in a typical Blues song. 

First, let us look at a formal rendering of a biblical Hebrew poetic line:

Psa 38.11:  

My friends and companions shun me in my sickness,  and my kinsfolk keep far off.

(the REB was used as it translates "those near me" as "kinsfolk," which seems right in the context)

The only thing joining the two lines in Hebrew is the usual vav, which by itself is a simple conjunction with no special force. But both Kugel and Alter insist that the meaning of the structure of a poetic couplet in Hebrew is "not only A, but what is more, B." It is on that basis that GNT translates the verse as follows (emphasis mine):

My friends and neighbors will not come near me, because of my sores;
even my family keeps away from me. 

This would be even more clear if we were to say:

Not only my friends and neighbors will not come near me, because of my sores;
but even my family has abandoned me. 

If parallel lines were in fact understood as having an implicit "not only" preceding the first line, then the level of anticipation in the ancient audiences can be assumed to have risen accordingly. The hearer would be put on the edge of his or her seat, so to speak, waiting for what he/she knew was coming, but either not sure exactly how it would be realized or just enjoying the emphatic rhetoric for its own sake. The second (emphatic) line presumably resolved the tension and gave the listener a cathartic release.

Blues does the same thing, only in its own way. If you listen to the following video of Tracy Chapman (with Eric Clapton) singing "Give me one reason," you will hear her (and him) repeat the first line exactly or nearly exactly in the second, along with just a slight change of key to help raise the level of anticipation. Then the third line completes the tercet (I had to look that one up), which along with the musical resolution gives the listener a distinct feeling of relief and pleasure (well, if you like the Blues, anyway).

Please consider the music video as a possible modern example of what ancient biblical Hebrew poetry may have sounded like (emotionally anyway) to an audience of its day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d3iWPXvErQ

Final note: The A/A'/B structure of the Blues can be clearly seen in this link which includes the lyrics to the Blues song: http://www.songlyrics.com/freddie-king/woke-up-this-morning-lyrics/

[In another post I have dealt with the Blues lyrical genre as a modern analog of biblical laments: https://map.bloomfire.com/posts/828691-biblical-laments-and-the-blues]