“Blues gets a bad rap because of what it’s called,” said the 23-year-old, one of the blues’ brightest new stars. “People associate blues with all the sad things that can possibly go wrong with their life. … (but) the blues is what’s happening.”

Lovers of the genre are trying to spread that word in 2003, which has been declared “The Year of the Blues” by Congress. Director Martin Scorsese is producing a seven-part series for PBS to air this fall, and the Experience Music Project, a museum in Seattle, is sponsoring an education program and traveling exhibit.

The official kickoff of the yearlong celebration occurs Friday with the Salute To The Blues concert at Radio City Music Hall. Blues legends such as B.B. King and Ruth Brown will be feted by pop, rock and R&B stars including Aerosmith, Natalie Cole and India.Arie with collaborations designed to attract the non-blues listener.

“I think when people rediscover this music, they’re going to say, ‘Wow this is pretty contemporary,’ so we’re hopeful,” said Alex Gibney, the event’s producer. “People think of it as this downbeat music where people are singing these slow, sad songs, and it’s really not that.”

The 77-year-old King, known as the “King of the Blues,” also said he hopes the benefit will open minds.

“A lot of the kids, they think it’s all pain, it’s all hurt, it’s all droopy drawers,” he said. “It wasn’t all like that in slavery.”

Blues’ roots lie in the work songs of slavery, as well as in early black gospel music and, later, other influences including folk music.

Blues accounted for less than 3.4 percent of music sales in the United States in 2001; it’s sales are so small it is lumped into the jazz category by the Recording Industry Association of America.

“I think that blues for the last two years has been going through kind of a quiet period, because there is not a pop artist who has championed the blues as other artists of the past (have),” said Bruce Iglauer, owner of the Chicago-based blues label Alligator Records.

He cited earlier musicians such as Stevie Ray Vaughan as having promoted the genre.

Yet King said interest is there.

“It’s hardly any night that we play that the band and I don’t sell out,” he said. “Somebody must like what we do.”

Blues supporters say one problem is that the music isn’t played on mainstream radio. “People have to have things in front of them for them to pay attention, to go out and buy the album,” said Copeland.

Negotiations are underway to broadcast the concert, directed by filmmaker Antoine Fuqua and executive-produced by Scorsese, on television or even make it into a theatrical movie release.

Concert proceeds are to benefit The Blues Music Foundation, which promotes the genre and assists needy musicians. Ticket prices range from $150 to $1,250.

Other performers include Alison Krauss; the Neville Brothers; John Fogerty; Greg Allman; rappers Chuck D and Mos Def; Bonnie Raitt; and guitarist Buddy Guy.

Gibney, the producer, said including non-blues artists was “an attempt to say that we’re guided by the Willie Dixon quote – ‘The blues are the roots, and everything else are the fruits,'” he said. “The whole idea is a sense of mixing present and past.”