The History of Blues Music

Alessio Villa 5 A/c
THE HISTORIY OF BLUES MUSIC & SLAVE TRADING

The history of folk music talks about Afro-American and Afro-European music. These
expressions describe a mixture of the two music traditions in the USA. West-African music
elements and European music traditions merge into each other on American ground.
The Afro-American music arises and forms the foundation of the music-forms jazz, blues,
gospel, soul etc. The music finds its way back to Europe, and the Negroid influence then
becomes appreciable ingredients in Western music.
The slaves' music

The period 1600-1850 was a time of stave trading and traffic. This period is like a bloodstain in
white man's history. Thousands of West-Africans were stowed on -board cargo ships, and
transported to the New World. The slaves were taken to areas in America where there was an
urgent need for manpower; the areas with huge plantations.
The U.S. slavery was repealed in 1865. We believe, that during these years, more than ten
million people were transported from Africa to America. Families were torn apart, children were
separated from their parents. Slave auctions were an everyday phenomenon in the New World.
But slavery didn't manage to break the Africans' will to preserve their culture. They still had
their rich music tradition.
West-African Music
Most of the slaves came from these three areas in Africa:
The West-African savannah - from Guinea to the Senegal coast. This area was strongly
influenced by Islam and its culture.
Music : ornamented song, long melody lines, many stringed instruments.
The rainforest area on the West coast Ghana,, Nigeria and Dahomey.
Music : big striking mechanisms, complicated rhythmics (polyrhythmics).
The Kongo - Angola - area, The Portuguese and Spanish colonies often got their slaves from
here.
Music : mostly polyphonic songs with sung or spoken dialogue.

The West-Africans music is strongly attached to the everyday life, religious ceremonies and
dance. The music is an integral part of the tribes' daily life.
The New World
When the Africans arrived, they had to adapt themselves to a new and foreign culture.
They lived under different circumstances, all according to the colony, the work and the time.
Much of the African heritage got lost because, among other things, they were denied the right
to practice their religious rituals. The question of whether the black' music would survive or
not, all depended on whether the slave was sold to a British (Protestant) or a Latin (Roman
Catholic) colony. It seems obvious that the African music had better terms of living in the Latin
colonies.
It was usually strictly forbidden to practice these heathen customs' in the Protestant colonies.
A great deal of the West-African music heritage survived, in spite of the suppression
it was carried forward from generation to generation, through attitude and habits, gestures
and movements.
The slaves met different ethnic groups in the Southern States, and there is reason to believe
that the Blacks gradually picked up features from English and French folk songs, from ballads,
Jewish songs and Indian music.
The European folk hymns dominated the religious music in the 1700s and the 1800s.
Because of this meeting between new ethnical groups. the Blacks gradually developed new
work songs and religious songs. At the same time they managed to preserve their old culture
anti traditions.
Work Songs
The supervisors allowed, and even encouraged, the slaves to sing. The singing contributed
them to overcome the monotony in the work out on the field, in a way it raised the work ethic.
This was how the concept plantation songs' started. The work song did not only function as a
stimulant, where the rhythm of the song subsidized the work-rhythm, but also as a news
channel. This was the only way the slaves could talk to each other during work; by singing.
Here, in the songs, the slaves learned about topical occurrences, narratives and the word of
God.
The new work songs that came into being among the Blacks in America, were the foundation
for the later to be known Afro American music.
The Gospel Music had its fountain in the Work Songs.
The Blues
The blues is the most independent type of black music in the African -American tradition. The
musical style wasn't really developed before after slavery had been embellished in 1865, but
the blues is deeply rooted in the slaves' work songs, gospel and Negro spirituals. Some say
that the blues was born in the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta where cotton choppers and
pickers sang to make the work go easier. These songs were influenced by African tribal songs,
work chants and "hollers". But even after the slaves were given back their freedom, they were
not considered as equals by the rest of the population. Most of them were poor and their living
accommodations were bad, they were illiterate and despised. It was under these circumstances
the term "being blue" appeared.
The colour blue expressed a feeling of sadness and depression, and of being lonely. While
Negro spirituals lent itself to a choral treatment and expressed the blacks' need for spiritual
guidance, the blues was about people and their everyday struggles. Blues lyrics was about
money problems, broken hearts, loneliness and sickness. Melancholy, however is most
frequently the theme; the essence of the blues is in such traditional lines as "Got the blues,
but too damn mean to cry". Sometimes the lyrics even criticized social and political injustice.
The melody line is improvised. A blues song is foremost played on a guitar, but also on
harmonica and banjo, or with a new improvised instrument called CIGAR BOX GUITAR
The cigar box guitar is a primitive chordophone that uses an empty cigar box for a resonator.
The earliest had one or two strings; the modern model typically uses three or more.
Cigars were packed in boxes, crates, and barrels as early as 1800, but the small sized boxes
that we are familiar with today did not exist prior to around 1840. [1]Until then, cigars were
shipped in larger crates containing 100 or more per case. After 1840, cigar manufacturers
started using smaller, more portable boxes with 20-50 cigars per box. The cigar box guitars
and fiddles were also important in the rise of jug bands and blues. As most of these performers
were black Americans living in poverty, many could not afford a "real" instrument. Using these,
along with the washtub bass (similar to the cigar box guitar), jugs, washboards, and
harmonica, black musicians performed blues during socializations.
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a resurgence of homemade musical instruments.
Times were hard in the American south and for entertainment sitting on the front porch singing
away their blues was a popular pastime. Musical instruments were beyond the means of
everybody, but an old cigar box, a piece of broom handle and a couple wires from the screen
door and a guitar was born.
CIGARBOX GUITARS
MODERN models of
Cigarbox guitar

The History of Blues Music

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How did slaves preserve their culture through music?

How did work songs develop among slaves?

Alessio Villa 5 A/c

THE HISTORIY OF BLUES MUSIC & SLAVE TRADING

The slaves' music

Music : mostly polyphonic songs with sung or spoken dialogue.

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