1. The Roots Of American Music
The Blues
The Roots Of
American Music

2. The Blues is a musical style, a “Folk Music”, created in the Americas in response to the hardships and injustice endured by generations of the African/American people kept in slavery and poverty during the early development of what would become the United States.
Slavery could not destroy the human impulse to make sense of life through stories, songs, and rituals. Blues was a spontaneous, organic expression of a culture.
Blues turned into a style; was performed and imitated. It transformed as the culture changed.

3. The Blues? What came before
Blues has contributed greatly in the development of Jazz, Rock, Motown, Hip-Hop, Country/Western and many other styles of music. In fact Blues is considered to be the foundation of all the popular music in America
But
What came before
The Blues?

4. Music in Africa
History & Culture recorded through song, dance & ritual (oral tradition)
Griots, Master Drummer
Voice most important
Call & Response
Leader – Chorus
Voice – Instrument*
Lead Instrument – Responding Instruments
Music involved in Daily Life
Births, death, hunting, feasts, planting harvests, social justice, secret society
Talking Drum

5. Music in the Colonies Many European Styles English & French folk songs
Anglo-Scottish Ballads (story songs)
Spanish Fandango
Irish Country Reels (Hoedown)
Sea Shanties (work songs)
Religious Music

6. Music of the Slaves 3 Main types of pre-blues music Field Hollers
Work Songs
Spirituals

7. Field Holler Called “Arhollie” Usually a single voice
Expressed hardships of slave life
Sometimes functional
Call to work
Call to meal
Quitin’ time call
Call to meetin’
Distinct vocal style

8. Work Songs Farm fields and prison work gangs Synchronize work
Men chained together had to move together
Established strong rhythmic pulse
Pulse is the heartbeat of Blues
Pass time faster
Express frustration and rebellishness.
“Go Down, Old Hannah”
Hannah = Sun
Don’t get up no more

9. Spirituals European hymns sung with African vocal style
Religious texts
Sometimes words had “double meaning” in order to hide actual meaning.
Expressed frustrations of slavery and hope of freedom
Texts eventually became more secular to produce the Blues

10. The Birth of the Blues Mixture of African & European Music
“House Slaves” were often taught to play European Music.
Provided entertainment for plantation owners
Field Slaves were left to their own devices
Developed their own musical culture
Developed in the Mississippi Delta
Late 1800’s (after the civil war)
Freed slaves traveled to find work