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by Christian Kallen
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Introduction: The Birth of the Blues The blues is a river deep and wide running through the heartland of 20th century American music, like the muddy waters of the Mississippi itself. It some ways it is not just "like" the Mississippi, but identical. Although its course is long and winding, it is navigable - there are landmarks, source streams feeding the main current and mileposts along the way. Let's take a journey down that river, and see where it leads us. Most people believe that the "field hollers" of the slaves were a point of origin for the blues, though of course the folk traditions of the West African homeland must be taken into account. In addition, there are elements of Stephen Foster-style music hall songs, rural traditions such as country dance tunes, hymns and plantation banjo-and-fiddle combos, and even fife-and-drum music. But rather than generalizing from a multiplicity of influences, let's be specific: in 1903, at a small Mississippi train station south of Clarksdale, W. C. Handy saw a black man in ragged clothes play a guitar with a knife to make "the weirdest music I had ever heard." Like his contemporary Buddy Bolden, the legendary originator of New Orleans jazz, this mythical artist was never recorded - we don't even know his name. But his influence can still be heard today in the sounds of urban blues, R&B, rock and roll, and even hip-hop as American music evolves into the 21st century. The most fertile soil for the blues is here, in the Mississippi Delta, where the river's centuries of flood have left flat or gently rolling landscape backing beneath the southeastern sun. In the aftermath of the Civil War, many freed slaves remained here, some even on the plantations where they were born, to do what they knew best - farm cotton, which grew so well in this soil. But emancipation did open the possibilities of travel, and many black men and families took to the road, choosing to pick guitars instead of cotton, and a "minstrel class," not unlike the griot of West Africa, came into being. By the 1920s, their music had become the blues. Also,
take a trip Down the Blues Highway
with Slate's "Well-Traveled." © 2003 by Christian Kallen |
Resources
A seven-part documentary on PBS, premiering Sept. 28
The book to begin with to learn about the musical and cultural history of the blues.
Personal tales of blues discovery, when Lomax was field recorder for Library of Congress; with companion CD.
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Early Delta Blues
