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(1)RD O CO0 z 0. Abstract The origins of the blues is not known conclusively; however, there are numerous theories of the birth of the blues. by Africans in America. African-American. The music evolved out of several song styles sung. Ultimately, slave songs were the immediate precursor. music. The blues retains. elements. of all. of slave songs , such as veiled. meaning; varied content, including complaint, revenge , resistance, satire, and protest; the music also functions as a kind of oral history, recording the lives of African-Americans . Slave songs were a conduit by which African culture was passed down from generation to generation; rhythms,. thus, the blues also retains such African musical practices. the supernatural. element, and the social function of the music.. provided the essential role of recreating African-American. as complex Music has. African communities in the Americas. Like all. musical forms, the blues expresses personal feelings, which is possibly. the most important aspect of the music.. Introduction There is some disagreement. among scholars as to the origins of the blues.. Lomax refers to the blues as "the moody song style that was born sometime. Alan around. 1900 in the Mississippi Delta"(ix).John W. Blassingame puts it somewhat earlier: "D rawing on their African musical heritage, Southern slaves had created by 1850 music that would later be popularized as 'the blues. (121). Baraka takes a safer stance by. saying it is "certainly no older than the presence of Negroes in the United States" Palmer asserts. that "in the repertoires. of a few singer-guitarists,. (17).. there wasn't blues,. not before the early 1900s" (47). And he agrees with Lomax when he suggests that "i n southern Mississippi in the 1890s there was no such thing as blues" (51). This does not mean blues did not exist elsewhere, however.. The Mississippi Delta was pioneered. more recently than other parts of the South: "Reclamation of this virgin wilderness land. blues, protest, African, American. 121.

(2) pQ. AS. began in the 1870s and continued up until the 1930s, and its way of life dates back to those pioneering years rather than to the period of slavery". )1). (Lomax 65). According to. bluesmen James Butch Cage and Booker White, however, the music came from "back in slavery time" (Oakley 9-10). Memphis Slim says exactly the same thing: "Blues started from slavery" (qtd. in Lomax 460). And Miles Mark Fisher also supports this assertion: "Bl ues originated during the first quarter of the nineteenth century" (188). There is a parallel argument. about the origins of jazz which can shed some light. on the accepted myth of the origin of the blues. Baraka says the following about New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz: Even though New Orleans cannot be thought veracity. as 'the birthplace. of the jazz and earlier twentieth. century,. that. of with any historical. of jazz,' there has been so much investigation. music characteristic. there in the first part of the. from New Orleans. conclusions. may be drawn. concerning the social and cultural phenomena that led to the creation of jazz. (71) Using this logic, the same can be said about the Mississippi Delta as the birthplace of the blues.. It is probably safest to say that no one knows for certain where and when the. blues were born. In fact, it may be more accurate to say that the blues was not born at all, but developed over generations everywhere. in the United States where there was a. significant population of people of African descent.. It is only relatively recently that the. term 'blues' was applied to a kind of music which has been around for an extremely long time: One can't even say with certainly evolved. version. of the earlier. musical idiom that has drawn. jump-ups. that. or one-verse. on numerous. field hollers (which it most closely resembles (from which it borrowed. some imagery. blues was simply a more songs.. Blues is a. sources, including jump-ups, melodically), songster ballads. and some guitar patterns),. church. music (which influenced the singing of many blues musicians), and Africanderived percussive music (which furnished some rhythmic ideas). Each blues performer. draws on a mix of these sources and on the influence of other. blues performers. 122. and comes up with something that is distinctively his or her.

(3) IV. 0 0 op. own; the only way to define blues with any real precision would be to take the repertoire. of every blues performer. z 0. into account . (Palmer 43). Add to this the personal feeling each performer. includes in his or her blues , which is. based on his or her unique experiences, and which their communities can relate to , and you have the ingredients for blues. The term 'blues' was permanently. affixed to the style when W . C. Handy and. others published music with the word in the title; for example, "Memphis Blues" (Oakley 41).. A comparison. of "St. Louis Blues" by Handy and a song such as "Crossroads. Blues" by Robert Johnson show how different conceptions of the blues can be . Handy's composition more closely resembles. the early jazz of New Orleans , whereas Johnson's. composition is recognizable as the 12-bar structure. we have come to associate with the. blues. As Oakley states: "Up to that point [when blues began to be published] the word blues was probably only loosely applied to a wide spectrum of songs — work songs , love songs, devil songs, 'ditties', `ballits' (ballads) , the over-and-overs,. the slow drags, pats,. stomps and all kinds of barrelhouse music" (41). The era of recording also standardized the 12-bar structure. of a lot of blues, whereas prior to the recording era there were a. greater variety of forms. In short, the blues draws upon a plurality of styles and sources. A connection can be made between these sources when one explores the commonality of content; for example, veiled meaning, ambiguous language , and pseudonymous. words.. These techniques of communicated and obfuscating meaning are continuations of African traditions.. African The. musical. traditions. slaves. continuation slavery; verbal shaped periods". traditions brought. of African. for example, performance. (xiii).. own by stating. of African-Americans with. them. traditions. the folklorist, traditions. all its distinctive Blues. historian that. have. to America. which. were. Robert. points. virtually. arts, during Palmer. "[Ole African. The further. Alan Lomax,. had survived. rhythmic. unequivocally. Retentions. intact. evolved blues. developed out. the. musical. is no different: in the. "that. black. in African. both the colonial reinforces. from. period. African. of non-. America , and had. and the post colonial. Lomax's. music from which. it is a. research. with his. the blues ultimately. blues, protest,. African, American. 123.

(4) AQ. derives came to what is now the southern United States with the first African slaves" (25-26). And Amiri Baraka, the well-known African-American )1). poet, in his book, Blues. People, states that "to merely point out that blues, jazz, and the Negro's adaptation of the Christian religion all rely heavily on African culture takes no great amount of original thinking. How these activities derive from that culture is what remains important" In short, the blues contains significant retentions. (16).. of African elements; however, what. these retentions are and how they have evolved requires further research. Although derivative Americans.. there. are those who claim that. African-American. music is wholly. of white sources, they are basing their belief on a myth about AfricanThis myth, refuted by Melville J. Herskovits in his book The Myth of the. Negro Past, is as follows, the cultures of Africa were so savage and relatively human civilization. that the apparent. superiority. so low in the scale of. of European. customs. as. observed in the behavior of their masters, would have caused and actually did cause them to give up such aboriginal traditions as they may otherwise have desired to preserve.. (2). An example of a belief in this myth can be seen in the story of Nick LaRocca, the founder of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an all-white band that "had been deeply influenced by the King Oliver band in New Orleans" (Baraka 143). He could not accept that African Americans developed jazz.. He "insisted that his band created jazz.. He also refused to. ever admit any black influence in his music" ( "Gumbo" ). It is possible to follow his line of thinking if we base it only on the circumstantial. evidence of the most successful early. jazz artists: for example, Paul Whiteman-the self — styled "King of Jazz" — and Benny Goodman.. LaRocca may have come to believe that his band had invented jazz because. they were the first jazz band to record, and they "were heard by the great majority of Americans first . . ." (Baraka 143). However, it was only through a twist of fate that they were the first to record, because, "[a] Negro jazz band, Freddie Keppard's Original Creoles, turned down an invitation to record a few months before the O.D.J.B." (Baraka 143-144). This type of situation stereotypes;. reflects a tendency. for example, Nick LaRocca was convinced. copied his group. As Herkovits states:. 124. by some people towards that African Americans. racial had.

(5) RD 0 CO. Whenever this view of the inferior creative ability of the Negro is brought forward, it is customarily. coupled with an observation. z 0. on his imitative gift,. which in turn becomes an additional reason for a policy of rigid control of Negroes by whites . . . . (21) Therefore, LaRocca's thinking was in no way unusual. The majority of people, one hopes, no longer think that way. Whiteman, Goodman, and the O.D.J.B. made music that appealed primarily to white people rather than black people.. They took music created by blacks and transformed. it into something palatable for whites: "white America could have no understanding. of. what they [black Americans and hip whites] were doing, except perhaps in the terms that Whiteman and the others succeeded in doing it, which was not at all . . ." (Baraka 152). However, jazz music, as we know it, would not exist if it were not for the blues, which is unarguably. a style of music created by black people. Baraka puts it concisely. when he writes, Ibilues is the parent of all legitimate jazz . . ." (17). Blues is the conduit of African culture and musical practice.. An African cultural aspect retained by the blues. is magic, or a belief in the supernatural. The blues has a unique relationship is often referred. to as the Devil's music.. to the supernatural;. to give one example, it. Parents would try to dissuade their children. from listening and playing the music, because of the negative connotations. associated. with it. There are legends of bluesmen selling their souls to the Devil at the crossroads at midnight.. One such musician was Robert Johnson.. He may have invented the story. himself so as to appear more threatening: He was considered dangerous because he was in league with the Devil. 'Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go,' he sang in his 'Me and the Devil Blues ' with a kind of grim relish that convinced. his listeners. he was ready.. (Palmer. 111-112) Another. bluesman. Wheatstraw,. who exploited. the superstitions. of his listeners. was Peetie. the self-styled "Devil's son-in-Law, or the High Sheriff from Hell" (Oakley. 167). He went so far as to have these monikers printed on the labels of the records he recorded.. The use of controversy. for publicity is nothing new. The idea of the Devil's. music has been adopted by heavy rock bands, which, musically, owe their existence to. blues,. protest,. African,. American. 125.

(6) figs. the blues. Along with a strong belief in the Devil was a belief in the power of charms.. )1). As. Houston Bacon, an African American who lived in the Mississippi Delta told Alan Lomax, "I got me a toby [a charm] and I'd just set him in the house where I was gambling and most generally I'd win" (qtd. in Lomax 174). These charms are commonly called mojo hands by bluesmen.. In his discussion of Muddy Waters, Robert Palmer discusses mojo. hands: Muddy had seen plenty of mojo hands. They were little red flannel bags that smelled of oils and perfumes; some were pierced by a needle or two. You bought them from a "doctor," a specialist in charms and magic. all believed in mojo hands," Muddy says.. "We. "You get you a mojo, and if you're. gamblin', it'll take care of that; you win. If you're after the girls, you can work that on the woman you want and win.. Black people really believe in this. hoodoo, and the black people in Louisiana was a little more up into that thing than the peoples in the Delta part, as far as makin' things that would work." (95-96) This use of magic is an example of the retention of African religious customs . In some West African societies it is referred to as juju or medicine. of Ghana a charm is called a cat's hand; however,. lilt's. Among the Dahomey. not from a cat itself.. It's. medicine and it comes from juju. If you want to play [the drum], you put it [the charm] on your arm and everything. will be all right". (Ibrahim Abdulai qtd. in Chernoff 17).. From this we can deduce that juju refers to metaphysical. power.. It is a part of West. African religious life. In America juju was somewhat corrupted because of the influence of Christianity,. which viewed African religions as devil worship.. bluesmen who purportedly. Very much like the. sold their souls to the Devil for musical prowess, conjurers. or "doctors" as Muddy Waters referred. to them were believed to have received their. power from the Devil; for example, the power. "of one remarkable. conjurer. named. Dinkie, [. . . ] it was rumored, came from his being in league with Satan" (Raboteau 282) . Depending on who is asked, the supernatural. power comes either from God or the Devil .. Albert J. Raboteau discusses the ambiguous ideas surrounding the source of this power: Herron and Bacon observed that the source of the conjurors' power was not. 126.

(7) tV. O0 D. well defined. One informant stated, "I have always heard that those doctors sold themselves reported. to the Devil before they were given the power ." Another. that all the conjure. revelation. z 0. doctors she had heard of claimed. from God." Some conjurers saw nothing strange. "a special. in calling upon. God to assist their cures. (287) In Africa the belief in magic does not carry the good/evil binary opposition that it does in the United States.. Raboteau also explains the African origins of this supernatural. belief: Magic is an integral part of religious life for many African peoples . It is intimately related to medicine in traditional African belief because illness and death are not due to "natural" causes alone but to "spiritual" causes as well . It is the priest-diviner-herbalist,. or "root-doctor," versed in the use of herbs ,. barks, leaves, and roots, to whom one goes for a diagnosis of these causes and for prescriptions best cure.. to ameliorate illness . Prevention, however, remains the. Therefore. the use of charms and amulets is widespread . Often. called ju-jus, gris-gris or fetishes in travel accounts, they are believed to bear spiritual power. (13-14) The belief in magic does not seem to have been a problem in Africa , where "in the life of an African community there was a close relationship between the natural and the supernatural,. the secular and the sacred". (Raboteau 15). In America , prior to the. Emancipation, Conjure could, without contradiction , exist side by side with Christianity in the same individual and in the same community conjure. answered. purposes. which Christianity. because , for the slaves,. did not and Christianity. answered purposes which conjure did not . (Raboteau 288) After emancipation, however, an uneasy relationship has existed between these beliefs in the African-American. community.. After being freed , many former slaves tried to. discard all the relics of their lives as slaves, as though those things were tainted by slavery.. Although many leaders of communities, including some ministers , tried to get. their peers to discard certain cultural practices, neither religious beliefs nor music are easily abandoned.. The blues and the church are intertwined;. therefore , discarding one. blues, protest, African, American. 127.

(8) AA. UiJ. 11 fEJ )1). and not the other was impossible. Many important bluesmen were also preachers:. "Music and the ministry were the. principal professions available to men of wit in the Delta. tried them both-Son House, Big Bill, Muddy Waters,. Many of the most ambitious. to name a few" (Lomax 359).. Magic can be used as a kind of revenge or resistance in a way similar to music; there is, for example, the story of the previously mentioned conjurer named Dinkie, who held everyone. on the plantation,. white or black, in his power.. come and go at his pleasure, he never worked.. Able to. [. . .] When a new overseer,. unfamiliar with Dinkie's status, tried to force him to work in the fields, Dinkie, by some secret means, set him straight.. [. . .] Whatever. the source of his. power, it was clear to all that Dinkie was his own master. (Raboteau 282) In short, there are significant African cultural retentions These are manifested. in African-American. in both music and religion, in the form of magic.. and music are important. ways of recreating. society.. Both religion. community and they are both forums for. communicating personal experiences.. Communication The single most important. aspect of the blues is that it expresses. an individual's. personal feelings. This is a refrain found in many discussions of the blues; for example, Amiri Baraka writes: "Even with the relative formalization of secular Negro music, blues was still an extremely. personal music". (65). In his discussion of Charley Patton and. other Mississippi Delta record makers, Giles Oakley states that "the bulk of their music was about the closer world of their personal feelings". (55). This aspect of the music. evolved directly out of the slave songs of the previous generations of African Americans: "Th e blues is formed out of the same social and musical fabric that the spiritual issued from, but with blues the social emphasis becomes more personal, the 'Jordan song much more intensely a human accomplishment". of the. (Baraka 63) . Although I agree. with Baraka's main point, I think he sells slave songs a little short. Slave songs are rich in feelings of personal suffering, and they are concerned with the here and now.. The. meanings of the songs are perhaps, because of the social conditions in which they were created, more veiled than the blues.. 128. The blues, like slave songs, is a music of personal.

(9) R.) 0 co. feeling, detailing the everyday. suffering of regular people , whether they are prisoners,. z 0. farmers, or sharecroppers. The days, weeks, and years following emancipation , "Reconstruction, eventual. restoration. of antebellum. power in the South marked. and the. the transition. from a. society half-slave and half-free to a racist society in which color , instead of slavery, became the badge of oppression". (Mintz x).. African Americans , freedmen and former. slaves, soon discovered that their living conditions had not improved very much , if at all. One difference was the increasingly solitary life of the sharecropper . Instead of working in gangs or even with the master on the smaller farms , the sharecropper. worked alone.. However, solitary working did not originate post-emancipation . Unlike the Caribbean slave societies, in the United States. the majority of slaves were held on small farms. rather than large plantations: In 1860, only 2.7 percent of Southern slaveholders and only one-quarter. of the slaves. owned 50 or more slaves ,. lived on such holdings . Very large. plantations were a rarity: a mere 0.1 percent of slave owners held estates of 200 or more slaves, and such estates contained only 2.4 percent of the slaves. By contrast, in Jamaica on the eve of emancipation , one-third of the slaves lived on holdings of 200 or more and three-quarters. lived on holdings of at. least 50. (Kolchin 101) Therefore, we can extrapolate from this information that solo singing must have existed among African Americans. prior to emancipation;. watched over to the same extent as slaves.. however , sharecroppers. were not. On top of this, solo singing existed in Africa. as well; griots, for example, often sing solo, although they always sing before an audience , making it a social occasion. Africans are a very social people, and their music making is usually a communal process: "In traditional African societies, music making is generally organized as a social event" (Nketia 21). The field holler was a way for the solitary field worker to maintain a connection recreating. to the world, specifically his community.. a community.. It is an important. aspect of. His individual holler was his signature , recognized by others. within hearing; the same applies to the hollers of convicts working in penitentiaries. in. the South:. blues,. protest,. African, American. 129.

(10) "fsE. AID. His signature song voiced his individual sorrows and feelings. By this means, he located himself in the vast fields of the penitentiary, where the rows were. )1). often a mile long and a gang of men looked like insects crawling over the green carpet of the crops. Listening to a holler, some con would say, "Essen at of Bull bellerin over there — he must be fixin to run," or "That's old Tangle Eye yonder. He's callin on his woman again." (Lomax 273) With its roots equally in the slave songs of the past and West African solo singing, the holler is one of the distinctive elements which gave rise to the early or folk blues, also called country blues, as opposed to the more sophisticated city blues. Another significant influence of the blues is work songs, also derived from slave songs, used during slavery by work gangs — sometimes called chain gangs — and continued on the prison farms of the South after emancipation, in the forced labor gangs that built the Mississippi River levee, and on the work gangs that built the railroads. The prisons in the South that used prisoners in work gangs recreated the conditions of slavery: "Worksongs are related to a cultural nexus almost totally nonexistent in this country; only in artificially maintained these, and prison is changing". anachronisms. does it still exist; prison is one of. (Jackson xxvi). Since Bruce Jackson wrote those words,. the conditions he found no longer exist, because prisons and the work gangs therein are now integrated: Once blacks and whites and Hispanics. worked. in the same squads,. group songs became a physical impossibility: you cannot synchronize. the body. movements if half the people cannot or do not want to follow the beat. (Jackson vii). I think the later is more accurate: in many situations some people refuse to follow others. It is not that they could not follow the beat, it is that the white and Hispanic workers likely did not want to follow it; for example, Mezz Mezzrow writes about mixed work gangs at a reformatory. he was sent to:. The best unloading team was made up of three guys who commanded a lot of respect in the prison, a colored boy named Georgia, a white boy named Joe Kelly, and the great Bow himself [a Jewish boy]. [. . .] We accompanied them for hours at a time, playing the blues slow and easy while they kept heaving. 130.

(11) R.) 0 00 z 0. and chanting out loud. (Mezzrow 12) It is obvious from Mezzrow's. account that the white boy and the Jewish boy could. keep time. At the time Jackson was doing his field research, the conditions in Southern prisons were very much like the plantation slavery of an earlier era. which contributed. The work song,. the driving rhythm of the blues, kept the team in time so that they. did not injure each other with their axes if they were chopping trees, and so that they all kept the same pace in order that no one would be singled out by guards (Jackson 29-30). This a good example of cooperation, the foundation of any community.. The elements. which all these styles have in common is that they are an outlet for the individual expression of personal feelings, and they help to recreate a sense of community among the disenfranchised.. The expression of personal feeling is an element of music which is. common to music in parts of Africa as well as to slave songs. There. are a number. of song styles. which are commonly. referred. to as the. progenitor of the blues. Principal among these are field hollers and work songs. Baraka supports this assertion when he writes that "in a few years after the Emancipation, the shout, hollers, yells, spirituals, and ballits began to take shape as blues" (59). Ultimately, however, these all derive from slave songs.. Fisher discusses this in Negro Slave Songs. in the United States: "It has been admitted that blues are woven from the same stuff as work songs, love songs, and so forth. They are all, in fact, developments (188).. The thread. which connects all these seemingly disparate. from spirituals". styles from modern. blues back to slave songs and even further back to Africa is the content which lies just below the surface: the veiled meaning. As we know from the study of poetry and other literature,. it is what lies beneath. the surface which is important, not necessarily the surface details. Bruce Jackson makes a similar argument in Wake Up Dead Man when he states: For the group generating folk songs there is a part of the content and context that is obvious, but to limit our understanding. of the songs' content. to the surface material is to ignore much of what we have learned in social science in the last half-century: men sing about what they know, of course, but there are many things to sing about; what they select tells us more than the lyrics would seem to indicate.. Many psychological defense mechanisms. blues,. protest,. African,. American. 131.

(12) AA. Pig FEJ. — denial , repression,. transference,. reaction formation,. and so forth. are. present as much in song lyrics as they are in conversation. (37) )1). What this tells us is basically that people sing to express their personal feelings, their inner fears and troubles.. Veiling meaning is a defense mechanism. survival, yet it also helps the performer. to communicate. It is something which all African-American helpful to better understand. used to ensure. feelings to his or her audience.. folk music has in common; therefore,. where the music originated.. it is. The ability to complain and to. get revenge through music is an element of personal expression which is as important in the blues as it was in slave songs. As it was during slavery, speaking out directly in front of whites, especially those with power over one's life was dangerous;. therefore, it was essential to veil meaning.. In the black church there was a tradition. of veiling meaning. emancipation.. which continued. after. Alan Lomax explains one of the functions that the preacher fulfilled for. the black community: There they found champions. to take up their cause.. The talented. men of the black community, using the relative immunity of the pulpit and employing biblical language to veil their meaning, denounced the wickedness of the Jim Crow system. (103) The bluesman. fulfilled a similar. provided a social commentary. function. for the community. as the preacher:. he. and voiced the issues important to the African-American. community; for example, in the following excerpt of a work song there is an indictment against racist, poor whites: Boys, the peckerwood a-peckin on the, On the schoolhouse door, sugar, Well, the peckerwood a-peckin on the, R-on-the schoolhouse door, well-a Well, the peckerwood a-peckin on the, On the schoolhouse door, well-a Well, he pecks so hard, Lordy, baby, Until his pecker got sore, well-a Until his pecker got sore, Lordy, baby,. 132.

(13) RD 0 0 co z 0. Until his pecker got sore, Lord, sugar, Until his pecker got sore, Lordy, baby, Until his pecker got sore, well-a . (Lomax 271) This example also demonstrates. the repetitiveness. which is typical of work songs and. the blues. Lomax includes a gloss about the meaning of this passage: "A raunchy play on words, with the poor white [called peckerwood because he resembles the woodpecker] pecking away at black education so persistently The use of the word `peckerwood. that his pecker [penis] gets sore" (271).. is an example of the use of a pseudonymous. word;. however, it is one that has been used so often in the past that most white people know what it means. folksongs.. The song also shows the bawdiness. found in some African-American. There were very few of these kinds of songs published at the end of the. slavery era, mostly the published songs are religious , thereby skewing our perception of early African-American. folksongs: "The Freedman's. secular songs of the Negro, but only the 'religious. Bureau published none of the. songs — and then those that were. quite readily recognizable as pickups from pale white Protestant. hymns" (Baraka 124).. The blues, however, records the entire spectrum of human emotion . It is significant that music provided an outlet for strong emotions which otherwise would have been bottled up inside; for example, Big Bill Broonzy , along with Memphis Slim and Sonny Boy Williamson stated as much in a conversation. recorded. by Alan. Lomax. They especially referred to music as a vehicle for revenge: "A nd the thing that has come to a showdown, that we really want to know why, and how come, a man in the South have the blues," Bill went on. "I worked on levee camps, extra gangs, road camps and rock camps and rock quarries and every place, and I hear guys singin uh-hmmmm. this and. rnmmmm that, and I want to get the thing plainly that the blues is something that's from the heart — I know that, and whensoever you hear fellows singing the blues — I always believe it was a really heart thing, from his heart, you know, and it was expressing his feeling about how he felt to the people. "I' ve known guys that wanted to cuss out the boss and was afraid to go up to his face and tell him what he wanted to tell him, and I've heard them sing those things — sing words, you know, back to the boss — say things. blues,. protest,. African,. American. 133.

(14) 3. 1. to the mule, make like the mule stepped on his foot — say, 'Get off my foot, goddam it! ' and he meant he was talking to the boss. 'You son-of-a-bitch,' he tI )1). say 'stay off my foot! ' and such things as that." "Y eah, blues is kind of a revenge," Memphis broke in. "You know you wanta say something, you wanta signifyin like — that's the blues. We all have had a hard time in life, and things we couldn't say or do, so we sing it." "H ow do you sing a thing like that?" Bill asked. "W ell, like a friend of mines was down working on the railroad, and he sang some songs for me, a little number called Oh, ratty, ratty section, Oh, ratty, ratty crew. Well, the cap'n getting ratty, ratty boys, You know I'm gonna rat some too. He couldn't speak up to the cap'n and the boss, but he still had to work, so it give him the blues, so he sang it — he was signifying and getting his revenge through songs." (Lomax 460-461) "Si gnifyin'" refers to the use of symbolic language and gestures to express discontent at poor treatment.. Referring to the mule instead of the boss is another example of using. a pseudonymous. word.. The singer displaces the object of his anger to something else,. which will have no negative consequences back to Africa.. for him. These are traditions which extend. Africans also use ambiguous language and pseudonymous. veil the meaning of songs. African-Americans. language to. expressed a desire for revenge, complaint,. discontent, anger, they satirized, encouraged each other, hoped for freedom, and rebelled in song. It provided solace in a harsh environment; it helped them survive. since the end of slavery it has become easier for African-Americans. However,. to sing more directly. about their experiences; for example, an element of the blues often discussed is its role as protest music. Big Bill Broonzy was very much a protest singer. "Bl ack, Brown and White" : This little song that I'111singing about, Brother you know it's true.. 134. This can be seen in his song.

(15) ro 0 co z 0. Now if you're black and gotta work for a living, This is what they will say to you. Chorus: They say if you is white, you all right, If you 's brown, stick around, But if you's black, well, brother, get back, get back, get back. I was in a place one night, They was all having fun. They was all buying beer and wine But they would not sell me none. (Chorus) Me and a man was working side by side, This is what it meant: He was making a dollar an hour, They was paying me fifty cent. (Chorus) I helped build this country, I fought for it too. Now I guess you can see What a black man have to do. (Chorus). (Broonzy, Lyrics). You can hear a distinct irony in his voice as he sings. black singers to sing directly.. It took a lot of courage for. When a black man like Big Bill Broonzy could speak out. like that, it had a profound effect on the world of music generally and his community specifically.. Combined with political folk singers of the 1930s like Woody Guthrie, the. folk music genre took off in the 50s and 60s, and it evolved into the politicized folkrock of the 1960s. Protest. as an element of the blues has been an important. influence. on singers black and white, it is the inherited tradition of veiling meaning, of resistance through song, which has been handed down from generation to generation in the AfricanAmerican community.. The blues does not express just one feeling; it is a complex music. which can express the whole world of emotion. A common misconception about the blues is that it makes us feel sad. many performers. Actually,. and fans attest to an opposite reaction: it makes them feel good; it. chases the blues away. It is a mistake to think that the blues only expresses sad feelings,. blues,. protest,. African, American. 135.

(16) f.--E AQ. "[t]h e blues can be just as joyful as a spiritual". )t). (Henry Townsend. Another blues singer, Alberta Hunter, attests: `Th e blues are like spirituals, almost sacred. singin. qtd. in Oakley 47).. When we sing blues, we're. out our hearts, we're singin' out our feelings. Maybe we're hurt and. just can't answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.. Yes, to. us, the blues are sacred. When I sing: I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry, Yes, I walk the floor, wring my hands and cry . . What I'm doing is letting my soul out. ' (Oakley 104) Therefore,. in a blues performance. experiencing and participating. the performer. is letting his or her soul out, and in. in the performance, the audience is also letting out their. souls. They are sharing an experience together thereby creating a community, even if it is only fleeting, lasting just the length of the performance.. Community Even a sad blues can bring out happy feelings, because there is the sense of shared experience, of solace, it draws the blues out and chases them away. In short, it recreates a sense of community.. Oakley attests to,. The prevailing sense of irony in the blues, the laughin the 'good woman feelin. to keep from cryin' ,. bad ' , and the feeling of hope in pain clutched with. pain in hope, [which] prevents it being seen one-dimensionally or simply as `protest music . As a music of feeling, feeling known to be shared by others, the blues is an evocation and exploration responses to the surrounding are in themselves. world.. of both personal. In as far as anger, outrage and protest. reactions to things unacceptable,. the blues can adopt that. stance, but usually with a cynical eye on the consequences. Thus the use of humor to veil protest.. is a part of the meaning of. However, the blues is also much more, it is the expression of the soul of a. community, and it helps continually to recreate fire from a hostile dominant group.. 136. (107). Like spirituals, the blues means different things. in different contexts and to different people, and protest the blues.. and communal. community, where it is constantly under.

(17) R.) 0 0 co. By providing an outlet for these feelings , the blues provides solace. It functions in. z 0. much the same way as the feeling of belonging to something greater than oneself , thus a community.. As Bruce Jackson states, referring specifically to work songs: "The songs. were functional: they were sung to relieve tension . . ." (vii). The same can be said for the blues in general. This is backed up by the bluesman , Henry Townsend, when he said the blues is "a relief, for pressure" all members. (qtd. in Oakley 46) . It is a service the blues provides. of the community who listen and enjoy blues . It functions in the secular. world in much the same way the church and spirituals or gospel music functions in the religious world. In African communities these things are the same , there is not the same fragmentation feels that. of the sacred and the secular which occurs in Western societies . Palmer. "[t]he deepest. blues asks its listeners. their lusts, and, above all, their morality. impermanence,". to confront their joys , their sorrows,. If the music has a single Great Subject , it's. which, it could be argued, is the subject of all history and , possibly, the. purpose of religion: all things are subject to change (275). The blues is a record history.. Fisher. of the lives of African-Americans. made the argument. . In other words, it is. that slave songs are a historical. record of the. people who sang them (178). The same can be said for the blues. Amiri Baraka makes precisely the same argument. in the introduction. to Blues People: "The music was our. history . ." (viii). This was true of slave songs , and, even more obviously, of the African music of the griots, who kept an oral history of their people. It is true of all the music which ultimately. derives from slave songs: "Each phase of the Negro's music issued. directly from the dictates. of his social and psychological. The historical function of the music is intertwined commentary.. environment". with its role in resistance. The music is basically a history of mistreatment,. of the effect of such treatment. communities. and social. and as such it is a history. on the soul. As the needs and wants of the community. have changed, in other words, as the social, environmental, African-American. (Baraka 65) .. and economic factors of the. have changed, so has their music.. There is still the. double entendre handed down from slave songs; however, the meaning may be more to do with love and lust or desire for success than freedom from oppression, but, in the end , these are the same thing. Freedom from oppression is a specific need, but generally, it is the need for relief from the pressures. of day-to-day life, which love and lust and wealth,. blues,. protest,. African, American. 137.

(18) f4E. ,P+1 [EJ. we often hope, can possibly provide us. Love Letters". (Listen to Deanna Bogart's song "Checks and. for and example of a song which discusses those pressures.). What was. true of the blues — its social function, its role as history, the use of veiled meaning, and its use as protest music — was inherited by its offspring: rock. roll, soul music, funk,. and hip-hop.. Conclusion The blues developed out of myriad styles of music sung and played by Africans in the Americas including slave songs, field hollers, and work songs, which give the blues its driving, persistent. rhythm.. However, all these forms are ultimately. derived from. slave songs. We should consider all these styles, including the ones developed from the blues, not as separate, but as part of a musical continuum.. It is like a single great song. with many parts and many voices. The music has evolved as the social, economic, and environmental conditions, and the taste of the community, has changed. As Clarence "G atemouth" Brown has stated, "there should be only one category of music in the music store: the music section" (Brown).. The music was both a conduit and an outlet for the. personal feelings of those performing the music is the social commentary. and listening to the music. A significant aspect of in the content, including veiled meaning, resistance,. complaint, revenge, satire and protest, which is inextricably intertwined with its function as history, and, therefore, its role as the glue, along with the church, which holds the community together.. It allowed a dialogue among members. is an oral history of African-American inherited. a tradition. of expressing. communities.. themselves. of the community, and it. Those performing the music have. to their communities. while veiling the. meaning from hostile whites, such as plantation bosses, work gang bosses, penitentiary guards, and racists.. The music helped African people recreate. their communities. in. the New World. As John Miller Chernoff writes in reference to African communities: " music serves as one of the important mediators between a person's activity and his community". (Chernoff 35). This means it is a way for individuals to describe their lives. and thereby relate to other members of their communities.. In short, the blues is a way. for individuals to share their lives with each other; to commiserate and to celebrate each other's lives.. 138. Most importantly,. with each other;. the music has helped African-.

(19) 0 CO. Americans. recreate. communities. , to survive,. and to thrive. in the. z 0. Americas.. Works Cited Baraka, Amiri [LeRoi Jones] . Blues People: Negro Music in White. 1963. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Broonzy, Big Bill. "Black, Brown And White ." Rec. 2 March 1947. The Land Where The Blues Began. Rounder Select, 2002. ---, Big Bill. Lyrics. Liner notes by Alan Lomax, excerpted. from The Land Where The Blues. Began. 1993. New York: The New Press , 2002. The Land Where The Blues Began. Rounder Select, 2002. ---, Big Bill, Memphis Slim, & Sonny Boy Williamson. Conversation Continues #2 . Blues In The Mississippi Night. Rec. 2 March 1947. Rounder Select , 2003. Brown, Clarence "Gatemouth." Personal interview. 17 Dec . 2003. Chernoff, John Miller. African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. 1979. Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1981. Fisher, Miles Mark. Negro Slave Songs in the United States . 1953. New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1990. "G umbo - Jazz." PBS VIDEOdatabase of America's History and Culture . 7 Feb. 2005. <http://pbsvideodb.pbs.orgiprograms/all. _chapters.asp?item_id=23351>.. Handy, W. C. "St. Louis Blues ." Martin Scorsese Presents: The Blues (CD One) . Hip-0 Records, 2003. Herkovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. 1941. Boston: Beacon Press , 1990. Jackson, Bruce, ed. and coll. Wake up Dead Man: Hard Labor. 1972. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1999. Johnson, Robert. "Sweet Home Chicago." The Complete Recordings. (CD One). Rec. 23 Nov .. 1936. SME Records, 1990. Lomax, Alan. The Land Where The Blues Began. 1993. New York: The New Press , 2002. Mezzrow, Mezz, and Bernard Wolfe. Really the Blues. 1946. New York: Citadel Press , 2001. Mintz, Sidney W. Introduction.. The Muth of the Negro Past. By Melville J Herkovits . 1941.. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. ix-xxi. Nketia, J. H. Kwabena. The Music of Africa . New York: W. W. Norton & Company , 1974. Oakley, Giles. The Devil's Music: A History of the Blues . 2"d ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.. blues,. protest,. African,. American. 139.

(20) AA. 31':1. Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues. 1981. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.. )1). 140. in. the Antebellum. South.. 1978..

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