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French-American Center Newsletter

TheBlues

The word 'blue' has been associated to the idea of sadness and melancholia since the seventeenth century.

When African and European music was first mixed together the slaves sang songs about their difficult lives and the way they were suffering and these sad songs became known as the 'blues'.

The slaves working in the fields used to express their pain and suffering through various chants and cries, the field holler for example. This was the beginning of the Blues tradition. As times grew harder and more cruel for slaves and also for freed slaves in industrial areas certain songs would become familiar and passed on from one group of afro-Americans to another.

The bango was the traditional instrument to accompany Blues style music. Following the civil war the Blues started to be recognised as the music that represented the mixture of African rythms brought over by the Slaves, the field holler, rythmic church music and als celebratory dance tunes which were called Jump ups.

Jump ups were tunes that were accompanied by a guitar and which consisted of a line which would be sung and then echoed by the guitar. This was called 'call and response';

Gospel music developped from the Black's charismatic and very identifiable way of praying together. African slaves had identified in a strong emotional manner to christianity and it's tales of slavery and freedom. The complex African rythms and a different way of worshipping planted the seed for Gospel which was an ideal way for slaves to express themselves, as churchgoing was tolerated.

Blues music evolved out of situations, the southern prisons with their work gangs and death row, the laments of poor people whose only outlet was music. Blues songs tell a tale of suffering. Later the sufferng of love, a much more universal issue, was to be expressed through the Blues

Blues music became more widely popular in the 1920's, Mamie Smith recorded the first vocam blues song 'Crazy Blues' in 1920. Meanwhile the Jazz era had begun, another shoot off from the Blues tradition. The huge popularity of Jazz helped Blues singers to obtain recording contracts and therefore popularised further the style.

During the first world war although the American army was segregated and blacks and whites were separate, northern whites mixed with southerners and learnt the Blues. They brought their new craze home with them after the war and Blues music became all the rage throughout the States. Records by Billie Holiday, sold in the millions in the 1930's.

In the 1990,s and 1930,s many blacks moved North and the blues then started to be played by big Jazz bands. During the late 1940s peple like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Elmore James , played the blues, with elecric guitars, bass guitar and harmonica, and began making national hits with their songs. Today the Blues still influence a large part of the popular music we listen to.

• Click here for a great site on Blues music
• Click on this link for a great article on Blues history
• Click on this link for all the information on black history you could ever need.

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