to be blue is to sing the blues

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- To be blue is to sing the bluesPosted on September 26th, 2011

Abstract:

The article aims at gathering some of the statements and arguments in the over debated question on the

balance of the European and African cultural elements in the blues. It finds that the different positions in

the debate bear a remarkable resemblance to two theoretical schools in the cultural anthropology, namely

the cultural evolutionist approach and the contextual approach (cultural ecology). A number of

explanations are put forth why the debate persists. The author is not optimistic as to the probability of a

substantial progress in the debate, unless emphasis in research shifts towards a more inclusive

perspective instead of the dominant fragmentary view. In particular, the need is felt for more comparative

studies which would offer elements against which the findings related to the blues could be articulated.This leads the author in the margin to the inevitable question why only the vernacular bluesy African

American music has succeeded in influencing western popular music but not other vernacular bluesy

genres as tango or fado.

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Is it the blues in life which has given or gives rise to the blues in music?

A simple question, which I believe most of us including myself will spontaneously affirm. And, yet, it

deserves a closer inspection. If at the end of reading this article you agree with me that a simple affirmation

is probably a bit too simplistic, then I consider my mission as accomplished. I will have succeeded in

sharing with you the flavor of some of the many questions I have been struggling with lately as it were from

can to cant. But beware, before reading any further, there are more questions than answers. Dont blame

it on me when you are left more puzzled at the end than what you are now.

My original intention of the article was to shortly describe the magnificence of the joyous events that took

place in the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century on the Place de Ngres, in New

Orleans, a place commonly known as the Congo Square. Slaves gathered there on Sunday not only to

sing and dance in their style, but also to organize a market for goods they were allowed to sell. The CongoSquare was on Sundays bubbling over with life, contrasting sharply with the more restrained activities on

the Sabbatical day on the northern plantations of Virginia and Carolina. In a later article, I intend to come

back on the Congo Square which even today inspires artists not only in America (see the Congo Square

theatre in Chicago), but all over the world (Congo Square is e.g. also as a company formed in the winter

of 2002 to promote jazz and blues in India).

F.W. Evans has very recently published the results of her research during more than 15 years on the

Congo Square. On the cover of the book I read comments as : The bloodlines of all important modern

American music can be traced to Congo Square, and the Congo Square is iconic in African American

history. The music and the dance of the gathering place transformed the art forms of this country. I can

subscribe to the importance of the magnificent work that F.W. Evans has accomplished to give us more

insight in this major cultural monument in American cultural history. However, we need to put the Congo

MyBlues

The way I feel about blues

be blue is to sing the blues | MyBlues http://www.myblues.eu/blog/?p=1517

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Square in a broader perspective to comprehend and evaluate its full significance. It brings us ultimately to

the question of and how the forced migration of 0.5 million Africans has influenced American music. If we

accept that blues and its immediate relative, jazz, has influenced modern musical history and there are

arguments enough to support this assertion then how and to which extent can we trace back the blues to

its slaves antecedents? Are the bloodlines completely traceable or has blood been altered significantly

during its lines of genealogy?

I believe that we should in the first place be clear that there is no generally agreed definition of blues music.

From a musical point of view, the genre can be described in terms of its emphasis on (poly-) rhythm,percussion, anti-phony, polyphony, But as soon as such a definition is given, examples can be put forth

of songs which do not fit the general criteria. Since I am a layman on this domain, I will limit myself here to

referring to the Encyclopedia of the Blues edited by Komara (2006: 105-110) which contains further

references. It is also illustrative to look at the many attempts that have been made to pigeonhole the

various past and actual styles in the blues.

In cultural-historical terms the matter is not easier, on the contrary. It would be limitative to study the blues

in terms of a single, linear historical line that starts with slavery up to the first documented observations of

blues by Jelly Roll Morton, Charles Peabody, Ma Rainey or W.C. Handy. The fact that the debate on this

line is heavily burdened with ideological positions doesnt make it any simpler. It is a small step from

raising questions about the degree of purity of the African element in the historical blood line of blues to

getting involved in a fierce political and emotional debate about ethnic issues. All cultural dimensions are in

fine linked to their social-economic and political context, including music, but there are only few musical

genres that are so closely linked to their social context than blues, and that are so much susceptible to

creating a vigorous discussion. The comparison is probably a bit unfortunate, but I feel that emotions in the

discussion on the nature and origin of blues are often as fierce as when fans of different football teams

meet. Dont get me wrong: this debate is inspiring. It is also fully comprehensible since at the end of the

day the arguments that are put forth by the parties are related to their self-definition as member of a

particular social group. Discussing the blues is discussing about ones soul as it is related to the group to

which one belongs. It is also a very democratic debate in which all social strata can participate: from the

academic to the musician, from the well to do business man to the man or women who has to fight each

day to make ends meet. Emotional arguments are often as valid as empirical evidence, which at the end of

the day need a theoretical frame to gain meaning.

I do not want to take a position in this debate in what follows, only to understand and to position it in a

larger context. It was for me refreshing to realize that the roots debate can be brought down, in general

terms, to two different approaches that also exist in the cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology is a

branch of anthropology i.e. study of humanity that focuses on the study of cultural variation in societies

and that collects data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities.

One such an approach posits that human beings share a set of characteristics and modes of thinking that


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go beyond, that transcend individual cultures. It attempts to describe and to explain long-term changes in

human ways of life. The term cultural evolution is used for specifying a focus on long-term changes not in

properties of a social group as such (e.g., its sheer size or location), but in the way of life the

characteristic artifacts, behaviors, and ideas ofthe group. This theory which primarily centers on

continuity, on what unites the present with the past is called the cultural evolutionist approach.

In another approach, denominated as cultural ecology, the cultural change is seen as the result of adaptive

processes in response to the specific context and characteristics of the local environment at a particular

point in time. The cultural ecology will more than the evolutionist approach focus on the correlation between

a particular environment and the culture which it creates. Cultural ecology emphasizes that the specific

characteristic of a environment (region or time period) plays a significant role in shaping the culture of its

population. It stresses the contextual element of cultural evolution.

With some simplification one could compare those approaches to the nature versus nurture debate which

is one of the oldest issues in psychology: what is the relative contribution of genetic inheritance versus

environmental factors to human development?

With this distinction in mind I have collected a limited sample of statements on the history of blues and

black music that come from different sources, going from academic studies to forum discussions on the

Web. I then labeled each relevant statement whether it expressed an evolutionist or a cultural ecological

approach. A number of statements, a minority, steered a middle course. Under here, I give a short overview

of the statements. Sometimes they are literally quoted (without referring however to the author), sometimes

textual adaptations have been applied to make them more comprehensible and readable within the present

context.

The cultural evolutionist approach

- The history of the American Negro is the history of the strife and the longing to attain self-conscious

manhood, to merge his double self (an American and a Negro) into a truer and better self. This dual identity

is a dominant theme in the Afro-American experience, which is reflected in his politics, religion and his

music.

- It is the African resistance to total acculturation that produced a hybrid culture known as African-

American. By accepting certain attributes of the masters culture which were essential to their survival or

congenial to their past learning, and clinging to those aspects of the African culture to which they found no

satisfactory substitute, the Africans cut a niche for themselves in a predominantly white society.

- The lives of all black people in America have been fundamentally shaped by the racial experience ofslavery; the memory of enforced servitude in the past has molded attitudes and feelings in the present and

has conditioned the black Americans stance in the world. Since the end of slavery, the black

communities have been searching for their identities in relation to white culture, in relation to


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slaves. The simple fact is, if slavery had not existed in the 16th and 17th century, the music we call the

blues would not exist today. I cant dismiss the influences that European music, especially Celtic music,

had in creating this music we call the blues. Theres no doubt that the Celtic musical scale and European

instruments played a big part in developing what became blues music, but the heart of the blues will

always be African.

- Afro-American music, though re-defined to reflect the realities of the American environment, retains

essential African elements till date. These core African elements like rhythm, blue note, dance orientation

and a whole gamut of performance practices buttress the point that Negro music making in the USA has

an essentially African core. One can safely advocate that Afro-American music is to be seen as the

continuation of the African tradition in the Diaspora.

- The African tradition is still alive in the Mississippi hills. The closest to the original African sound can still

be heard in the fife and drum bands that play in that area.

- Certainly the blues, like jazz, is an amalgamation of many cultural and ethnic influences. Nonetheless, it

needs to be stressed that at least during most of its existence as a living and evolving musical form the

blues has represented a Black voice. Like so-called Black English, that voice is infinitely varied,

and contains multitudes, but there is something deeply and vitally African-American about the identity it

assumes.

- The blues have absorbed influences and voices from diverse sources and influences; yet blues have

established and retained a particularethnic for want of a better term voice/identity for which they

are highly valued.

- The blues came from Africa, not from some cotton field in the Mississippi Delta.

- The blues had a baby and they named it Rock and Roll, because the blues came from African soul.

- It is at least arguable that, as some may state, there was no blues movement, as such, in the 20s and

30s. There certainly was, however, an African-American vernacular music movement (for want of a better

term). It covered the gamut from unrecorded folk music (work songs, field hollers, etc.) through hymns

and religious songs, acoustic blues, classic blues, all the way to jazz, pop, and beyond. The observation

that Robert Johnson sang pop tunes is beside the point; his voice was a Black voice, and thus he was

a part of this movement no matter what he sang. And certainly his recordings whether he himself

labeled them as blues, or whether that name was given to them by the record company represented a

Black voice, strongly and eloquently.

- Musicologists seem to agree that the twelve-bar form basically represents an individualization of the

call-and-response. The individual serves as both caller and respondent, in other words.

- There is strong evidence that slaves held their very own clandestine services, away from the eyes of white

overseers. These were strongly Africanist in both form and content, even as (over time) they

incorporated more and more elements of Christian theology.

- Their music was (and is) African-American in its essence ; it did (and does) retain strong core African

elements in both its melodic/rhythmic forms and the way(s) in which it manifested in performance; and it

did (and does) represent a voice of resistance (although not necessarily political) and cultural/historical


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identity/pride.

- What seems to be happening as the music evolves and the old blues masters fade from the scene is that

a revisionist approach to the roots of the music is emerging. Influences that previously played only a

contributory part in a musical pot-pourri are now apparently sufficiently important to, if not deny authorship

of the music to African-Americans, then severely denigrate their contribution. Justifying such an approach

requires harder evidence than what is available now.

- Many examples from slave narratives, from interviews with former slaves, from the writings of white

observers who attempted to document the slave culture in its natural habitat show how African cultural

practices, including discourse styles and the spiritual/social mores that they represented, were retained and

adapted to life and struggle in antebellum African-American society. Theorists have shown how these

elements of the oral tradition were adapted, and continue to be utilized by poets, novelists, and essayists

writing in the African-American literary tradition.

- While the blues is certainly grounded in a broader constituency today, saying that the African-American

fabric so basic to its origin and essence is irrelevant now is not only ignorance, but sometimes a form of

attempted theft. It would be hypocritical to say whites arent entitled to love, advocate or play the blues, Im

just saying that those upon whose backs the music was built deserve to have their contribution recognized

and acknowledged as a lasting basic of the music and not be consigned to ancient history or academia.

- I dont believe Black American music adopts the tonality or tuning structures of first generation white

European emigrants; there is too much proof to the contrary.

- It is always interesting that when one debates the origins of the blues one always ends up looking at

scales and harmonies. Thats such a European way of looking at the music! I have always found the link to

African music to be in the rhythm and the lackof conventional Western harmony. Harmony as we

understand it chord progressions is a very unusual thing by world music standards. Most cultures,

including most African cultures, tend to just stick on the I. With blues, this is the clearest link to Africa.

Listen to such widely different blues singers like Charley Patton, Sonny Terry and Blind Willie McTell. You

can sing the melody and keep full harmony without ever changing chords. Now thats African.

The contextual approach (cultural ecology)

- There is doubtless a connection between West African music and the blues, but it gets overstated and

the impact of the folk and religious music of the British Isles is understated, and still more so the

creative achievements of the first blues men and women.


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- As Christianity was forced upon the slaves, European, mostly Celtic hymns became assimilated into

the music that was becoming the blues. Celtic scales are almost the same notation as what evolved into

the blues scale. All of these ingredients began to shape what we call the blues today.

- Nothing proves that the blues came from Africa. Black people came from Africa, and they brought

their music along with it, but after several hundred years, that music evolved, taking various forms at

different times, blues being just one permutation, and a late development at that. The blues certainly would

not have happened without blacks and the tradition of African music, but neither would it have happened

without white people and European musical influences.

- I would never argue that blues could exist without black people, or African influence, but that is not the

same thing as saying the blues came from Africa.

- I think that trying to reduce a modern, innovative art form created (in part) by black people who had lived

in this country for 300 years, to a vestige of tribal music that blues practitioners were unfamiliar with (even if

they retained many aspects of it) is undermining their contribution.

- Blues is American music, like ragtime, country, R&B, rock and roll, rap, etc

- I would not deny that blues is a black or African-American music, but I think that to say it came from

Africa is misleading.

- It is still unclear how much blues is a folk music or a folk adaptation of popular music.

- There was no blues movement during the 20s and early 30s. There were songsters who were as likely to

play ragtime songs, gospel songs, and ballads as blues. We also have to remember that blues was

primarily dance music, and the connotation that the word has now was not necessarily the same as it was

before.

- I dont think that blues or anything that the songsters were doing in the 20s and 30s was self-consciously

African or black. I think that a lot of the music is marked by black characteristics, but of course, there are

also recordings where we cant tell if the musician is white or black, which is a telling reminder of the

musical climate of the time.

- Blues is a relatively modern form of music with hazy origins that has as much western influence as

African influence (and I dont just mean European influence; I mean that the blacks who helped createblues were as African-American as the blacks who created jazz, although there are definitely some cultural

and geographical differences). The blacks who created blues were most likely playing ragtime pieces before

they were playing blues, and in many cases they learned blues from records (pop records, no less) as

much as they did around the plantations.

- Certainly the music in the 20s and 30s was called the blues by then; but it does, indeed, seem very

questionable (to say the least) whether Patton, House, Johnson, et al. called themselves blues singers or

bluesmen on a regular basis.

- Segregated slaves were often in close contact with whites as part of their daily work. They cleaned the

masters house, they made his bed and worked in his kitchen, they nursed his babies. They served as

waitstaff for balls, parties, and, no doubt, other occasions where music was played (whether that be folk

music in the Anglo-Celtic tradition, or European classical music, or pop music of the time). And, let us not


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forget, the initiative to convert slaves to Christianity began very early on which, of course, was an

extremely significant element in the cross-cultural exchange.

- Southern segregation did not mean that people werent physically proximate to one another. White and

Black areas/neighborhoods/communities were often adjacent to one another; people saw, heard, and

experienced at least some aspects of each others cultures on a daily basis, even if they technically werent

allowed to interact as equals (or even at all). Sociologists have long noted that so-called lower-class

people usually know a lot more about the lives, culture, and ways of their upper-class counterparts, than

vice versa. And, the cross-cultural exchange went both ways.

- The 12-bar form is an interesting question: there seems to be a fair amount of evidence in support of the

hypothesis that the 12-bar became standardized only in the 20th century. Transcriptions of African

American songs from the 19th century look quite a lot like blues, except for the fact that there is no clear

12-bar form, and no standardized repetition of the first line before the response. There is even a possibility

that the standardization of the 12-bar form came from Tin Pan Alley.

- Vaudeville-style music and its cousins in traveling tent shows, medicine shows, minstrel revues, etc.-

dates back a lot farther. Maybe there is an under-recognized influence here? And maybe, as well, it

might account for at least some of the similarities across regions?

- We know that on at least some plantations, slave minstrels entertained whites at parties meaning,

obviously, that they had learned to make music that sounded good to European ears. Maybe they were

expressly trained in this; maybe, as savvy and expert musicians, they picked up on these foreign styles on

their own. But well before Emancipation, European musical influences had worked their way into the

music of African-born (and the descendants of African-born) slaves in the Southern U.S.

- As far as resisting the influence of Christianity is concerned, my understanding is that most African

religions are very open-minded in terms of dogma: they are very oecumenical in their outlook, in other

words, they have historically adapted ideas, beliefs, even actual deities from other religions which they have

come into contact with.

- I dont think the blues does or has ever sounded particularly African; what does sound African are

some (not all) of the indigenous music forms of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the West Indian (including

coastal South and Central American) nations. Compared to the Black Puerto Rican, Cuban and Haitian

music, the blues does not sound the least bit African.

- Why do all the white people want to imagine they hear African sounds in the Blues? The blues was

made in America by (African) Americans in America. It seems like the African slaves were cut off from

the African cultural influences much more so than were the African slaves in the nations in and peripheral

to the Caribbean. The only thing African about the blues is the African descent of those who originated the


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blues.

- The decade of 1880 also saw Blacks take on a greater role in minstrelsy, but not in all regions. Blacks

started to play roles which were previously handled by whites in black-face. This would show both

command and acclimatization of the idiom from a performance standpoint.

- The two methods of making music African and Scotch-Irish were in a stylistic sympathy. This does not

mean that they were co-equal, but only that simplistic dichotomies as European/African do not really work.

They fail to give credit to the white influences on expression and global aesthetic, and they reduce the

African American influence to something of a noble savagery, ignoring the use of harmony and more

sophisticated techniques derived from more formal kinds of training.

- Black music has always been marked by the idea of an imaginaryAfrica, a reference which helped

white critics to acknowledge the musical inventiveness of slaves by the mid-19th century without disturbing

racial prejudices too much.

- What makes everyone believe that a socially, physically, and mentally oppressed community was able, oreven wished to, keep and develop a concealed, distinctive musical genre, or type of singing? This is pure

projection of the colonialist ideology on African-Americans, as if they were an independent and united

nation with its own codes, language, and religion, likely to ignore and dodge the overwhelming cultural

oppression. What was left of, or had evolved from African traditions for centuries, was not allowed to

become part of a mode of expression, or even considered as of any aesthetic value by African-Americans

themselves, until the new, fashionable, urban trend called blues in piano rolls and early sheet music

spread all over the rural South at the beginning of the 20th century, giving the music some fresh air and

granting local entertainers the right and encouragement to singem the way they felt.

Do we not need to consider the birth of the blues as a historical event?

- It makes sense that as the slaves got their names from the slave masters and that they carried the slave

owners blood, their religion and their customs, that they should have adopted and adapted their music.

- Technological progress and mixing of cultural groups tend to be the main catalysts in the birth, cultivation

and evolution of genres.

- New music and new cultural dialogues are made within the context and the possibilities provided by

existing social relations, technological means and aesthetic conventions.

- Social influences are crucial to the blues: most blues singers were exposed to the existing work songs

and religious expression early in life and were able to adapt some of the melodic character, subject matter,

emotional intensity, and spiritual depth to the developing of the blues. There are thus important

antecedents to the blues that bypass the influence of African culture.

- Although many academics agree that the blues may hold an ancient oral tradition, it is also true that the

majority of its content was a personal and communal response to the changing patterns of repression and

powerlessness among the poorest segments of the South Eastern black society rather than a

continuation of an established historical tradition.

- Blues is a form of musical expression, rather than a long historical tradition. The genre is a perfect

receptacle for external influences.


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- Musical innovations are the result of commercial opportunities for individual genius, entrepreneurs who

recognize the new demands and act to meet them.

- The publishing of the blues genre was a process of consolidation, with definitions of the style beginning to

appear, and given a name by the appearance of published tunes bearing the word blues in their titles.

- It can be said that the blues was born from geographical factors (the African Diaspora and slave trade,

southern labor), nurtured and developed within the afflictions of an oppressive society and

economic volatility, and was eventually stabilized by the consolidation of its politics.

- Ties with Africa persisted in the memories of slaves who had been born in the British colonies, and the

memories they handed down to their children. However, the Europeanization of the mainland slaves

was irreversible.

- Just as the need for communication weakened the position of African languages, so in music and dancing

European elements crept in, little by little. Except in isolated communities of runaway slaves, the process

of acculturation was unavoidable.

- Things in the blues had come from the tribal musicians (in W. Africa) of the old kingdoms, but as a style

the blues represented something else. It was essentially a new kind of song that had begun with the

new life in the American South.

The middle approach

- The term blues is probably way too limiting to describe/invoke the rich and varied (and still

living/evolving) musical heritage. Perhaps, ultimately, African-American Diasporan music is closer to the

right term.

- It is generally acknowledged that the music was at heart an integral part of African American culture. This

seems to be challenged now without as far as I can see any real supporting evidence. I can understand

why people would like the Blues to be called American music but I dont understand why they would want

to diminish the influence of its African American creators. Surely the two are not mutually

incompatible?

- Its not an either/or discussion. One can be both rootsy and also be new or even iconoclastic in

ones own innovations. One can tweak, elaborate on, even mock whats gone before as a tribute to it, not indisrespect of it. Indeed, its the highest sign of respect to plant ones own individual identity on something

that a great master has done before. These tweakings / elaborations carry with them important essences of

the original inspiration, but the end product is something new and different.


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- The dichotomy between being a purist and being an innovator is a western concept, and has

done great harm to a lot of things, the blues being only one. The very idea that a canon or a repertory

exists in some kind of historic isolation, to be venerated and reproduced note-for-note or word-for-word, is

the antithesis of the African notion of honoring the ones whove gone before by improvising on their

creations and creating them anew.

- To succeed, music must be an invocation of life in the present tense, an emotional (and often physical)

call to action, not an artifact. Roots are strong only when they nurture something that is alive and

growing.

- Cause and effect are by now buried that it is hard to determine how much effect whites had on blacks.

- I dont agree that African music had little or no influence on the blues. It had a huge impact. But I also

disagree that European music had little influence on the blues and that its only marginal. Blues simply

wouldnt exist without the contribution of white music, just as Bluegrass wouldnt exist without the

contribution of black music.

- Blues emerged from a melting pot where the predominant ingredient derived from Africa but was

augmented by many different cultural influences.

What can we conclude?

As I stated above, I do not want to take a position in this discussion in the present article which only aim it

is to try to comprehend and to posit the arguments. I will thus phrase my conclusions in the form of raising

another question: why does this debate between what I called the evolutionist and contextual approach

continue so intensely (in an explicit and an implicit way)?

The reasons are multiple and are in itself an interesting topic for a long exchange of views. There are three

grounds though that seem to me of major importance: (1) the definition of the blues, (2) the quality and

quantity of the available historical material and (3) the way this material is approached.

1. Definition of the blues

One could write a book collecting and analyzing the many definitions of the blues. The very ambiguity of the

definition is debit to the continuing debate on the origins and development of the musical genre. If there is

no agreement on what we are talking about (not from a musical perspective, nor from a cultural

perspective), then there is also no way of reconciling the positions. If it is questioned whether or not the key

players on the blues scene in the 20s and 30s defined themselves as blues artists or not, Im completely

lost. If I notice that today artists are booked in blues festivals but do not consider themselves as blues

performers, there is manifestly a problem of denomination.

I am afraid though that the efforts for a better mapping out of the genre will also end up in the same

discussion as outlined above. What anyone sees as the blues is as culturally determined as the way that

he sees its historical evolution. It goes without explanation that ethnic elements will sneak into what is seen

as blues or not, especially when the topic is raised of what is considered as authentic or not.

Perhaps, I would suggest, it is not necessarily appropriate to come up with too strict a definition, since, after

all, we would never succeed in doing justice to the extremely rich variation in musical expressions which

receive the blues label. The possibility to bring forth most individual variation on basically simple chords is


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by the way one of the characteristics of the blues. Too strong an attempts at categorizing would moreover

mislead us just the same way as when the blues was first being codified on sheet music and then on wax.

Putting in pigeonholes complex phenomena relaxes the mind and leads us to the false feeling that we have

a good overview of the situation, but leads even more to a withering of the infinite richness of reality.

2. The quality and quantity of the material.

The further we go back in time, the more rare the material on which suppositions and theories need to be

based. From what I have understood so far, the documents which are available and relevant for what

concerns us here are relatively scarce for the period before the Emancipation, and especially before 1800.

This is a crucial period when the first intercultural exchanges began. We can only conjecture as far as the

sounds are concerned, of course, and even if our speculations seem safe in view of some incidental

detailed documents at our disposal, the first obligation is to remain critical about the sources and to read

them in full abstraction from our own historical biased views. Let us also not forget that people take notice

in the first place of what attracts their attention, of what seems odd and weird. Sometimes, the absence of

historical observations and documents sounds harder than the presence of them. Moreover, the available

documentation needs to be interpreted in its past social context, with the bulk of the material being

produced by the ruling white. The ideological stand of the observer was no less important. An example:

from a religious point of view, dancing was for instance seen as sinful and was likely to be either ignored or

to be the subject of fierce condemnations. Abolitionists would also prefer not to mention slaves dancing as

this was seen as in contradiction with the image of the suffering slave; slaveholders, on the contrary liked to

promote the image of the dancing slave as it was the ultimate confirmation that slaves were a happy bunch.

True, a rich source of documentation comes from the Federal Writers Project (FWP), organized within the

framework of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program set up by president

Roosevelt in the 30s. Between 1936 to 1938, more than 2.300 former slaves from across the American

South were interviewed by writers and journalists. These former slaves of whom most were born in the last

years of the slave regime or during the Civil War, provided first-hand accounts of their experiences on

plantations, in cities, and on small farms. Without any doubt, their narratives constitute an extremely

important resource for understanding the lives of the slaves and the texture of their daily life, including

music. But, also with this source, do I need to repeat it, extreme prudence is at the order of the day.

What goes for the documentation on the American context bears even stronger validity for the African

sources. The acknowledgement that there was a cultural diversity in the background of the hundreds of

thousands of slaves that were brought to the colonies in the north some directly from (West) Africa, some

indirectly through the West Indies is already a first prerequisite for a serious analysis.

3. The approach of the material

More than the ambiguity in the definition of the subject and more than the absence of (researched) material


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and documentation of sufficient quality, the nature of the approach to the material and available data is for

me a key explaining factor for the persistence of what often seems an endless discussion. Very often the

assumptions (academic and non-academic) are based on fragmentary data or a personal interpretation of

sonic resemblances which are extrapolated at a higher, general level. Observations made for a particular

population or time period lead far too often to non-justified generalizations about larger populations or time

periods.

By way of illustration: one could be tempted to interpret the music of Otha Turner or from Sid Hemphill, as a

sign that the African tradition is still alive in the Mississippi Hills. Alan Lomax had understandably a keen

interest in this music when he recorded it in 1942 and later in 1959. In his article on Otha Turner in

Bluesnotes, May 2003, G. Johnson, states: Fife and drum bands have their roots firmly planted in African

music. Long traditions carried over by captured slaves, brought to American soil where their new owners

attempted to quell the sound, especially in the South. They kept the music alive in their memories and

passed them down through the generations.

The need for a nuance in this general (evolutionist) statement is obvious when, as fieldwork by a.o. David

Evan (1972) has shown that the fife and drum tradition is more widespread than the earliest research

demonstrated. It can be suggested that as early as the seventeenth century blacks may have picked up

the skills of fife or drum playing from the militia units in New England and the Middle Colonies, since in the

early decades slaves were compelled to undergo military training. The author continues stating that the

early accounts might indicate that black fife and drum bands were modeled on and did not differ

considerably from their white counter parts, qualifying it however by adding that there is a possible

influence of black music on the early military fife and drum bands.

Another illustration where falling in the trap of too quick a generalization is also very real is offered by the

discussion on the emergence of the Negro spirituals and more particularly the link between the AfricanAmerican hymns and their European counterparts (lined out hymn singing). Willie Ruff has unearthed that

some remote African American congregations in the Deep South and some white congregations in remote

churches of Appalachia sang hymns in Gaelic, and linked this back to an ancient call-and-response service

still intoned in Gaelic in the highlands of Scotland. After his initial findings, he extended the syncretism to

practices of some Native Americans pointing thus to a unique mix of Gaelic, African and American native

cultural elements.

However, is this complete story? Probably not: was it the English or the Gaelic tradition that impacted the

lined out hymn singing? As a friend suggested me recently on a forum: The evidence is not particularly

strong in the Gaelic direction. Lined out hymn singing wasnt even exclusively British in origin, as it can also

be found amongst the Amish from a German language tradition (its pretty doubtful the Amish hymn

singing had any important impact on the slaves).

These two examples show that an exclusive approach based on fragmentary data is particularly dangerous

and can lead to theories that start to live their own life especially in an era where information spreads so

quickly and so widely and that are at the end of the day taken for granted without examining their original

sources.

Especially in a field with so few definite and tangible data available, an inclusive approach is mandatory.

Each statement should be carefully weighed against as much data as possible coming particularly from

comparative research. The latter should not be limited to the sole African American population but could be

broadened to the total African Diaspora. There are examples of broad comparative studies. Roger Bastide


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has for instance studied African influences throughout the Americas. He found much stronger African

influences in Central America and the Caribbean than in the USA, with the exception of two main centers:

Sea Islands (Virginia coastal area) and the region around New Orleans.

The historical evolution of slavery in each county and country as it is expressed in a particular development

of social, economic and demographic variables seems to me crucial for an understanding of how black

music has evolved. Birth and death rates amongst the slavery population, for instance, have had a clear

impact on the need for bringing over new slaves from Africa and thus indirect on the persistence and

survival of African cultural idioms. These demographic data on its turn depended upon the type of

plantation and labor systems that were in place, etc.

But do we need to confine ourselves to just blues or black music? The findings related to the development

of blues and black music could be articulated against findings which result from global models including

other musical genres. One such a model worth considering still is the one founded by Victor Grauer and

Alan Lomax who developed the cantometrics method which attempts to relate regularities of musical style

(or musical organization) to social organization and also to historical factors. It establishes correlations

between easily observable style factors and elements of class stratification, gender relations and sexual

value systems. This method has been taken up again very recently by Armand Leroi, an evolutionary

biologist with the Imperial College in London. Leroi is testing the ability of computers to analyze sound in

view of creating a Cantometric description of traditional music from various cultures.

Another interesting path for investigation might be the comparison between the emergence of African

American blues and other bluesy genres as the tango in Argentinia, the fado of Portugal and the Greek

rebetica. As Mark A. Humprhey (1993) contended: Blues wasnt the only folk music to emerge in the

nineteenth century that spoke plainly of the pleasures and pains of a poor underclass. Tango, fado and

rebetico all grew from urban subcultures and voiced the taboo, sex, drink, drugs. They have each been

called the blues of their respective countries, in part for a quality of musical mournfulness, but more

importantly for their vivid descriptions of a life style that, by polite standards, was deemed scandalous.

These genres also stemmed from a blending of different working class cultures. Tango is said to have been

born out of a.o. African, Italian, French and Spanish influences. The Greek blues, Rebetico, developed

around ports and urban centres starting in the end of the 19th century and blossomed on the arrival of a

stream of immigrants pouring in from the Greek Isles and from Turkey. Its lyrics are most often melancholic

and deal with the hardship of uprooted people, the missed love ones and the dramas of the working mans

life. Fado is also characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor. One

theory on its emergence contends that the Fado came to Portugal, also a crossroad for cultures, by the

music of the Brazilian slaves.

If the vernacular musical genre that we label the blues and that emerged in the South of the United States


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has been able at the end of the day to catch the attention of the world and has influenced significantly

todays popular music in contrast to other local genres we inevitably have to ask if other than its intrinsic

qualities are relevant. I would suggest an affirmative answer. We cannot ignore the role that the United

States have played in the world politics and in the fostering of its culture and language all over the globe.

Already in the 1910s the dominant record companies emphasized music as a product for export and

started establishing branches all over the world. It was only with the start of World War I that they felt the

need to look for expanding the markets in the homeland as the European consumer had other things onhis mind. It was no coincidence that the race market was promoted just after World War I: it was a

much-needed commercial boost for falling sales abroad.

And, oh irony, it was the former motherland that taught the former colonists in the sixties that Muddy

Waters was not a lake in the USA but a precious jewel on the crown of their very own cultural legacy.

As a blues lover we have to be constantly aware to see the object of our love in a proper perspective and

to step out of what I might call a tunnel vision. This perspective can only make our love deeper. What

continues to make blues for me so special, next to its musical qualities, is its merger of the I and the

WE, the fusion between the artist and its audience. There is so little distance between performer and

listener. A friend, blues musician, once trusted me that he was constantly amazed how helpful blues

lovers are between each other as a world community. Isnt that special?

And for the musical qualities, let us remember the words of Victoria Spivey: To pay too much heed to

standardized blues tones and bars spoils the emotional impact inwardly for yourself. You must feel in

your heart most of all, not in your brains or in the interest of your pocket. Flat tones, whether they be hard

or soft, show the freedom in blues singing. You should never know when they come out of you. The heart

will tell the voice when.

To conclude, let me come back to my initial question: Is it the blues in life which has given or

gives rise to the blues in music? From my side, I feel better equipped now to answer it.

Hardin, www.cartoonstock.com

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