THE BLUES

It’s history and role in Afro-America

Khalid Razick

MHIS-221 | Prof. Brian Hogan

 The blues acts as a form of communication in the African American Community. It is an out-

let for them to express their communal feeling as black people, individuality, and connect with

the motherland of Africa. The blues draws on the deep cultural memory of the African people

and applies it to a contemporary context. Signifyin’; the African practice of saying one thing

while meaning an entirely different thing was passed down into blues music and lyrics.

Remanence of the trickster god Eshu survive in the form of Satan. Drum, dance and song all

being central to African life are transcended into the blues.

A multitude of its stylistic elements can be directly derived from the both the Ring Shout and

the Senegambian Fodet. It’s pentatonic melodic structure featuring “blue notes,” and melisma,

along with its robust vocal style. These traits boarded the Middle Passage and were the basis of

the Afro-American styles predating blues. In the slave hollers, work song, and spirituals which

informed the blues, the musical tradition of Africa is alive and well.

As we already know, black institutionalization and oppression are found in the heart and

soul of the blues. Another role of the blues is to address the current state of things, and the black

experience. Hundreds of years of racism has indefinitely molded this experience.

Additionally, being at a certain place in a specific time results in small changes that lead to a

butterfly affect. If the slaves weren’t banned to play drums because of the Stono Rebellion, then

Afro-American Vocal groups would have never taken off. If racial tension in the south never

caused the Great Migration, then the blues would have never made it to northern urban hubs and

contributed to future musical forms.

In summary, we will look at the uprooting of a people from their homeland, and observe how

their music is informed by the journey. How it is informed by cultural memory, and life

experiences.

If we take a look at world history retrospectively, we have come to learn about past and

present civilizations by not only written and archaeological accounts, but in addition to spoken

word tales and folksongs. For people within these communities, the music and stories were and
are continued to be passed down generationally, along with food, language, other traditions. This

creates what is known as cultural memory; a strong remembrance of ancestral life and bond to

the culture of one’s homeland. Throughout history, music has been a key component in

preserving cultural memory.

Take the documentation of history in Africa for example. As opposed to written history,

most of what we know of the various African cultures is based almost entirely on oral tradition.

The Griots; hereditary musicians tasked with keeping these traditions, preserve cultural memory

through playing songs and telling stories about everyday living.

African American Bluesmen were not so different from African Griots. The black

cultural experience was just as deeply rooted in the blues as it was in the music of the griots. The

bluesmen wrote songs about the everyday black experience, which was much darker than the

African experience. The blues was born in post-slavery world of Black institutionalization.

Amongst the challenges faced were racism, sharecropping, black codes, exclusionary voting

rights, Jim Crow laws, police violence, and mass incarceration. All of these issues along with

slavery became a part of black cultural memory through blues music. And for those who choose

to see the glass as half full, the blues embodied the freedom of freight trains headed North, and a

release from bondage and institutionalization.

The role of blues music during this time was to be the voice of the oppressed. The blues

was an outcry for social justice that is presented in the most innocent way. Music is beautiful and

precious, while not overtly political or religious. Because of its raw emotional power and dance,

the blues was able to attain commercial success amongst black and white audiences. Black

musicians were able to express their sorrows about troubled times both openly and signified. The

blues was both crucial as an expression for black folk, and as a call to white folk.

In White Society, the emotional quality in music and dance is repressed. White music

was more based around strict compositional rules as opposed to rhythm and improvisation. The

emotion and expressiveness that black music and dance brought to America was completely
foreign to White Americans. Being so original to white people is partly why the blues garnered

the attention that it did. The expressiveness of the blues also became an outlet for many women

to sing the blues and have very more successful careers then the men in blues. Both Ma’ Rainey

and Bessie Smith got their start singing the blues in vaudeville. Both women gained national

attention by using sexual lyrics in their songs. Here is a lyric from the Ma’ Rainey tune “Prove it

on me Blues:

“Went out last night with a crowd of my friends.

They must've been women,

'cause I don't like no men (Rainey).”

This is significant because 1928 was not a time when a woman, let alone a black woman

would come out as queer so openly. Ma’ Rainey was a pioneer in black, female, and LGBTQ

rights. The blues was an outlet for reinforcing and forming new cultural memory, expressing

oneself, and social change.

Next, we will examine the features that make the blues what it is. To do this we must first

go back to Africa. The blues, along with other forms of African American Music are derived

from The Ring Shout. The Ring Shout is an African religious ritual which combined dance,

drum, and song. Musical characteristics typical of the ring were the use of a robust timbre,

melisma, polyrhythm and call and response phrases. It was also "the main context in which

Africans recognized values com- mon to them-the values of ancestor worship and contact,

communica- tion and teaching through storytelling and trickster expressions, and of various other

symbolic devices. Those values were remarkable because, while of ancient African provenance,

they were fertile seed for the bloom of new forms" (Stuckey 1987, 16). When the first ships

made their way from Africa to America, the ring had spread its seed to all of the black styles that

informed blues.
 Slaves sung individual field hollers to communicate on the plantation without their

masters being aware. An important stylistic factor in these hollers is signifyin’ which is later

found in the blues. Signifying is a wordplay that uses one denotation while having another

connotation. The technique originated from the tale of the signifyin’ monkey. The monkey

insults the lion in a way that frames the elephant for saying those things in the first place. This

method of saying something while meaning another thing is a central part of black culture and is

found in lyrics from blues to hip hop. Signifyin’ can also be used in a musical sense. In call and

response figures, the response often signifies the call. This is the same when a horn

accompaniment follows a vocal phrase. The second piece of material is commenting on,

expanding on, or twisting the first. “Musical Signifyin(g) is troping: the transformation of

preexisting musical material by trifling with it, teasing it, or censuring it (Floyd - 8).” In an

improvisation one could be signifyin’ the melody, the previous soloist, an outside musical work,

or even themselves.

As a jazz trombone player, I often signify the blues in a jazz context. Many legendary

jazz players put the blues in everything, and it becomes a distinct part of their style. Take Lee

Morgan for example. Morgan is a player with great facility on the trumpet. There is no doubt that

the bop of Clifford Brown left a deep impact on his playing. He even pushes further post-bop

while playing with Wayne Shorter in his later days. But the blues is always so recognizable in his

playing, whether it’s a more trad. bop tune, or more hard bop.

This application can also go the opposite way. A very popular thing to do is impose

bebop over a blues. Take Charlie Parker who super imposed two-fives, bop scales, chromatic

enclosures, and approach notes all in a blues. The “bird blues” form, a bopified, version of the

standard blues form became the basis of many tunes such as Chi-Chi, Blues for Alice, and

Freight Trane. The possibilities for alteration are unlimited. Another technique is to superimpose

multi-tonal systems over the blues. The same year that John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps (1959)” was

recorded, he played as a sideman with Cannonball Adderly on the tune “Limehouse Blues
(1959).” In Coltrane’s solo you can hear impositions of a chromatic mediant based multi-tonic

system that is the framework for the tune “Giant Steps.” Signifying was important because it

allowed one idea to be juxtaposed with another. In Coltrane’s case in a musical sense, and in the

case of the black community in a verbal and cultural sense.

Slaves also sung collectively in what are referred to as work songs. The work songs

helped slaves cope with the boredom of their monotonous work, as well as make them more

efficient. The leader would sing a consequent phrase and the other slaves would sing an

antecedent phrase. This is an example of call and response. Other characteristics of work songs

were repetition, a robust sound, melisma moans, and blue notes. This format is actually the same

as gospel spirituals. The preacher starts a call and the congregation responds. The melodic and

rhythmic characteristics were the same as those from slave songs derived from the ring shout.

What was different from slave songs was the influence of European harmony. When black vocal

groups emerged in the 1860s, they used the melodic and rhythmic aspects from the ring in

conjunction with European harmony. Additionally, Christianity became the topic of singing in

the more religious spirituals, rather than the African Religions.

Blues music came out of the deep south after the civil war. It was the secular cousin of

the spiritual, although sometimes still containing religious themes. Instead of wishing to die and

go to paradise like the slaves, bluesmen and women hoped for amends in the current life. Blues

lyrics were based on situations that were personal to the musician or amongst the black

community. The blues form for was AAB typically over 12 bars. However, AAA and ABC were

both prevalent, as were 8 and 16 bar forms. The blues incorporated melodic elements seen in

previous ring derived music. These are “call and response figures, elisions, repeated short

phrases, falling and pendular thirds, timbral distortions, ululations, vocables, hums, moans, and

other devices [typical of music derived from the ring] (Floyd – 75).” The blues is harmonically

based off of three primary chords: tonic, subdominant, and dominant, and a swing rhythm is

employed.
 To be fully educated about the heritage of the blues, we must be aware of the culture and

history that informed it. A great deal of blues’s key characteristics come from the Senegambian

Fodet. There was a large population of Senegambians taken as slaves because of how close they

were to the slave factories in the West Savanah between the Senegal and Gambia rivers. This is a

description of the Senegambian Fodet given by Samuel A. Floyd jr, matching a few topics in the

last paragraph: It “(1) uses cyclical form, with phrases played or sung to an “alternated use of

tonic and secondary tonal centers,” (2) commonly has an A A B text structure, (3) makes use of a

vocal practice in which the song begins on a high pitch and “gradually moves to lower pitches at

the end (Floyd – 75).” In Senegambian music the early banjo and fiddle were the prominent

instruments used, as opposed to the guitar in blues music.

Life and culture in Africa very directly contribute to Blues Music. Eshu Elegbara, the

trickster god made his way through the middle passage and right in the blues. In African

American culture, Eshu was reincarnated into the devil. Bluesmen such as Robert Johnson were

obsessed with a concept called the crossroads. Here is a chorus from a Robert Johnson tune

titled, “Me and the devil blues.”

Early this morning

When you knocked upon my door

Early this morning ooh

When you knocked upon my door

And I said, "Hello Satan"

"I believe it's time to go. (Johnson)."

The Devil who has Eshu’s power to “make all things happen and multiply (Floyd - 73),” would

show himself to bluesmen and offer them incredible musical abilities in exchange for their souls.

This scene is called the crossroads, which other bluesmen such as Tommy Johnson and Peetie

Wheatstraw also explored. Wheatstraw even wrote a blues called, “Devil’s Son-In-Law.” The
crossroads is relevant to the blues not because of the devil, but because the remanence and

signifyin’ of Eshu in African American culture.

There is also a great obsession with trains in the blues tradition. Trains represent freedom

and mobility. Let’s Take a look at a train inspired blues called “The Midnight Special.”

“Recorded in 1934 by Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter at Angola Prison for John and

Alan Lomax, the song has been covered by a host of artists, notably John Fogerty’s Creedance

Clearwater Revival. The Midnight Special is said to be the name of a train that left Houston at

midnight, heading west, running past Sugarland prison farm, the train’s light becoming a symbol

for freedom for the inmates. The song also references the injustice of black men being

incarcerated for minor infractions (downatthecrossroads)”. Trains not only represented freedom

from the injustices of mass incarceration, but from Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes, Sharecropping,

and other forms of persecution that black people had to face during that time. When blacks

participated in the Great Migration for economic opportunities and a better standard of living,

they went North by hopping freight trains. This is what inspired the many blues and jazz songs

about trains.

The Blues originated in the 1860s from the Deep South, Midwest, New Orleans,

Memphis and St. Louis (Hogan - 3). This was just after the country had been politically and

regionally divided from the Civil War. Politically, Southern Democrats were able to pass the

3/5ths compromise, allowing slaves to count as 3/5ths of a vote. This gave the south an upper

hand in representation. Northern Republicans responded by making slavery illegal in the north

and encouraging other states to follow. This was also concerning for the south because its

regional economy depended entirely on slavery. This included slave trade as well as crops that

were picked by slaves, such as cotton, which was quite difficult to harvest. These political and

regional tensions are what directly caused the South to secede from the Union and form the

Confederacy. What followed was the bloodiest war in U.S. history, with “American casualties
higher than the American Revolution, World War War I, World War II, and Vietnam Combined

(Crash Course).”

After the war, 3.9 million slaves were freed, awaiting to be integrated into society. (wiki)

At the start of Reconstruction, things starting looking pretty good for African Americans.

The Freedman’s Bureau was established in 1865 to aid in southern reintegration.

“The Bureau provided food, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered legal

assistance. It also attempted to settle former slaves on land confiscated or abandoned during the

war (History).” Fiske University is one of the schools that was established during this time,

giving way to the Fiske Jubilee singers, a cornerstone acapella group in the Afro-American

Vocal tradition. The ensemble was of the first to perform slave spirituals for white audiences

across the country. As black music and education was progressing so was politics. African

Americans began to hold offices in the government.

Additionally, several key legislative acts were passed that took steps for the equality of

Black Americans. In 1866 the Civil Rights Act was passed, stating all persons born in U.S. have

equal rights regardless of race. The 14th amendment: defines citizenship, guarantees equal

protection and attempts to extend the Bill of Rights to all states. The Republican party fought for

these acts and black rights in hopes of gaining black votes in future elections. However, their

efforts took time and money, and they eventually gave up fighting. And despite legislation being

passed, the rights promised by these documents were not completely guaranteed until the next

century. We observe this with black institutionalization. Slavery still lives on even with the U.S.

legal system of 2021. The first evolution of this concept was sharecropping. Because freed slaves

had limited economic opportunities, White plantation owners hired them to do labor in exchange

for a share of the harvest, and sometimes a small amount of money. Sharecropping was

essentially legal slavery, abusing a class of people who are locked in an economic situation.

Speaking of putting a spin on slavery, the reintroduction of laws controlling the behavior

of black people had made a return. Since 1712 slave codes were presented control slaves and set
guidelines for their conduct. Black Codes with precisely the same intent were instituted during

Reconstruction, just changing the word “Slave” to “Negro.” “Section 2. Be it further

enacted, that all freedmen, free Negroes, and mulattoes in this state over the age of eighteen

years found on the second Monday in January 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or

business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together either in the day or nighttime, and

all white persons so assembling with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes, or usually associating

with freedmen, free Negroes, or mulattoes on terms of equality, or living in adultery or

fornication with a freedwoman, free Negro, or mulatto, shall be deemed vagrants; and, on

conviction thereof, shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding, in the case of a freedman, free

Negro, or mulatto, 150, and a white man, $200, and imprisoned at the discretion of the court, the

free Negro not exceeding ten days, and the white man not exceeding six months….(Lumen).”

With the first part of this quote, if a black person were to be found in public not possessing

papers showing proof of employment, they would face consequences. While black codes give

African Americans some rights such as litigation and marriage, it was mainly an evolution of

slave codes as we have seen above.

If Black Codes were not enough, the next level of black institutionalization was Jim

Crow Laws. Jim Crow Laws legalized racial segregation, establishing separate facilities for

colored fold. These include schools, local businesses, water fountains, bathrooms, etc…

Although the Civil Rights Act and 14th Amendment guaranteed equal rights regardless of race,

Jim Crow Laws were upheld by the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v.

Ferguson.

In 1865, the Ku Klux Klan was founded in the south. A terrorist organization rooted in

white supremacy, the Klan was responsible for many hate acts against minorities and their white

advocates. It is possible that their hate was fueled by black progress during Reconstruction. First

enslaved and deemed subordinate by the white man, the black man gained freedom and began to

climb the societal ladder. From owning land to even having political offices, the radical right was
shook. Many of them worried that the newly freed blacks would compete with them for jobs.

Unfortunately, black hate was not only confined to the clan. In 1865, working-class Irish

initiated the “Draft Riots,” a five-day riot in Manhattan protesting the allowance of wealthy men

to buy out of the draft. “A crowd of rioters in Clarkson Street . . . met an inoffensive colored man

returning from a bakery with a loaf of bread under his arm,” states an 1863 police report about

the Draft Riots. They instantly set upon and beat him, and after nearly killing him, hung him to a

lamp-post. His body was left suspended for several hours. A fire was made underneath him, and

he was literally roasted as he hung, the mob reveling in their demonic act (wordpress).”

Because of these frequent acts of persecution as well as biased local laws, fewer blacks

voted in the election. As a result, the Democrats were able to take the south back and gain

representation in Washington. Then in 1873, the U.S. fell into an economic depression that

discouraged Northern Republicans from fighting for Black people all together. To secure his

victory in the election of 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes had to remove troops from the

south. Because of this turmoil, Reconstruction was over. The violence and mistreatment that

Black folks had experienced in small rural towns had made many go to the big cities, taking their

music with them. This urbanization was known as the Great Migration.

The Great Migration is what transported the blues out of the deep south to the country’s

urban hubs such as Chicago, Kansas City, and New York City. These big cities are where the

blues would further evolve and create new styles of music. If blues music had not been present in

NYC following World War I, Big Band Music may have not been the same. The blues always

seems to be in the heart of every African American musical genre that came after it. Its

emotional power lent itself to expressiveness and creativity. The blues spoke for the sorrows of

Black America in its constant times of turbulence, and preserved its African roots by signifyin’

cultural memory such as the ring, and Eshu. The blues in essence is a form of communication. It

communicates cultural memory, the communal struggles of black people, and allows those who

play it to express themselves to their fullest potential.

 Works Cited

Rainey, M. (1928). Prove It On Me Blues. Paramount Records.

Stuckey, S. (2014). Slave culture : nationalist theory and the foundations of black America.

Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1987)

Floyd, S. (1995). The Power of Black Music. Oxford University Press.

Johnson, R. (1937, June 19). Me and the Devil Blues. Vocalion.

Downatthecrossroads; WordPress.com.

https://downatthecrossroads.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/20-blues-train-songs-you-must-

hear/

Hogan, B. (2020, September 7). Blues and the Crossroads. Google Docs.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SAJ4AiU7LS-4sFF-

3nosPBeQFHkHSsU_kJepLk0Kwdw/edit#slide=id.p1

Reconstruction and 1876: Crash Course US History #22. (2013, July 18). Reconstruction and
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Emancipation Proclamation. (2020, August 9). Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation#:~:text=As%20the%20Union

%20armies%20advanced%20through%20the%20Confederacy%2C%20thousands%20of

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Networks. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedmens-bureau

Primary Source: Mississippi Black Code (1865) | United States History II. (n.d.).

Courses.lumenlearning.com.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory2os/chapter/primary-source-mississippi-

black-code-1865/

A lynching on a Greenwich Village street in 1863. (2013, January 14). Ephemeral New York.

https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/a-lynching-on-a-greenwich-

village-street-in-1863/