The Blues Defining the blues is like trying to explain what it means to be an American. Even in that comparison, it would not be that easy as the blues are partially representative of African Americans even before they were legal citizens; when the blues were not even called the blues. Therefore it is important in this case to identify an origin. Since that has not been confirmed yet, we must at least go by a starting point such as W. C. Handy’s historical encounter in 1903 “at a railroad juncture deep in the southern night, Handy dozed restlessly as he awaited the arrival of a much-delayed train. A guitar’s bottleneck resonance suddenly jolted him to consciousness, as a lean, loose-jointed, shabbily clad black man sang [x 3] ‘Goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog’” (Baker 4). In his own words Handy wrote “His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had some of the sadness of the ages . . . . The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I ever heard. The tune stayed in my mind” (Santelli). Though we may never know the true first blues song, what W. C. Handy represents is the first documentation of an evolution in music called the blues. This way, we can research everything before and after this date in determining the history of the blues. What are also important in Handy’s account are the description of the man encountered and the meaning of the song. The ‘bottleneck resonance’ and the ‘weirdest music’ both signify the slide technique which was at first a knife being rubbed against the guitar strings for a mysterious sound never before heard. That the man was ‘shabbily clad’ with a facial ‘sadness of the ages’ describes the attire and mood that many bluesmen were known for singing about. Also, the fact that he was waiting at the train station and singing of ‘the Southern that crosses the Dog’ depicts somewhat of a traditional lifestyle of the bluesman. This is by no means even a fraction of what it means to have, share, or understand the blues. It is simply the first time it was written about.
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“Music, dance, [and] religion, do not have artifacts as their end products, so they were saved . . . . And these are the most apparent legacies of the African past, even to the contemporary black American” (16). -Blues People This helps to clarify that African slaves had nothing but physical and mental properties as they were thrown into an unfamiliar atmosphere, deprived of family members, and unaware of any future outcomes. However, their knowledge of music, dance, and religion could not be taken from them. Another point is that African tribes were separated often by languages so that they could not communicate with each other. Theoretically, work songs were then used as a form of communication when nothing else seemed to work, creating a sort of rough beginning of standard Black English. Work songs were also a “means of heightening energy, converting labor into dance and games, and providing emotional excitement in an otherwise unbearable situation” (Cone 98). Another aspect of the work song is that it was also of African origin. While these songs often had something to do with the task at hand such as the daily work of a tribe or family, lyrics among slaves were quite different in that there were no positive outlooks. It is also known that it was slave masters who often required work songs in order to keep track of field locations.
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Works Cited Baker, Jr. Houston A. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Baraka, Amiri. Blues People. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1963. Cone, James H. The Spirituals and the Blues. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991. Cullen, Jim. The American Dream. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Franklin, H. Bruce. "Songs of an Imprisoned People." Melus 6.1 (n.d.). Nall, Hiram. "From Down South to Up South: An Examination of Geography in the Blues." Midwest Quarterly 42.3 (2001): 306-320. Santelli, Robert, Holly George-Warren and Jim Brown, American Roots Music. New York: Ginger Group Productions, 2001.
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