WITH EVERYTHING THAT’S going on in the world today it wouldn’t be right not to mention - especially given this month’s two lead features - that much of the music we love, listen to and learn from, can be traced back to the African-Americans of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Blues originated in America’s Deep South from slave plantations and sharecropping farms, but was born from what’s been called the ‘cradle of the blues’ in Africa. A mix of field hollers and spirituals was passed on in the aural tradition, and only later written down and made more formal by WC Handy and others. Some have also suggested a crossover between the Scottish folk tunes heard from the slaves’ ‘masters’, Islamic songs from the African Muslims that were also brought over, and even a hint towards the ‘powwow’ drumming of indigenous Americans. It’s also likely that freed slaves (America abolished the practice in 1865 and many thousands of freed men joined the army) picked up new musical influences from around them.