There's no doubt that Blues music is perhaps the most misunderstood and often misjudged music in all of American history. Since its beginning in the early 20th century, no form of expressive art has ever meant more or influenced as much life as Blues music has. It's imperative that people understand where Blues music has its roots and how, through its natural progressive nature, it has ties to almost every conceivable form of modern music.

You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been.

The Beginning

It was 1903 when W.C. Handy heard what we now call "the blues" being played while he waited for his late arriving train at a Mississippi depot. Handy was a band leader and a music publisher. Although he has come to be known as the "Father of the Blues", he admits that he didn't start the Blues. This genre of music came from the souls of slaves and emerged simultaneously throughout the South, originating as early as 1890.

In order to fully understand the Blues, we must back track to the time of slavery in the United States. Out of 35-40 million Africans to be tricked, trapped and captured onto slave ships, only an estimated 15 million actually made it to America. Their own African heritage was stripped from them (or withered away on its own) and whatever was imposed upon them transformed into a culture of its own. It's undeniable that their religions were suppressed and replaced by Christianity.

During the time of the American War of Independence (1775-1783), the Northern states declared slavery illegal. The south, however, did not. Even when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, the South ignored it and illicit trade continued.

Through the fields you could hear long, drawn out moaning going on, but the slave owners didn't see much harm in it so they let it continue. After the work day was over, slaves would get together and sing out affirmations, pledges and prayers that they eventually lengthened out with repetitive choruses. At first, they accompany their vocals with hand made drums, but slave owners soon grew worrisome that this may be some sort of signal being made from one set of slaves to another that would ultimately lead to a revolt so the use of drums was abolished. The songs, however, remained a reflection of the infinite sadness and despair of an oppressed people.

Eventually slavery did come to an end shortly after the Civil War. The Southern economy was shattered by the war and its defeat, which lead to many former slaves moving to the North and West to communities where other freedmen had already developed. The black community, now broken up, had no structure of its own on which to build.