The Effects of Blues Music on Civil Rights
Blues Music | Influences on Civil Rights in the United States | Addy Phillips |
Eddie James “Son” House, Jr., an American blues singer and guitarist once stated, "People keep asking me where the blues started and all I can say is that when I was a boy we always was singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin', but we made up our songs about things that was happening to us at the time, and I think that's where the blues started (Cohn, 1993).” House, living through the development of the blues and the Civil Rights Movement, had a definite grasp on the subject at hand. Having changed his lifestyle from the church to blues, he faced many hardships including a deadbeat father, alcoholism, affairs, and prison time. House is a prime example of how the blues shaped the lives of African Americans and why the blues left its mark on history. The blues was once a way of life, a variety of music, a poetic movement, a state of mind, a folkloric tradition, a moral attitude, and even a kind of spontaneous intuitive critical method (Garon, 1978). The blues depict the “secular” dimension of black experience. They are “worldly” songs which tell us about love and sex, tragedy in interpersonal relationships, death, travel, loneliness, etc. The blues are about black life and the sheer earth and gut capacity to survive in an extreme situation of oppression. To talk about the blues is to talk about going back to the roots, which means where it all started at, this music, the blues and the church music, and so far as I can understand, it came from the country, the fields, and the shacks and the towns that weren’t but wide spaces in the highway (Titon, 1979). It is impossible to say simply, “Slavery created blues,” and be done with it. Blues did begin in slavery, and it is from that “peculiar institution,” as it was known euphemistically, that blues did find its particular form (Jones, 1980). The exact date of the origin of the blues is difficult
Eddie James “Son” House, Jr., an American blues singer and guitarist once stated, "People keep asking me where the blues started and all I can say is that when I was a boy we always was singing in the fields. Not real singing, you know, just hollerin', but we made up our songs about things that was happening to us at the time, and I think that's where the blues started (Cohn, 1993).” House, living through the development of the blues and the Civil Rights Movement, had a definite grasp on the subject at hand. Having changed his lifestyle from the church to blues, he faced many hardships including a deadbeat father, alcoholism, affairs, and prison time. House is a prime example of how the blues shaped the lives of African Americans and why the blues left its mark on history. The blues was once a way of life, a variety of music, a poetic movement, a state of mind, a folkloric tradition, a moral attitude, and even a kind of spontaneous intuitive critical method (Garon, 1978). The blues depict the “secular” dimension of black experience. They are “worldly” songs which tell us about love and sex, tragedy in interpersonal relationships, death, travel, loneliness, etc. The blues are about black life and the sheer earth and gut capacity to survive in an extreme situation of oppression. To talk about the blues is to talk about going back to the roots, which means where it all started at, this music, the blues and the church music, and so far as I can understand, it came from the country, the fields, and the shacks and the towns that weren’t but wide spaces in the highway (Titon, 1979). It is impossible to say simply, “Slavery created blues,” and be done with it. Blues did begin in slavery, and it is from that “peculiar institution,” as it was known euphemistically, that blues did find its particular form (Jones, 1980). The exact date of the origin of the blues is difficult
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