Slavery and Music

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Without slavery, music would not sound the same.

The blues is the music made by slaves. It was the first type of music, and it was created by normal people when they were forced into slavery many centuries ago. When more than 12 million African slaves were taken over to America countries to work they used to have everything taken away from them. Their rights, their names and their possessions were all stripped from them. However the one thing slave owners could not take away from the African slaves was music. Therefore the slaves sang while they worked, they sang different types of songs. There were work songs, coded songs and traditional songs. The work songs were sung to help them while they worked traditional songs to keep their traditions with them and coded songs would have secret messages of how to escape. One example of a coded song is ‘Wade in the Water’. This told the slaves that they should wash themselves in the water to get rid of scent so when their owners came after them with dogs, the dogs would not be able to smell them. There is an old legend that a man called Robert Johnson went to the cross roads and sold his soul to the devil in order to be a good guitarist. The blues started when slavery started. Blues is the name for the music of the past because it used to be like when people are upset they are known as being blue. The blues then went on to become greater music, more people started getting involved and it has evolved to become the music we have today. Then the slavery ended, in 1863 when the president, Abraham Lincoln, said no to slavery. This was called Emancipation Proclamation. After the slavery ended, as the slaves were all left poor and homeless, they turned blues into a type of job. When people started to play regularly, it grew from a hobby into a job. The musicians used to play in the Chitlin Circuit. Slavery and the blues music were linked because if there had been no slavery, people would not have sung so many songs...
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