Blues

Assembled from 44 blocks · 3 evidence · 31 related

1. Story
2. A vocal-led practice that took recognisable shape among Black musicians in the American South in the years around 1900 and which, in its rural Southern form, is markedly closer to Sahelian than to coastal West African music: a solo singer, string accompaniment, no percussion, flexible or "wavy" intonation that slides between the pitches a keyboard would fix, pentatonic melodic material, and a relationship between voice and instrument of unison or heterophony rather than harmony. Those are the traits Kubik uses to argue descent principally from the west-central Sudanic belt. Its earliest documentation is anecdotal and specific: the bandleader W. C. Handy, waiting at Tutwiler station in Mississippi around 1903, heard a man press a knife against guitar strings and sing "Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog", and later built a career on adaptations of what he had heard. The twelve-bar form and the flattened thirds and sevenths that later definitions lead with are conventions that settled in print and on record after 1912, not features present from the start. What was present from the start was a way of using the voice, and an instrument used to answer it.
3. Knowledge
4. Guitar
5. Colonial prohibition of drumming
6. The Mississippi Delta
7. Blues
8. Jazz
9. Connections
10. Colonial prohibition of drumming
11. The Mississippi Delta
12. Jazz
13. Guitar
14. The Great Migration
15. Samba
16. Race records
17. W. C. Handy hears a guitarist at Tutwiler station
18. The Great Migration
19. Mamie Smith records "Crazy Blues"
20. Muddy Waters is recorded at Stovall Farm
21. The West African drum ensemble
22. The Stono Rebellion
23. Blues
24. The Stono Rebellion
25. The South Carolina Negro Act prohibits drums
26. New Orleans confines Sunday gatherings to Congo Square
27. Blues
28. W. C. Handy hears a guitarist at Tutwiler station
29. The Great Migration
30. Muddy Waters is recorded at Stovall Farm
31. Blues
32. New Orleans
33. Son cubano
34. The first jazz record is made
35. Alan Lomax records Jelly Roll Morton at the Library of Congress
36. European lute
37. Blues
38. Highlife
39. W. C. Handy hears a guitarist at Tutwiler station
40. The Kumasi Trio record in London
41. Evidence
42. Handy, waiting at Tutwiler station circa 1903, heard a man play slide guitar with a knife and sing "Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog"; he led an orchestra in Clarksdale from 1903 to 1905 and recounted the encounter in his 1941 autobiography Father of the Blues. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary attributed to the Blues Trail marker text; the marker page was not opened, and the quoted autobiography passage is reproduced at second hand.
43. Kubik traces the blues principally to the west-central Sudanic belt rather than to the West African coast, identifying an "ancient Negritic" and an Islamic strand, and characterising rural Deep South blues as solo, string-accompanied, percussion-free, pentatonic and marked by wavy intonation. V55 verification basis: the book is cited as the standing authority and is named in the Journey's own declared references; it was NOT read in this session, and the account of its argument comes from retrieved summaries and reviews.
44. Mamie Smith recorded "Crazy Blues", written by Perry Bradford, for Okeh in New York on 10 August 1920; it was the first vocal blues recording by an African American artist, sold strongly to Black purchasers, and prompted the record industry's race-records series. V55 verification basis: retrieved in search summary alongside encyclopaedic accounts; the Registry essay PDF was not opened, and the widely repeated million-copy sales figure is not adopted here.