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Guest column/Blues music has a rich and powerful history

From the beginning of slavery in 1619 until 1865, when the 13th Amendment was passed abolishing slavery throughout the United States and its territories, African Americans sang their way through poverty, beatings and working in the plantation fields from sun up until sundown, and finally, cooking and cleaning the master’s house.

The forms of music that slaves sang were blues, spirituals and gospel, and these were created by African Americans.

Blues gets its name from the blue notes, usually the third and seventh notes of a major scale that are flattened or played below the intended pitch.

Classic blues music follows a 12-bar structure with an opening line that is repeated and a third rhyming line. The first blues songs originated in the Mississippi delta during the 1890s, but the roots of blues music can be heard in the Negro spirituals and call-and-response songs sung during slavery.

Blues-like fragments were heard after the Civil War and frequently dealt with their newly gained freedom allowing ex-slaves to go wherever they pleased.

Though the blues grew out of the Black experience, the style frequently was condemned by Black churches. The lyrics stressed everything from poverty to loneliness and love, to racism, drinking work and sex.

After the 20th century began, racism and poverty caused thousands of African Americans to move north to New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit, bringing the blues with them.

Blues music is derived from the Negro spirituals and gospels music.

It’s a style of music that has influenced the writing of African American authors ranging from Langston Hughes to Alice Walker, and can be heard in everything from boogie-woogie to jazz, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. Current blues singers include B.B. King and Robert Cray.

The plantation fields from the 1600s to the 1800s were a blessing. The African Americans sang until sweat came down upon them. Each song had a code for the enemy, and each code brought about an anointing from God. From the blues, spiritual, jazz and gospel, it’s music that cannot be beat.

And even today, colored, Black, Negro and African Americans can certainly sing without an accompanist.

“Lift every voice and sing; Till Earth and heaven ring. Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies. Let us march on till victory is won.”

(Wiggins, a resident of Steubenville, is president of the Ohio Valley Black Caucus Inc.)

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