Echoes Of Distant Cultures

The blues was shaped by African culture, the experience of slavery and many other influences, but it emerged as a distinct form only around the turn of the twentieth century - some four decades after the abolition of slavery and several generations removed from the mother continent. African retentions in timbres, tones and rhythms, and in the functional nature of music in daily life by people who were not necessarily professional musicians, the beginning, Adam had interacted in America with European blues, 'cause he was I created a woman. Now rybody's got the blues.' musical traditions, including Scotch-Irish fiddle tunes, English ballads, Christian songs and marching bands. Slaves with musical talent learned to ie JJixon Di entertain whites at plantation dances performing the popular dances and songs of the day. The work songs and hollers of those labouring in the fields often harked back to the chants of their African ancestors, while in the churches Protestant hymns took on an African-American character to emerge as 'Negro spirituals'. Africanisms survived in the work and game songs, call-and- Right In Alabama and other parts of the Deep South, the blues developed as a form of dance music. response patterns, vocal and instrumental phrasings, syncopations, oral traditions, folk customs and beliefs, pentatonic scales and flattened 'blue notes', as as in instrumentation.