Blues Music Influence On African-American Culture

Sweet harmony and valiant lyrics ring out in the sky as a group of people in the street clap and dance to the beat of the music. The lyrics speak of overcoming all and living in what seems to be such a distant world. The people enjoying the music are African-Americans and they are playing a genre known today as the Blues. The origin of the Blues genre dates back to the Atlantic Slave Trade, which took place from 1619 to 1809 and beyond. In order to get the cheapest labor for future plans in the New World, Europeans travelled to Africa in search of people who would soon become slaves (Weissman 6). It was these slaves who found a sense of peace in the music they would later begin to create. After continuous years of slave labor in America, a “cultural process” began to occur. African-American slaves began to gain a sense of themselves and thus started to bond together to create African-American culture (Steinberg 7). This culture led to an explosion of tunes that included harmonious …show more content…
The rooting of the genre began in locations all over Africa before the Atlantic Slave Trade began. It continued to develop with the transport of slaves during the 17th century all the way up to the beginning of the 19th century (6). While slavery was mainly prominent in the South, Blues style music can also be traced to areas further north. This could be due to the freeing and fleeing of slaves who then traveled up North (Jones 4). Although the music did begin to spread all over the United States, this was not without cause. Soon after the Atlantic Slave Trade ended, there was a drastic increase in the African-American population. With this and the fear of rebellion, slave owners did everything in their power to fight the issue and spread apart the population (Weissman 8). Despite this separation, this did not stop the development of what would become one of the most popular music genres of the