We Are The Blues

Smoky and whiskey smelly saloons, the old sluts, the men of honor who fight at blackjack, a poor man who drains his umpteenth glass, the blues in the background, the rustling of Mississippi.

1. illustration of John Carroll Doyle

From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War in North America ended the Confederate States of America and began the so-called era of reconstruction.

Before that, 48% of the population of the southern states was entirely composed of African-American slaves who were exploited in the plantations of tobacco, cotton, sugar and coffee.With the Emancipation Proclamation promulgated during the war by Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent XIII Amendment to the Constitution, slavery and forced labor were abolished permanently.

From that moment on a stream of former slave-musicians poured into the streets the songs that in the past accompanied their hard work in the fields.

Detached from the religious tones of the spiritual, the bluesman through improvisation used individual singing and the melody of his guitar to narrate intensely personal themes and often melancholic, conditioned reflection of the state of discrimination that, despite the abolition of slavery, he continued to beat hard on the black skin. But the blues was above all a feeling of rebellion and hope, of closeness to the weakest, of community union.

2. the bluesman Robert Leroy Johnson

The word comes from an old English expression of 1600: "to have the blue devils", with which was identified the state of sadness and instability of alcoholics (blue in the vernacular of the period); subsequently the expression extended to any state of overwhelming suffering. And it is precisely during the sufferings of slavery that the feeling of rebellion of the blues finds incarnation through music.

In fact, the deportees were primarily deprived of their cultural identity because from Africa, in addition to being torn individually by their families, they could not even carry traditional clothes, objects, lucky charms, musical instruments, their names, their language. Everything they created in the New World was then created based on memory. In many of those countries of origin one of the instruments of musical culture is the kora, similar to the lute harp, which accompanies the narratives of storytellers, the so-called jali, which among the peoples of West Africa enjoy great respect as experts and protectors of the oral tradition of their people.

This African form transplanted in America led to the use of classical guitar and individual singing (among other things from the remodulation of their drums such as dundun and djembè with European percussion instruments were born the first modern drums used in jazz).

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The delta blues was one of the earliest recognized blues styles, and is named after the area in which it developed, the Mississippi Delta.It was a genre that between the 20' and 30' gave prestige to some who were later considered among the most influential members of the blues and the greatest inspirers.

4. one of Johnson’s rare photos

The most iconic was Robert Leroy Johnson, who died at the age of 27, was the purest expression of the rebel blues:

A globetrotter, a strong drinker, led a short but intense life, transformed into a legend by a tale fed by himself in his texts, according to which his artistic talents would have been favored by a pact with the devil tight in a cross-country at 00.00 on a summer night.

Some witnessed the fact, others attest that he disappeared for a whole year and then reappeared with a skill never seen before.He is now recognized as one of the greatest guitarists of the genre.

The blues remains the musical form that more than any other has influenced the music of the twentieth century, giving structure and quadrature to most current genres.

Jazz in particular influenced him and was also strongly influenced by him;The term Jazzy is synonymous with life, effervescence, virility. The same energy that, triggered in the fields at the time of slavery, exploded around the world carrying behind it the most intense feeling of freedom.