History through Music

HISTORY THROUGH MUSIC

We might be used to thinking of music as something which punctuates the silences of our lives: something we listen to while waiting for the bus, something to sing along to while in the shower or dance to on the weekends. But a culture’s music and its musical tradition can tell us a huge amount about that culture’s history, its struggles and its evolution over the centuries.

Did you know, for example, that you can trace a line from modern-day hip-hop to 1800 West Africa? In the late 1700s and early 1800s, American landowners began to plunder West Africa for slaves. Thousands of Africans were traded into slavery and shipped across the Atlantic in order to work the cotton fields of the ‘New World’. And while they had no possessions, they brought memories of their music with them. They introduced instruments like the banjo and tambourine, and sang their traditional songs as they slaved in the fields.

Each generation of slaves modified the music of its predecessors, as they themselves changed. Many were converted to Christianity, and began to sing about their new religion. Others used songs as a way of making their hard work more tolerable. After sunset, when their work was done, they would gather together and sing their own songs – often they were songs of nostalgia and longing for a better life.

Those Christian songs would evolve into what we nowadays call Gospel music: the repeat verses and alternating singers of the field songs sung by those slaves can still be heard in many modern-day rap songs; and the songs they sang at the end of the day became the core of all modern-day African-American music. The sadder, downbeat music became the Blues. The faster, more communal sounds grew into Jazz.

Over the decades, these styles have evolved into the music we nowadays hear on our radios every day. One quick example: in the 1930s, a black guitarist called Robert Johnson began to sing and play some of the blues songs he had grown up with. [Listen to him singing ‘ Me and the Devil Blues’ or ‘Crossroads’]. Meanwhile, another black musician, Jimmy Yancey, was adapting the jazz tunes of his childhood to the piano [Listen to him playing ‘ Rolling the Stone‘ and ‘Midnight Stomp’].

A few decades later, and Chuck Berry was revolutionising music with his new rock’n’roll style. You can clearly hear the influence musicians like Jimmy Yancey had on him [Listen to ‘Johnny B. Goode’ or ‘Maybellene’]. Meanwhile, musicians like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were taking Robert Johnson’s mournful blues into the 1960s [ Listen to ‘ ‘How Many More Years’ or‘Hobo Blues’ ].

Fifteen years later, and those blues were blended with the hippie movement by black musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, George Clinton and Gil Scott Heron [listen to ‘Voodoo Chile’ or If You Want Me To Stay’ or Home Is Where The Hatred Is’ ].

If the music from that last track is familiar, it’s because Kanye West sampled it on his track My Way Home’ . And remember Robert Johnson’s ‘Me and the Devil Blues’? Gil Scott Heron has his own 2010 version of it .

The funk-blues of Sly Stone and George Clinton were moulded into a half-talking, half-singing style which became known as ‘rapping’ [Watch Kurtis Blow sing ‘Christmas Rapping’ in 1980, or Grandmaster Flash with The ‘Message’ in 1982]. From there, it’s a short journey to Rakim, Run-DMC and Wu-Tang Clan, and then another to Nas, Eminem and other modern-day rappers.

And what about the old gospel songs that were being sung by the slaves in the cotton plantations? They also evolved and can be heard in modern-day music – developing from gospel to soul to R&B and hip-hop: from the hymns of the cotton fields to the protests of ‘We Shall Overcome‘, to Ray Charles’ soul [‘ Georgia on my mind ‘], to Stevie Wonder’s funk [‘ Higher Ground‘],Marvin Gaye’s R&B [‘ What’s Going On‘], and, more recently, Kanye West’s modern rap/gospel classic, ‘ Jesus Walks‘. Prince, Justin Timberlake, Alicia Keys, Mary J Blige and Usher all come out of this pedigree.

Continue: Music as Education

World Music