Emancipation Proclamation As A Good Reason For Blues

“The blue devils” was a 17th-century English expression that referred to the intense visual hallucinations that came with severe alcohol withdrawal. Overtime the word “devils” faded from the expression, and it became “the blues”(Devi, Debra), meaning “a state of agitation or depression”. In the early 1900s, “the blues” took on a new meaning, a music genre, yet the original intent was still prevalent. The blues songs are “lyrical rather than narrative”(“blues”) with a heavy emphasis on feelings of sadness or melancholy similar to the once felt in withdrawal. The blues being a sad genre, nevertheless escalated to heights and popularity we had never seen before. In the following essay, through the lenses of history, politics and social trends we find why “the blues” became popular.

The blues is hard to pin point to one specific region, after the emancipation proclamation, African American culture spread quite quickly in the south. “The typical three-line blues verse did emerge from the call-and-response songs made up by slaves in the fields”(Devi, Debra). This tie with African American continues to grow, In areas of high concentration you can see the popularity of the blues flourish in the early 1900s. Earliest forms of the blues date back to the 1890s and early 1900s. In 1912 W.C. Handy’s “Memphis Blues” was published. Due to the success, many other Tin Pan Alley blues songs gained popularity as well. The need for the blues began to spread around the south, reaching fame in “Georgia and the Carolinas, Texas, and Mississippi”, here we start to see the success of artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mississippi Delta Blues, Charley Patton and other Blues legends. Nightclub singers such as Alberta Hunter and Ethel Waters “entertained the growing African American middle class in New York , Chicago, and other northern cities as well. There was a real infatuation with the blues spreading all across the country.

Taking a step back to see why the blues did so well, there are few political turning points that make this possible. One of them being the Emancipation Act of 1863, more famously known as the Emancipation proclamation. The first appearance of the blues is dated after the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave over 3.5 million slaves living in America human rights. While most African American Slaves in the south went into sharecropping and working with agriculture, they had simple liberties and some freedom of expression. The establishment of “juke joints” gave African Americans a place to kick back after a long week of work and listen to music, dance, or gamble. Many argue that the success of the blues is closely linked with the newly acquired freedom of African American Slaves.

Not just politically though, the freedom of slaves impacted the African American culture in so many ways. This is very evident in social trends at the time. Before the emancipation, African American excellence in arts had barely ever been appreciated on a platform that reached both a white and black audience. The country for the first time ever, while still segregated, receptive to African American success, in both black and white communities. Artists like Gertrude “Ma” Rainey and Bessie Smith released their early recordings during the height of the blues craze (1920-1926), and sold well with both whites and blacks. “Everybody was buying phonographs… everybody had records of all the negro blues singers… you couldn’t help but hear the blues” (Jackson and Wylie 1966, 29). This time of overcoming racism was the perfect time to make a big leap into an up and coming music genre, it was now that they had a bigger audience than ever.

The new receptive audience, African American culture expanding and the support of the country people made the blues what they were meant to be. They used experiences that people related to, love, struggle, things that got people emotionally attached and hook new listeners. For the first time in our history, we were being captivated by a one person show, rather than a group or a band, it was captivating and progressive. It kickstarter rhythm and melody in the americas for future artists.