Blues: The Music of Poverty and Marginalisation

Blues was composed, performed and sung by people who lead lives of immense hardship – grinding poverty and genuine institutionalised racism and discrimination. But reading some of the lyrics I was struck how some of them also reflect the times we’re living in with the cost of living crisis. People of all races are finding it hard to make ends meet, while being expected to watch on and cheer as the global elite get richer and richer.

Here’s a few sample lines expressing the singer’s poverty from Harris’ book, Jazz.

‘I’ve never seen such real hard times before

I’ve never seen such real hard times before

The wolf keeps walkin’ all ’round my door.’

And

‘I can’t go outside to my grocery store

I ain’t got no money and my credit don’t go no more.’

Can we have that last couplet sung by protesters the next time some Tory ratbag goes on a meet and greet of the plebs?

I was also struck by this piece, about a navvy on the roads describing how he’s making it, but it’s only for the rich White folks in their cars.

‘I’m makin’ a road

For the cars

To fly on.

Makin’ a road

Through the palmetto thicket

For light and civilisation

To travel on.

Makin’ a road

For rich old men

Two sweep over in their big cars,

An’ leave me standin’ here.

Sure,

A road helps all of us!

White folks ride –

An’ I gets to see ’em ride.

I ain’t never seen nobody

Ride so fine before.

Hey, buddy!

Look at me!

I’m making a road…’

And many Blacks today share the sentiment behind the lyric, that they’re exploited and marginalised working to produce goods and services that only rich Whites will enjoy.

But I also think it’s possible to go beyond the specific politics of race, as now people of all colours are being pressed into poverty and exploited by the global rich. We’re all expected to work for a pittance so that Priti Patel and the other authors of Britannia Unchained can rave about how strong the British economy is, while working people see precious little of this illusory wealth.

Coded Language in Plantation-Era Blues

I haven’t posted much over the past few days as it’s been a bit busy down here. We had Dad’s funeral on Monday, which I’m very glad to say was extremely well attended. And then I had my birthday yesterday. I took a bit of time leafing through a book I bought years ago on Jazz in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham. This is Rex Harris’ Jazz, first published in 1952, though I’ve got the 1957 edition. I’ve found it really informative, especially when it comes to those Jazzers who were really big in their time, but have since faded away, and on the musical roots of Jazz itself.

One of the snippets of information I found particularly fascinating was a quotation from another book, explaining that the plantation slaves would make up lyrics in their Blues and work songs to warn each other if a new White master was coming, who would be a threat to one of them. This passage runs

‘E. Simms Campbell in Jazzmen cites an excellent example of the way in which the Work Song was used as a secret code to pass information in the plantations and thus laid the early foundation of the form of the Blues.

He says:

They worked and sang together and many of these songs carried a meaning only to Negroes. To the white mind, if was perfect peace and contentment among the blacks, but to Negroes it was often a means of communication. ‘Ya bettah breeze on down dat road – son – bettah breeze on down dat road. Mustuh Charlie from town ain’t feeling good – ya bettah lighten dat heavy load’ from one to another the song was taken up and passed along the field. It simply meant that there was a white man from a different town who had arrived on the plantation and the young Negro who was working among them, guarded zealously from whites ‘at de big house’, had better leave town. Negroes frequently hid one of their own who had sought refuge among them, and they were telling him in code that he had better leave the plantation that night. Such lyrics interspersed among well-known songs carried a world of significance to Black ears.’ (P. 37)

Elsewhere he notes slaves’ reverence for Moses as the liberator of the Jews from bondage in Egypt. The great anti-slavery activist and pioneering feminist, Harriet Tubman, was dubbed ‘Moses’ for her work on the Underground Railway. And the Blacks and White activists running it would call out ‘Go down, Moses’, to each other as a warning that the slave catchers were coming.

As you’ve noticed, the book uses the language of the period in which it was written. At the time, ‘Negro’ was the perfectly acceptable word for Blacks, although it has fallen out of favour since. Nevertheless, Harris has a very deep feeling for the music and admiration for its composers and performers, and especially the race that created it.