The History of Blues Music: A Different Point of 'You'.

Addendum:
The History of Blues Music: A Different Point of 'You'.

Anyone who's into music and has an iota of sense would so easily know that the origin of blues music does not come from America, particularly, because it's a land devoid of any cultural point of reference.
This mini-post isn't to discuss the abundance of ignorance amidst the American populace, nor is it a try at chopping logic with something that has few (if any) traceable and reliable sources. You read on:

Long before the time when blues music started taking a firm popularity in the south, (this happened between the last two hundred years), slaves being indentured by the white, wealthy people who were European by decent and origin didn't arrive from Africa. Some of the earliest slaves that reached America weren't actually African: they were coloured people traveling by mistake to these abominable shores and were enslaved for a period of time until freed back again to roam this new land they've never set foot at before.

Around the early 1600s, African slaves began an influx after the Spanish empire at that time had close trade ties with the Arabian west African part of the Arab world (ruled under the banner of a Muslimite Turkish Sultanat). One should realise that Turkish people who got to power in the mid-15th century were actually slaves (mamalik/mamloukin), who took over the ruling Muslim empire from also-slaves other ethnic minorities like the Fatimites in Egypt, Ayyoubites in Syria and the Levant, and other Minor Asian people who were captured through years of war in the region as the Islamic empire was stretching to far-reaching limits in Europe, westward, and India and China in the east.

The first people who began to 'take slaves' weren't actually Arab-Muslims as most western academic sources fall short to mention: they were Chinese. Arabs learned this from the Chinese Empire and took interest in Africa and the islands that surrounds this huge continent. Most Africans have never seen any light-skinned individual at their primitive lands, and so it's said that when they saw fully-clothed travelers (Arabs, accompanied by Chinese traders), they thought they were Gods and started to worship them willfully, only for the latter to refuse this as it's prohibited in a monotheistic faith like Islam to take people as Gods, or declare oneself as so. Arabs were traders by the nature of their geography: most Arab lands were water-surrounded slabs of earth and this caused them to become the most-learned and trusted sailors. Even Spaniards learned at their hands seen in the manufacture of their ships (reached an apex of mastery with the establishment of the Armada in the 1600s).

Nevertheless, when China started to fall down due to inner fights and dissenting colonies, Arabs continued the trade because the Spaniards wanted as much as they could get their hands on to build their empire that was reaching as far as the Pacific Ocean at that time. Arabs took slaves not from the heart of Africa but from nearby Sudan, Zanzibar, and North-West Africa: it was deemed a land full of monsters and Arab travelers wrote books about some critters (complete with hand-drawings in order to sell for the high-brow wealthy Arabs back home), and everyone backed off from venturing into this land save from those lands that were known and for which these traders were familiar with. Sudan (means in Arabic, 'those who are black', or 'The Blacks'), and Zanzibar (Zing is Persian for black). So, together with their maritime knowledge and supremacy Arabs established the first tarns-continent slave-trade that took place in the mid-1600's.

When the ships started to lay moor (hence the word Moor: Moroccan/Moorish Africans who lived in the farthest west of North-Africa), the Spanish conquistadors paid per head (a system that didn't include women and children because these came at very special prices), by gold they were stealing with their indifference in bloody war after war in their South American colonies.
Moorish people are said to have come from Sudan itself way back at the starts of the Islamic expansion which started in the seventh-century C.E.. Nothing is for certain here, but today, some Moroccans and Mauritanians are known by their Sudanese tribal roots and names that are traceable all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, and more specifically, Yemen. Hmm, music now? Here we shall start again, so *scraps blackboard clean*...

Yes, it's Yemen the origin of blues music. Yemenis were those very traders who traveled to faraway shores to get these slaves and in the middle of these long, sea voyages... they influenced the slaves aboard with their music. Not just that: they also convinced some to take up Islam as their sworn-to-life religion... something that black slaves took later to America. There is a close relation with Islam and Blues, but not in what most ethnomusicologists try to point out as the 'melisma', or 'audio ornaments' of both music. Islam has no music and that is a given fact. Few do know that most contemporary Islamic music didn't come from Arabic origins: what's Arabic in concerns to music was simple, plucked 3/4 music. This Arabic music that most of you can hear is not Arabic at all: it's Turkish and mostly Minor Asian.

Forward on, and to search deeper into the origins of blues... one should take a huge reference from not Islamic chants, but sea shanties that were popular to sailors who on board of their ships, fled the strict eye of the punishing mula (a Persian word, by the way which was called 'muhasib', or one who punishes others'). At sea... there is freedom, and yes, rhythm.

The waves of the sea were the only accompanying band to the sounds of rows thwacking against sea waves as the hand claps and shouts of one lead singer took place hundreds of years ago on those slave ships. This is where blues music came from... this call-and-response heard through human flesh and water (water=life). On the other side of 'Life', hardships and deaths were a common occurrence at the bosom of these seas. Sickness, fights, riots and what-not all contributed to this 'harsh'-sounding this music took form the fear within. It is — in my opinion, the world's most plaintive sound and the sound of true and deep human pain and suffering. Not just from being a slave going nowhere, but from being at the mercy of this raging sea that after all resembles a Oneness of some Divine entity... a God.

Later and as these slave ships started to dwindle in numbers with the abolishing of slave trade in 1865 slavery took a new garbing initiated by colonialist Britons and French invaders who needed simply... 'handymen'. After that, these uneducated slaves were fooled into joining the two warring colonizers' armies in exchange for their freedom which they took from them by force. Many slaves died fighting for both sides which added to the pain and made their sounds very audible with the advent of the first phonographic recording gizmotry in the late 19th century.

Blues as it was called, or sometimes 'Race Music'. This was race-specific music, or maybe (thanks to an evil empire building its strength on the ashes of burned black people's houses and the dead bodies of many who tried to escape the wars), nothing the lazy, white man would want to listen to: he who wanted some flesh-machinery to work for him as they enjoy free-everything and their dosage of stupid European music (read: Classic/ Upper-Class/ Aristo-Crappy Music). The fleeting freedom these slaves wanted did not stem from the white people who enslaved them: it was freedom from this tumbling, mad-mad land full of filth and pain. Freedom of the past, present, and future. A nothingness of everything.

Nothing much has changed ever since, most Afromericans do agree. They do believe in this newly-hailed freedom because they were influenced by the propaganda of Communist Russia taking sides again for them backing their small poor pockets filling them with whatever money master-puppeteers paid for them based on orders from their masters in Britain and yes, guess who? America again. They claimed that they are free in the late 50's (Race Riots/ Human Rights/ etc), and united they all fell prey to their own disease of greed and more greed the same as their white slave-masters did before them hundreds of years ago. Nothing is good down there where Americans are, believe me. Nothing.

When blacks started singing their songs that they used to listen to from their grandfathers and old grandmothers (some barely spoke any English or French), those songs were not the real deal: the songs slaves sang were actually songs very common in those western African shores of Mauritania and Morocco. And again, these were sounds that were taken from the other side of Africa, Sudan, Zanzibar, and Nubia. The final destination for those original sounds were really from Yemen. That's turning the circle full.


Etymological Origins:
Blues mean 'darkness', or something dark in most world modern languages. Blues in Arabic means sky (azraq/zarqaa). Some sources correlate the Arabic word (bla'a, or balwa) which means literally 'a calamity'; 'something that strikes someone or a place etc... with damage or illness' to where blues as a definition originally came from. Blues itself as a word was not burrowed from Arabic whatsoever. There is no correlation here even if it makes some sort of sense. Blues came from the word bhlāw in Indo-Germanic languages and it means literally 'light-skinned', 'something light', and later on Russian белый, belyi which means 'white'.

From these etymological roots forwent the word blues sung (or, actually whispered in fear of punitive retribution) in songs that talked about how 'blue' one felt as they plowed the land for the white man beginning a tradition of colours that formed the banner of such United States of America: blues, whites and reds. Blue was the sky (cotton-picker's only solace as they looked unto these cerulean heavens asking for God's mercy and salvation), and White (cotton-colour which was a code-like reference to their source of pain and enslavers stretching from Arabic-Chinese slave-meisters to white Anglo-Saxon chauvinists abound in eastern states such as the North and South Carolinas), up to Red (blood on the cotton from picking it in endless open fields ruled with insatiable greed for money from selling this product back to Europe which was way 'more civilized' than America as not to have slaves working openly in fields).

Blues singers weren't American after all: they were African. One can only laugh side-splittingly at resourceful academics who call white people like W.C. Handy as the forefathers of the Blues. Fuck no. Blues was and still is alive in East Africa (and, Yemen, too) in countries that still have to suffer at the hands of these American stupes who are in a colonization row these days splitting this beautiful culturally-rich country or that into two warring halves seen lately in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco, and yes Mauritania, too.

What's blues to do with Sudan? Music. The pain of being slaves for eons. Sudanese people can come face to face with their 'abeed' (slaves in Arabic) origins with ease but not when they are being colonized by the white-white man (read: You one who is slave to his/her own self and the other puppeteers who are whites mostly). Sudanese people are free, and will always be free for all ages to come because their music has protected them from the enslaving Arabs, and before them Yemenis who now have a substantial Sudanese ethinicity in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as well as the new Ameridiot who calls them now as terrorists and what-fuck-all.

Blues went to the west shore of Arabia by way of wars and trade routes, and reached the slave-harbours of Mauritania and Morocco by way of peace and religion. That's where the circle stopped revolving and everybody went home and was happy. The slaves went and left to the other side of 'The Great Sea' instead as it was called, and all that's left of them is the music. Music that lives all through human pain and suffering; injustices and cruelty, wars and greed and this innate filth inside all of us to posses and take control of what's not ours and be always in control of something so elusive as ... a sound.

This sound lives on and on in places some dumb-as-dirt people would laugh (or, worse might never have heard about in their entire worthless lives...) with names like Sudan. Or, Mauritania. And, now what? These countries are becoming the 'cool' places to know their music and go see concerts wearing turbans as-if. Hmm, pathetic much? Innit so?

At the end, the closest backline traceable of blues music that attaches it to America in Africa is Mauritania where most slave caravans stayed there until their carrying ships came to take them to their unknown fates. How many died on the way there to that 'Big' Cunt-inent? One should ask instead: Where are the sounds that are still alive? And, smiles as they ask this query because life is an ongoing cycle of birth-and-death. Nothing too buddhistic here, but what comes up ... must come down. Soon.

So, here: Take the blues back atchya. White folks in America stole this style from rural Afro-Mericans and called it 'country'. All folk music that is American (country and western as it's called: two curse-words trust me...) is not white. People (or, non...) who feel proud and white singing country music should get some sense in their thickest of all skulls: this music isn't even white you dumbwads. Nope.

Black Africans or white Americans... One shouldn't pay any attention to anything but what is really enjoyable, or of some worth. Blues music is a really enjoyable style of seemingly modern music if listened to with one's mind and not their anal cavities. Modern blues music is nothing nowadays but a form of pleasing-yet-again not-so-entertaining-the-white-man by selling something so say, some folks in South Carolina would "Get'er Done!" over and over again through hefty-handed stabs inside that poor turkey cutlet or this sammich etc... these are fed out and fed-up. Actually, that is exactly what all Americans are exceptionally good for (and only come 'worse' than most other 'races' at the end)... guess it? Food.

Blues music isn't American. This music is not even Arabic in origin... And, never African, too. It's God's sound on earth whether you believe in such a luxury as to have one or... none. Suit yourself.

That's THE blues.


Further Etymological Notes:

The word 'Groove' is Arabic, originally. When we talk about blues music, one should mention a bit of that... Jazz thang. Jazz was the precursor music for blues; a chariot that took early, rural-and-rough, grunt-'n'-slide blues sounds to the city with its big lights and monetary rewards. The city in question must be either New Orleans (French), or New York (English).

Grooves are these tiny small fissions on top of wax records that were first used way back at the very starts of the last century. And, from that word came a rejoicing shout of dancers who fled the hard-working daytime into a lively night club scene, dancing without a care in the world. That's where 'groovy' came from (early, black hip-speak). It referred to how one was enjoying their times listening to 'hot' jazz (the sounds as they are played live), or warm jazz (what's played or aired on the television), and 'cool' jazz (played on record). The word 'cool' came from kōl: 'none moving person' from a High-Middle Indo-German word meaning a 'cabbage'.

As for groove, it means in Arabic 'a valley'; 'separation in a mountainous region', or 'any small fission' (Arabic: جـرف/ plural is: جـروف). Arablack slaves used this word they had inherited from their forefathers who came to America in slave ships as was discussed in the essay above. There's a close relation to both jazz and blues and Arabic as a language, first of all, as an origin to all black-African music and as the source of most popular western music in general.

Maybe you aren't amazed by these etymological revelations, but even the word 'Jazz' itself is Arabic in origin, and yes... it came from the slaves who used to dance a mid-1800's dance touching their bodies with their arms calling it 'jas', which later became stressed as 'jass', then finally jazz. Jas (Arabic: جـس), means literally to 'touch skin'; 'put, or move hand across as to feel'.

Not amazed 'nuff? Ragtime jazz (and, also blues) comes from the Arabic word 'raks' (رقـص) which is a plural-singular form. Ragtime was called so when it began to get popular around the south as just 'rags': dances, or more... any dance. Further on, the Arabic word means 'a daemonic possession' or, رجز 'rijzz', 'shake' 'rajz' denoting the dancer being daemonically-possessed, or controlled by a spirit which makes them shake. Almost all types of dance throughout history has its origins in this other-worldly, unseen spirits who do see us, but we don't.

Little do we know, right?