I've blogged before about a trip to Oklahoma where I was blown away by a 3 piece Native American blues band that opened for us on the rez. Steve Williams and his guys tore it up and we loved it as did all who came out that night!
Growing up in the 60's with free-form FM radio in the States one could hear all sorts of music as the d.j.'s back then played whatever they liked. Bands like Indigenous and Blackfoot were played right along with Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin alongside Rev. Gary Davis, Miles Davis, Melanie, Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie and Joni Mitchell just to name a few.
So what about blues? B.B. King, Albert King and Freddie King got airplay too.
But were there, are there, is there any connection to Native American/First Nations bluesmen and women, bands and the like?
I've gone down many ethnomusicology "rabbit holes" over many decades and from time to time have specifically located elements of a cross pollination of Black and Native American cultures and subcultures dealing with and as the direct result of slavery, Southern U.S. "breeding" (ugh!!) by white slaveholders and the intermarriage of both groups.
The idea that they never heard nor at least to an extent assimilated elements of other culture's music styles along with other shared common things seems to me, ridiculous. There is plenty of historic evidence of all I've just written in recorded as well as oral histories from various tribes and formerly enslaved African people.
Here are two interesting pieces. Note when scholars write and speak of blues music origins they typically are dating from some point in the late 1800's. Hybrid music began to be written down in sheet music form and only some decades later in the early 1900's was there anything like an audio recording apparatus.
It's clear most of what became largely recorded was of interest commercially and the wider the audience the better. Between those with money (white folks, let's face that fact) and eventually Black people, the ability prior to radio playing blues and blues-based music was only available via live performers or on records. This meant one had to have electricity and a phonograph.
Radio began to change this scenario but not at first.
So the idea that Native Americans -often quite distanced and sometimes literally, by mainstream whites and sometimes Black folk -were going to be sought out for their music styles (mainstream commercially viable??) and thus add to a historical record seems obviously a non-thing.
Not to anger those loving various forms of avant-garde music styles, but let's face that the more of a minority form, more interest and therefore money-making possibilities shrink. Why bother to seek minority music among minorities unless it's an area of academic study or for some level of financial profit?
I suggest only traveling ethnomusicologists and like scholars would have had interest in doing so from the beginning.
I've spent years studying the topic of blues music origins and some of the proposed links among Native Americans/First Nations and other "aboriginal" peoples, and yet I return often to do so.
In light of all this, if you really dig through the Web you'll find some classic articles that speak to the issue. Here are a couple (that lead to more): https://www.earlyblues.com/Essay%20-%20The%20Red%20Man%20and%20The%20Blues.htm
https://bluesfestivalguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/The-Emergence-of-Native-American-Blues.pdf
If you have sources that deal with these matters I would LOVE to hear from you via gkaisersoze@gmail.com
And as always, thanks for stopping by! -Glenn
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