Reggae got Blues :: essays papers

Reggae got Blues IntroductionNo food on my table, no shoes to go on my feetNo food on my table and no shoes to go on my feet,My children cry for mercy, entitle they aint got no place to call their own.The vapors arose as both a social protest and a means for expression by the African-American slave. The institution of slavery had existed in the first place the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but never before had a race suffered such discrimination oppression and poverty as the West Africans have endured for the last four hundred years. The Africans sole purpose in America was, for the most part, to provide the cheapest unpolished labor possible to procure(Baraka, 3). Previous forms of slavery (Roman and Greek) utilized the keen capability of slaves, where as the institution of slavery in the Americas treated slaves wish well that of property, a master would relate to his slave as, . if you twist the knob on your radio you expect it to play(Baraka, 3). This, the non-human view of s laves that existed, viewed Africans as heathens and thought them to be primitive and inferior to the Euro-American. These so-called nonliterate peoples whose traditional histories were passed down times to generation through oral tradition, were seen as primitive to the highly industrialise Euro-Americans. The profound beliefs and concepts of one culture (African) become absurd and intangible for a complete opposite culture (Euro-American)(Baraka, 7). Not only were the West Africans aliens to the their bodily surroundings but aliens to a new philosophical system(Baraka, 7). With this in mind the West Africans who survived the western passage across the Atlantic to the disseminated multiple sclerosis Delta had found a similar Jamaican Babylon and, Lord they aint got no place to call there own. The blues are an extension of the West African oral tradition through spirituals, worksongs, seculars, and domain of a function hollers. From the late eighteen hundreds to the mid twenti eth century afro- Americans have been slaves to King Cotton in the form of bound slavery, dwell farming and sharecropping. The endless cycle of debt, has Blues music centered on movement from oppression, and poverty while the protest may not evermore take serious form. I will examine the music of the Delta blues looking for connections to the mento/early reggae era in religious, social and lastly melodious context.RELIGIONAfrican religions usually have a tight represent with a particular culture, language and belief system.