Hip Hop is the Great Great Great Grandchild of The Blues

Written By: Lamont Jack Pearley Sr

The Blues and Hip Hop constitutes over one hundred years of black expression. They are both oral and aural documentation of the black experience in the Americas. Furthermore, the expression is unique and specifically formulated as a response to black in America. According to Louisiana native and blues legend Chris Thomas King, 'Blues' was created in New Orleans. The term 'Blues' initially meant risqué. It was a type of entertainment against the pseudo polite and bourgeois culture, similar to its great, great, great-grandchild Hip Hop which often exults its rebellion to an oppressive system. Another early African American expression called 'Slave Seculars,’ were the response of slaves who did not buy into the teaching of European missionaries. James Cone explains, "The "secular" songs of slavery were "non-religious," occasionally anti-religious, and were often called "devil songs" by religious folk. The "seculars" expressed the skepticism of black slaves who found it difficult to take seriously anything suggesting the religious faith of white preachers." (1) The undertone of Hip Hop constitutes this skepticism as well, as the culture embraces the theology of the 5 Percent Nation of Gods and Earths, Fruits Of Islam, and Hebrew Israelites, which all are grounded in Black Nationalism.

Field hollers were how black folk communicated in the field—a cry out to someone far away, which prompted a response. The term "cry out" is important because though it could be a shout or yell, it functions heavily as a cry out of agony, or even to conjure spiritual strength, it was a primary purpose of the field holler. The Black Spiritual, another transmission known as a cry to God for salvation, was part of enslaved African Americans' praise ritual. The black pastor who uses what is known as the hooping hollering style of ministry, utilized today, employs all of the above, and all three exercise the call and response method. These expressions birthed and ushered in blues as we know it, ultimately passed down into emcee'n, which is the rapping element of Hip Hop.

There was no white influence on blues or hip hop, except for a disenfranchised system. As James Cones puts it, "The Blues are not art for art's sake, music for music's sake. They are a way of life, a life-style of the black community; and they came into being to give expression to black identity and the will to survive." (2) One main contrast in both black expressions of storytelling is hip hop originated through migration and industry change. The story of urban concrete and brick buildings. Nevertheless, both respond to an environment hostile to the idea, culture, and skin of black. 

We must note that Blues and Hip Hop not only served as a riposte to the blackness by white supremacy, but they both also served as an effective antidote to conflict within the black community. For instance, Hip Hop originates from the street culture of the Bronx, New York, at a time known as "The Bronx Is Burning." Coined by Howard Cosell as he commentated the 1977 World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, the term referred to the decade of the 1970s when an economic collapse and a slew of arsons plagued the South Bronx. Violence was high. During this time, Hip Hop emerged at block parties, community centers, and in abandoned buildings. Richard L. Schur says, "Hip-hop did not originate with political or artistic manifestos, but at dance parties and in public parks." (3) However, there is a political and social aspect to its beginnings, economic as well. The people involved in Hip Hop made a conscious decision to defy social and economic injustices and create a resolve for inner group conflicts. It's an identity, a dress code, and a way to resist poverty, oppression, and police brutality through uplifting storytelling. 

The folk hero is at the center of Blues and Hip Hop, exhibited as early as 1877. It is a statement against a system that humiliated and abused a group of people. A martyr of sort. During the reconstruction era, the folk hero of the black community is referred to as the bad man. As Fox Butterfield explains in his book All Gods Children, "At the turn of the century, as life worsened for blacks, a new breed of African American folk hero arose across the south - the bad black man." (4) This bad man played a part as a folk hero and as a folk narrative through lyrical transmission, along with the character of bluesmen or emcees (rapper) who represents the folk. Songs like "Stagolee" based on Lee Shelton, who shot and killed a man named Billy Lyons in a bar in St Louis, Missouri in 1895, which has been sung by Mississippi John Hurt and Fury Lewis, exemplify this notion. 

Stagolee Lyrics by Mississippi John Hurt - 

Stagolee was a bad man

They go down in a coal mine one night

Robbed a coal mine

They's gambling down there

And they placed themselves just like they wanted to be

So they wouldn't hit each other when they was shooting

Money lying all over the floor

There was one bad guy down there he thought he was

That was Billy De Lyon

So he had a big 45 laying down by the side of him

When they got placed, why, Stagolee spoke to him

He says, "Boys, look at the money lying down here on the floor"

Says, "What would we do if old Stagolee and them was to walk in here?"

These acts of rebellion highlighted in song and persona represent the outrage blacks felt for centuries of persecution by a white supremacist system. In essence, the bluesman and the emcee are folk artists, and they traject folk music. In 1914 Henry Edward Krebiel published his book Afro-American folksongs: a study in racial and national music raising a fascinating point of view in regards to African American music transmission – "Folk songs are not the popular song in the sense in which the word is most frequently used, but the song of the folk, not only the song admired of the people but in a strict sense, the songs created by the people," applying to both the Blues and it is great great great grandchild Hip Hop. Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur both have a compelling role in Black Folk Narratives. Initially, when they were alive, they too were the folk hero, because they made it out of the ‘hood’, they shared the folk stories. After their untimely deaths, they now again, function as a folk hero, a legend of sorts. 

During the days of the plantation and slavery, musicians were not just to entertain, but they were folklorists and teachers. They were the griots and holders of the scrolls. They passed on Black Folklore and dances, and they taught songs of generations past, connected the ancestors to the present, and prepared the youngsters to carry it on for the future. This passing on of tradition through song and musicianship guarantees that our culture and heritage would remain and continued actively. A great example of that is Texas Songster Elijah Cox, who sang a song called "Cruel Ol Slave Days," learned while stationed and living at Fort Concho, in San Angelo, Texas, from an ex-slave. He eventually performed that song and others for the Library of Congress in 1935 at 93. In Hip Hop, KRS One, also known as "The Teacha," fills this same role. KRS One is the founder of the Temple of Hip Hop, which part of its description reads, "In 1994 we realized that rap was something that was done, while Hip Hop was something that was lived. We realized that Hip Hop was far more than just a music genre, that it was a collective urban consciousness that produced not only the expression of rapping, but also breakin', Deejayin, graffiti writing, and beat boxin." 

Know Thy Self Lyrics by KRS One - 

We say, "Criminal minded", 'cause our thoughts are illegal 

We represent the very thinkin' of, inner city people 

Real people, people that take care of thyself 

They need health, love, awareness and wealth"

When thinking of black expression and black vernacular, Blues and Hip Hop go hand in hand. They are the voice for the voiceless broadcasted with unique phrasing and wordplay. It is scientific and opposes the treatment of black in America. Leroi Jones says, "Blues means Negro experience," and "…the term blues relates directly to the Negro, and his personal involvement in America,”(4) and Meta DuEwa Jones explains, "When you consider the intellectual ingenuity of hip hop artists, you are describing rhetorical genius rooted in a black aesthetic.”(5) Alas, Blues and Hip Hop are not only relayed orally but through literary expression. James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Richard Ellis, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name a few. Both are a paramount vehicle of black storytelling and a living document of the black experience.  

1 - James H. Cones, The Spirituals and the Blues, Orbis Books, 1972, 1991, 98

2 - James H. Cones, The Spirituals and the Blues, Orbis Books, 1972, 1991, 111

3 - Richard L. Schur, Defining Hip-Hop Aesthetics , University of Michigan Press, 47

4 - Leroi Jones, Blues People - Negro Music in White America, HarperColins Publishing, 1963, 1999,2002, 94

5 - Reflections of Hip Hop, Michael Eric Dyson, Language, Diaspora, and Hip Hop’s Bling Economy, 41