Now this is the blues. Never was a white man had the blues, ‘cause nothin’ to worry about.
Good Morning Blues, Leadbelly, Blues artist
The one thing that has kept the African-American community going, despite all the tribulations of an enslaved existence and later with the various forms of injustices, is its music. The current instances of protests and unrest are no exception.
Right from the early days of slavery, African-Americans were creating music in different forms. As a research article puts it:
African Americans accompanied their labor with work songs that often incorporated field hollers – call and response chants tinged with falsetto whoops called ‘arwhoolies’…
This was despite periods when their musical traditions, especially drum-playing, were prohibited by the various authorities. As the poet, writer and chronicler of the black music traditions, Amiri Baraka, wrote in his poem Wise, Why’s, Y’s:
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