Introduction

"When African and European music first began to merge to create what eventually became the blues, the slaves sang songs filled with words telling of their extreme suffering and privation.... One of the many responses to their oppressive environment resulted in the field holler. The field holler gave rise to the spiritual, and the blues, 'notable among all human works of art for their profound despair... They gave voice to the mood of alienation and anomie that prevailed in the construction camps of the South,' for it was in the Mississippi Delta that blacks were often forcibly conscripted to work on the levee and land-clearing crews, where they were often abused and then tossed aside or worked to death."

quoted from "A Brief History of the Blues" by Robert M. Baker at

http://www.thebluehighway.com/history.html

Drawing: blacks work on the levee

by J. O. Davidson for the magazine

"Harper's Weekly" March 15, 1884

from The Land Where the Blues Began

by Alan Lomax

[New York: Pantheon, 1993]

	Chronological knowledge and the tradition of African-American music/experience on internet:
	1. Timeline for African-American experiences--- http://blackvoices.webpoint.com/bhm/timeline.htm
	2. Chronology for African-American music--- http://www.visionx.com//jazz/jazzline.htm
	3. Online essay: Religious and Secular Themes in the Mississippi Delta Blues--- http://www.wfu.edu/~pendeea3/bluesppr.html
	4. Broad introduction on African-American culture--- http://www.lang.osaka-u.ac.jp/~krkvls/afrocul.html