The history of all pop music starts with The Blues, and believe it or not, the Blues goes back nearly 150 years.

It all started 500 years ago, soon after explorers discovered America.  Many people moved there, from all over Europe.  They wanted to make America a comfortable country to live in, with towns, farms, roads, railways, and factories.  To do this, a lot of hard work was needed – to do all the building, and the farming.  People didn’t want to do it themselves, and couldn’t afford to pay labourers to do it... so they decided to use people who would work for free.  Now who, you might ask, would do that sort of work for free!

The answer to that question is slaves.  Men called “Slave Traders” went to West Africa and kidnapped thousands of African tribesmen and shipped them over to America to be sold as slaves to the American settlers.  Poor Africans!  They were frightened and lonely, many were separated from their families.  They were forced to work out in the fields, or on the railway lines for long hours every day.  They were often treated very cruelly by their masters. 

As the decades and centuries went by, they no longer spoke their African languages and spoke English instead.  Slaves had children together, and the children too became slaves.  All slaves were made to go to church on Sundays – and in fact, this was the one thing that they liked, because it taught them about music and singing.  Also, they enjoyed the bible stories that reminded them of their situation:  like Moses escaping from Egypt with the Israelite slaves.  Soon, “Spiritual” songs were invented; songs that the slaves would sing about hoping for freedom.  “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is an original Spiritual, and so is “Amazing Grace” and “Michael Rowed The Boat Ashore”. 

In the 1800s, slavery finally became illegal so all slaves were freed.  At first, the African-American ex-slaves were happy, but they were soon disappointed; because they weren’t allowed to go to school, they couldn’t read or write, and so they couldn’t get good jobs.  They could only get labourers’ jobs – working in the fields, building railway lines – just like slaves’ jobs.  Although they now got paid, it wasn’t enough to pay for homes or food.  African-Americans had freedom, but were penniless.  Often, they would wander from town to town, trying to find work and running from people they owed money to. 

It was these wanderers who first sang the Blues.  The Blues grew out of Spirituals; but Spirituals were songs of hope, Blues were songs of sadness and disappointment.  The singer would sing slowly and play the banjo, sometimes a harmonica too.  There were usually three chords to Blues songs, and each song had several cycles of twelve bars.  (Blues is still played today – but electric guitars have taken the place of banjos!)  In the 1950s, Blues became faster and louder and changed into Rock ‘n’ Roll, which, a few years later, changed into Rock music.  Jazz also grew out of Blues, and Jazz later evolved into Funk and Pop.  Now do you see how important Blues is to pop music?