Giles Oakley
Blues - La musica del diavolo

For us rock-blues enthusiasts, from the Stones to Clapton to Led Zeppelin, blues has always been an important element. But finding a text that thoroughly explored its origins and evolution has always been challenging.

We all have somewhat fragmented information, and we are sure that, from the beginning, blues was born from the African-American populations who, having arrived in prosperous and newborn America in the nineteenth century, used singing and dancing as expressions of their origins. In my opinion, a truly enlightening text that traces the fundamental steps of this journey and of a genre that would change the musical culture of the twentieth century is precisely "Blues - la musica del diavolo." It is actually a BBC documentary produced by the same author and reproduced in paper format in 1976. In Italy, it arrived in 1978 and was later reprinted by Shake editions. To this day, in Italy, it remains one of the most comprehensive texts on the genre. It analyzes the origins by retracing the history of the African-American people, their movements, and the various influences. It goes from the cotton fields to the barrelhouses in the Mississippi Delta to recordings in the South by whites in the fields where blacks worked, passing through the Great Depression. An analysis that describes the hardships of African Americans, the sacrifices, and the continual humiliations, the migrations to the more industrialized North, and the blues that, as a consequence, became electrified. From these evolutions, the blues moves in tandem with the soulful influences of artists like B.B. King or Albert King.

Naturally, it starts with W.C. Handy, probably the progenitor, passing through Mississippi John Hurt, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, the mystery of Robert Johnson, Sonny Boy Williamson, artists who have known tribulations of all kinds but with a talent that managed to go beyond any humiliation. Guitarists who absorbed techniques by bringing back piano ragtime, harmonica players who were capable of reproducing an entire orchestra. A certain Keith Richards would be struck by this story, by the dignity of a people who, starting from their own history and dignity, with limited resources, a battered guitar, and tapping feet for rhythm. Then came the electric guitars, the double bass, the drums, and it would become a full-fledged conquest. A white man named Elvis Aaron Presley would realize its greatness, creating rock 'n' roll with a few shrewd moves and a pompadoured quiff.