Clifton Hicks

Female Blues Singers in 1790s Jamaica?

Added 2018-04-14 12:00:00 +0000 UTC

While waiting on my pre-ordered copy of 'Banjo Roots and Branches' (https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/23cnd4ft9780252041945.html) to I arrive, I'm meticulously going through this outstanding work by Dena Estein: 'Sinful Tunes and Spirituals.' On p. 70 we note the following passage:

"When the mill is at work at night grinding sugar, there is something affecting in the songs of the women who feed it; and it appears somewhat singular that all their tunes... are of a plaintive cast. Sometimes you may hear one soft, complaining voice and now a second and a third chime in; and presently... a full chorus is heard to swell upon the ear and then to die away again to the first original tone."

(Beckford, William 'A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica' London: T & J Egerton, 1790)

I can't help but think of these enslaved women as being pioneer American blues singers, distantly (though clearly) linked to the earliest recorded blues artists of the 1920s--all of whom were female as well.

It's also interesting to note that, at least according to all of the materials I have read, the earliest banjo players documented in west Africa and the Caribbean during the 17th and 18th centuries were exclusively male (and quite often professional minstrels). By 1850--and probably much earlier--Americans of every gender and ethnicity were playing the banjo.