ler and wise man. They typically carried an instrument similar to a guitar or banjo. However, due to their rapid change in environment, they could no longer sing the songs that they used to sing in their old villages; they invented new songs. Songs about being chained on the ships below deck like animals, about those who did not survive the brutal crossing to New World, and about the homes they would never see again. And once in America, there were other hardships to sing about: the ignominy of the auction block, the separation of family members, and the remorseless treatment at the hands of landowners.
             Even though their masters, and most slave owners at the time, continued a wave of new laws and restrictions to suppress the threatening culture of Africa, these griots and these slaves used their new style of music to cry out against these blatant wrongdoing to their race. They needed an escape to retain the essentials of their culture, of their motherland of which they undoubtedly could not suppress the memories of values and of experiences known previously to them. By the end of the Civil War, these slaves had blended African and European influences to recreate their own culture. This neo-African culture included African-American styles of dance and storytelling, work and spirituality, conversation and community.
             Blues music originated in the cotton fields of the southern United States where the majority of the slave hands were put to work. The earliest folk-blues were sung by name
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