Schwarz
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The Delta Blues’ deepest roots lay in the music of Africa. The music made its way to North America through the culture of the 15 to 20 million slaves brought during the 300 years of the slave trade. The majority of the slaves entering the Mississippi Delta were from West African tribes: Bantu, Yoruba, Ewe, and Akan. The music of these people is different, but do have recurring themes in all of them. The music is participative in call and response, drenched in oral history and tradition, and rhythmic pitch-tone fluctuations. While the vocal theme and methodology is primarily West African, the majority of the instrumentation has its beginnings in the savanna and Sahel zones of the Western Sudan. The main instrument of the West African coastal tribes was the drum, but the use of drums was outlawed during the early days of North American slavery, so the adaptation of savanna-derived string instruments came into prominence. The instruments were easily adaptable to English and Scot folk music, since all three relied on stringed instruments. These instruments were mainly two-string bowed and plucked lutes, griots, bania/halam, beta, and earth bow. Melodic lines are plucked by finger with these, in varying speeds and tone, to simulate the accompanying story being sung or chanted. The instruments crafted from local wood, and the string made from the gut of animals. This allowed for the relatively easy translation of instrumentation into early slave life. String instruments, at least of a certain type, were easy to make from local materials.
The tone and timbre of African music also reflects a great influence on the early blues. These aspects of the music centered on the playing style and accompaniment articles. Flattened notes and fluctuated tone, played to an upward drive in accordance with the drum rhythms, sound strikingly similar to pentatonic and heptatonic scales.