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This brief video describes how Africans changed the tune to American music using the Blues Scale. A Blues Scale is a six-note musical scale pattern that evolves a solid and intense emotion of struggle, identity, acceptance, equality, justice, and hope.

The Blues Scale birthed field songs while enslaved people picked cotton and provided other free labor services against their will. Free labor was one of the main reasons ‘some’ Africans were brought to America as ‘slaves.’ Some historical data indicated that some Africans were already in America before slave ships arrived. Moreover, inhumane, barbaric acts kept Africans bond from experiencing freedom. Those inhumane, barbaric acts produced a sound that revolutionized American music forever - the Blues Scale.

Dr. Shantram J. Hawkins