Story Telling Through Music

All music tells some kind of story, but I recently heard a song that was eerily similar to our recent studies in class. The song "Ten Million Slaves" by Otis Taylor is about the "middle passage" for slaves, that being the trip from Africa to America. Here is a link to the lyrics. The song is about how, as Otis says, "Ten million slaves crossed that Ocean / They had shackles on Their Legs", and how the slaves back then had no idea where they were going or what they were doing.


The song parallels many of the horrible conditions slaves had to live through in the book A Narrative Life of Fredrick Douglass, including the lack of adequate food as mentioned in the line "Food goes bad, food looks Rancid / But they ate it anyway". Slaves lived horrible lives, and it is very depressing to think that some were allowed to starve because owners did not want to spend money on feeding their workers.

Here is a video of the song.

Apart from this song in particular, the entire album, called "Recapturing the Banjo", tells another surprising story. If you were asked where the banjo was from you would probably say the south. That is what most people, me included, have commonly thought. But recently I learned that that is incorrect, the banjo actually originated in Africa. Although throughout their adaptations to American music banjos have changed greatly, they have their origins in Africa. Otis Taylor decided to inform the public, and he made that album to tell a bit of history while he made the music he loves.

I doubt this is the only piece of musical history that is not common knowledge, so when I get a chance I intend to look into it more.