The Story of Fife and Drum Blues
One of the forgotten styles of Country Blues is Fife and Drum Blues from the Hill Country of Mississippi. This style of music is distinct from the more popular guitar-driven Hill Country Blues which itself is quite distinct from the nearby Delta Blues which gave birth to such artists as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, B.B. King, and Muddy Waters. The Hill Country is special in the history of blues, however, precisely because of its distinct style that seems to preserve a culture older than the Delta blues.
For an illustration of the difference between Delta Blues and Hill Country Blues, listen to the Hill Country Bluesman R.L. Burnside play “See My Jumper Hanging on the Line” and then the Delta master Tommy Johnson play his “Canned Heat Blues.” Hill Country Blues is very rhythm-oriented which seems to reflect Fife and Drum Blues (as explored below).
When settlers first moved into Mississippi, the Delta region between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers was a jungle of trees and vines in the Mississippi floodplain which kept farmers in the Hill Country above the Delta. The Delta land itself, however, was rich with potential for farming which spurred a clean-up campaign to clear the land for farming. This process included building a massive levee system which has been continually built over since the pioneering began. As this rich and newly cleaned land became available, people began moving from the hills down to the former floodplain for farming and employment, bringing their culture with them and starting new musical developments that would flourish far beyond the Delta.
However, even as the Delta blues proliferated, the Hill Country culture still thrived. When folklorist Alan Lomax visited the area, he found not only a distinct type of blues in the Hill Country, but a musical tradition that melded Fife and Drum Corps with African drumming and Blues melodies.
At the beginning of the colonization of America, slaves were made to undergo military training and many became involved in military and military-type bands, learning fife and drum and creating ensembles. However, as the United States solidified, slaves were forbidden from drumming out of fear it could incite rebellion. After Emancipation, the freed slaves picked up drumming again, this time using the fife and drum outfit and refitting the music with polyrhythmic tendencies and other African drumming techniques. On top of this, the musicians would improvise short melodic passages over the drums much like Hill Country guitarists do over their own chordal rhythms. The drums used are old military or marching drums and the fifes (quills) are handmade out of reeds by heating a rod and burning holes to hollow out the reed and create the finger holes. For a good example of the style, see Napolian Strickland perform at a picnic and see how the melodic style and rhythms compare with this Nigerian talking drum ensemble and contrast with the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps.
This Fife and Drum Blues provides a striking example of how the blues is a distinctly American and African style of music and how it grew out of the political and social influences of these competing cultures. Just as the Blues holds an important place in the history of popular music, these Fife and Drum songs have a commonly overlooked but socially important place in the culture of the Blues.
