'''Fife and drum blues''' is a rural derivation of traditional Country_blues. It is performed typically with one lead fife player often also the band leader and Vocalist, and a troop of Drummers. The drum troop is loosely structured unlike Drum_corps and may have any number of Snare, tom, and Bass_drum players. Fife and drum performances were Family affairs often held at reunions and big Picnics. It is suggested by most texts that it has roots not in the American_Revolutionary_War, but actually in Africa; the use of fife is merely a replacement for instruments the slaves had used in Africa.
Fifes were carved from Cane that grew locally. Drums were often hand-made, and equally often just percussive objects. The vocals seem to derive from two main styles:
# Traditional Call_and_response of Black Spirituals
# Short repetitive Lyric
The genre originates in very Rural areas of the Farming South and today persists in a stretch of sparely populated Southern_states stretching from northwest Georgia to an area south of Memphis. Notable performers are Napoleon_Strickland, Dan_Emmett, Othar_Turner, and Jessie_Mae_Hemphill. Performers play blues songs as well as religious songs such as "When the Saints Go Marching In" and "When I Lay My Burden Down."
==Films==
*''American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America'', part 3: "The Land Where the Blues Began" (1990). Written, directed, and produced by Alan Lomax; developed by the Association for Cultural Equity at Columbia University and Hunter College. North Carolina Public TV; A Dibb Direction production for Channel Four.
*''Deep Blues'' (1991). Directed by Robert_Mugge.
*''Gravel Springs Fife and Drum'' (1971). Filmed by Bill Ferris, recorded by David Evans, and edited by Judy Peiser.
==Related texts==
# David Evans, "Black Fife and Drum Music in Mississippi"
# Howard W. Odum, "Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negro"
# Eileen Southern "The Music of Black Americans: A History"
# http://www.folkstreams.net/context,86
{{blues}}
==See also==
*Othar_Turner
*Ancient_Fife_and_Drum_Corps
Category:Blues
Category:Blues_music_genres