I have done this lecture for six years at Rytmus Music conservatorium in Stockholm. and Kulturama Stockholm. It all started with them seeing the importance of having the history of the Blues included in their program. While I was working as a harmonica teacher they realised the advantage of having someone with the background of a musician that worked closely with many of the blues legends and someone who has developed his own music career over the last 40 yrs

This lecture begins with descriptions of how slave traders from Portugal, Holland, Belgium and France captured, or in some cases bought slaves from tribal leaders, from different regions in Africa.

And how slaves were transported to America and Europe in slave ships. Chained together and packed like sardines, millions died during transport. Only the hardiest survived transport. Coming from different regions they where unable to communicate to one another. They expressed their suffering through moaning, crying and wailing.

These were the first sounds of the blues. When the slaves arrived in America they were forbidden to speak their native languages or play their native instruments for the fear of upraising. You no doubt heard of the jungle telegraph, the sound of drums could carry hundreds of miles.

The slaves were put to work in agriculture, mainly picking cotton, the railroad industry and later Cole mining. Some were domestic slaves. In the fields they made songs called field hollers. I teach the class a simple field holler, explaining call and response. And then I have the class to sing some old African-American children rhymes to show the connection to the field holler.

Then I perform a modern Hip-hop/rap showing how the music has made a full circle and invite the students to improvise and perform their own rap. Later I show the class some films of some of the blues legends and explain that the Christian church fought for having the slaves were human beings and had rights. After the war between the North and the South black people became shear croppers, often working together with the same plantation owners that were formerly their masters.

When agriculture became mechanised most of the plantations went out of business forcing them into the big cities. There the urban blues was born. I explain to the students how the music of today is influenced by call and response. Blues music is not just a bunch of sad songs, but also an expression of hope and independents.

This is a short out line of a three-hour lecture, which I also can do a ninety-minute version of. As well as a song workshop where I sing with the students and teach them how to write their own blues songs and a song workshop where I show a formula of how to write rap/Hip-hop songs.