ROBERT SANTELLI: We speak in hushed tones and try to come to grips with the place we are visiting. I think it’s safe to say that everyone who walks through here leaves with a somber feeling, an idea that they have just touched a little bit of the underbelly of the human existence.

TOUR GUIDE: When the slave trade started, in the 16th Century, the1500s these storerooms were converted into dungeons to hold the captives and this is where they held the women. Please, we are going to go in there, mind your head. There is a short step down before you get to a level ground. Just walk straight and keep right. These are the original bars, 300 years plus from the Dutch. There were no toilet facilities. They were only given empty containers placed at the corners. Everything was in here, no bathroom, nothing. So the longer they stayed here, the more they died. They were given food, they were fed, but not good enough: something to sustain them. If they had given them good food, they could have got strength to fight. Of course, some refused to eat. Some preferred to die than to go through those horrible conditions. The dead bodies were removed and thrown away into the sea. Please mind your head and bend very, very low. They made the doorways very low, very small, very short because in those days Africans were very tall, and so it would be very difficult for a tall African to run away through there without being arrested.

Yeah, this was one of the dungeons for the men. About 300 men were packed in for one month, two months, three months, made them weak and lean, very skinny.

In those days, when the ships came, they brought small boats down here to take them still in chains before they were taken to the ship and then off to the faraway places.

ROBERT SANTELLI: So, were they allowed to play drums?

TOUR GUIDE: They were in chains. How do, how do, how do they carry drums and whatever?

ROBERT SANTELLI: How about singing?

TOUR GUIDE: Well, singing they did. When one sings sometimes it consoles the soul. So as for the singing they did a lot, but not drumming and dancing. They were in pens, how how how they enjoy? Yeah, they sung to console themselves, but not for enjoyment.

Please note, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the end of the tour. Have a nice afternoon.

ANGELIQUE KIDJO: We use the soul to express our sorrow, our pain, and also the hope behind the pain.

KEB' MO': Singer Angelique Kidjo was born in Benin in West Africa.

ANGELIQUE KIDJO: The African people have been brought to America. They are not immigrant. They have been forced to come here. The people that are taking them away think that if they did took the drum away from them there will be nothing left. They forget the voice is always going to be louder than anything else.

KEB' MO': In the 21st Century experts agree that Blues music grew directly out of the American experience after the end of slavery. The American musical establishment all but ignored the Blues until 1912 when W. C. Handy began issuing Blues songs as a written sheet music.

WILLIAM FERRIS: When we talk about the Blues and trying to transcribe it, you can never fully capture it.

KEB' MO': William Ferris, co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

WILLIAM FERRIS: Using classical music notation that one would use for, say, Bach or Beethoven, really is not possible with music like the Blues, because you have notes that are stretched and bent, treated in ways that are simply not transcribable, you simply have to hear them.

KEB' MO': Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin understands the power of the blue note.

ROBERT PLANT: You’ve got to get the blue notes in. That’s what rock and roll is. It’s got to have the blue note. You can’t say everything with lyrics and the whole thing about the Blues is it transmits emotion. The moaning makes it work. When women come to me and they say, “Man, you moan better than anybody else,” I say, “Uh-uh. Check Robert Johnson’s ‘Preaching Blues.’”

KEB’ MO’: Stretching and bending notes are pretty easy to do for singers and guitarists. On the piano, however, the blue note is slightly different. Marcia Ball demonstrates.

MARCIA BALL: The Blues is in a minor key in its pure form. A major scale, five notes [plays piano] has a chirpy, positive sound to it. A minor… [plays], that’s the blue note. And it gives you a sadder, more serious sound. So, if you’re playin’ [plays piano], then you have a rich, full, happy, positive sound. And if you’re playin’ [plays], and that’s your blue note.

KEB' MO': Along with the blue note, another trademark of the Blues is improvisation and variation. B.B. King.

B.B.KING: One of the things that I do, which may not be proper for some, but I play each night like I feel that night. For example, “The Thrill is Gone,” I don’t try to play “The Thrill is Gone” like I did in ’69 or ’70 when I first made it. I play it tonight like I feel it tonight, because I don’t know how I felt then. But I know how I feel tonight, so I’m gonna play it the best I can play tonight. And that’s what keeps it fresh. Whatever song I play, I’m playing it tonight like it’s the first time.

KEB' MO': B.B. King and Tracy Chapman, “The Thrill Is Gone.”

SONG: B.B. King with Tracy Chapman, “The Thrill Is Gone”

KEB' MO': B.B. King and “The Thrill is Gone.” That features Tracy Chapman and comes from B.B.’s album “Deuces Wild.” I’m Keb’ Mo’ and we’re exploring the roots of Blues music on The Blues.

KEB' MO': There’s a tradition among working people, especially those who do rhythmic physical labor to turn routine into music. Sea shanties, marching songs, even prison songs of chain gangs are part of this tradition. In the fields, railroads, and prisons of the American South, black workers developed field hollers and work songs, tunes they sang to help the hard work go just a little faster.

Kip Lornell is Professor of Africana Studies at the George Washington University.

KIP LORNELL: Field hollering would either be a single person singing in the field as they’re working, or you have group work songs. And the group work songs were sung to do a number of things: one is to keep time, so that if you’re lining a track you would all jerk up on that crowbar at the same time, or if you were felling a tree, so the ax chopping was done in rhythm. Also, alowed musicians and singers and just general folks to voice things that they weren’t able to voice in other ways because I’m not sure that the people who were keeping track of what they were singing always caught exactly what was going on.

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