The Diddley Bow Ushers in Southern Blues Music
Welcome to The Southern Minute Podcast. This is my introduction, but my reason for this audio vignette is to explore Southern topics that have significance to the Cinema Man series I’m writing. The South’s natural history, history in general, Southern gothic topics, etc. will hopefully add to the color of these novels—all in one minute (more or less)!
Click on the link to see more about my world in “Cave Buckner Marinates.”
Ahhhh, the South . . .
You’ve been listening to the tones of a musical instrument that has its roots in African music.
This simple instrument made from farm scraps, established American Blues music throughout the rural South in the 1890s and it is still played today all across America.
Hey! . . . welcome to “The Southern Minute.” I’m your host Cave Buckner.
Known as the “diddley bow,” it was a musical instrument born on a sharecropper’s farm.
Made from scavenged materials it was nothing more than a thin metal broom wire that was tied off on one end of a broomstick and stretched tightly the length and tie off again, with space for the string to vibrate.
You simply pluck the string and move a finger pressing on the string along the broomstick or use something more expressive that would slide up and down the length of the neck, such as a bottle or a knife edge to play high and low notes.
Using a slide was the most important part of playing the diddley bow because it provided a way to get a wide range of tones, including slides, bends and vibrato, which could wring out every ounce of emotional pain to tell a sad story.
To make the musical notes louder, people would connect the stick or slab of wood to a hollow container on one end—anything that would serve to amplify the sound, and in more cases than not, a cigar box, with a few holes cut into the top to let the sound out, served as a resonator, or something that would amplify the sound.
The blues sound developed from the hardships of living a sharecropper’s life. The music reflected social isolation and poverty.
Sharecroppers learned to make do and during the most trying times, it was music—any kind of spiritual or what we know now as folk music, that helped them get through their day.
It was a popular music form, because everyone could nod along, relating to the sad notes, the collective expressive human wail of tortured vocals emoted from men and women with relationship problems, to unfair treatment of segregation practices and oppressive Jim Crow laws.
The diddley bow—an expressive instrument that helped to calm a troubled region during the hardest of times, yet brought the blues style to the forefront of American music history.
This is the Southern Minute. I’m your host Cave Buckner—thanks for listening.