Who Else Wants to Play the Blues
Diddly Bo – Seasick Steve (LWJH S35E05)
Music should be fun. Anybody with an inclination to make music should be able to. Unfortunately we are taught that, in order to make music, you need to study music tablature, learn scales and chords, spend money on expensive musical instruments and practice loads. But this is far from the truth.
Have you ever see any African tribes people dancing to drums? The drummers have never studied at music college. They obviously can’t read music and wouldn’t know a scale or chord if it hit them on the head. But they are certainly having a good time. Making music with the simplest of instruments, often nothing more than a hollow log or a an empty gourd with some lose seeds used as a rattle, is great fun and that is what music is all about.
The Berimbau is a Brazilian instrument that uses only one string that has African roots. Not surprisingly it looks a bit like a bow that could be used for hunting. Now this simple instrument is the precursor to pretty much all forms of stringed instrument including guitars, harps and even pianos.
You may have heard of the Diddley Bow. This is an easy to make African American one stringed folk instrument. These might be made from nothing more than a plank of wood with a length of wire stretched from end to end. The string is tensioned with something uses as a bridge and the pitch is varied by fretting the string with a piece of bone, glass or maybe a knife or some other form of slide.
Lonnie Pitchford, a well known exponent of the Diddley Bow would make his one stringed instruments by attaching a wire to the vertical support of his front porch. Diddley bows were commonly made by poor field workers and share croppers in the Mississippi Delta region.
The blues is rooted in simple folk instruments like the diddley bo. Many of the original blues greats from the 1920s and 1930s got their start by playing these simple one string instruments. One modern day Diddley bow players who you may have heard of is Seasick Steve. So why not knock together a simple Diddley Bow and become a one string virtuoso today.
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