Hip
The History
Chapter One
In the Beginning There Was Rhythm
Slavery, Minstrelsy and the Blues
Do you know what a nerd is? A nerd is a human being without
enough Africa in him or her ... You know why music was the
center of our lives for such a long time? Because it was a
way of allowing Africa in. - Brian Eno
Toward the end of 1619, John Rolfe, the first tobacco grower
of Virginia, noted the arrival of a new import to the British
colonies. Rolfe (1585-1622) is best known as the husband of
Pocahontas, and it was his experiments with growing tobacco
that saved the Jamestown settlement from ruin. The incoming
cargo he noted on this day would change the course of tobacco
and the colonies as a whole. "About the last of August," he
wrote, "came a Dutch man of war that sold us twenty Negroes."
These slaves, likely looted from a Spanish ship or one of the
Spanish colonies to the south, were not the first African
slaves in North America. The Spanish explorers Panfilo de
Narvaez, Menendiz de Avilis and Coronado had all brought
slaves into what is now Florida and ... read full excerpt from Hip: The History ebook
