Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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Song:
- Charlie Patton
SE C O ND L IN E
because it has a bass drum accent on the four. It originated in New Orleans, where the
second line refers to the people dancing behind the band after a New Orleans funeral.
- that is the second line. When they put the body
down and the band strikes up a lively tune to bring the people home, the dance the people
are doing behind the band- that is also the second line. The people that follows the
funeral is the second line. It grew to mean the people that follows the parade, the band
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that follows the float. But when we put people down, we have a good time
In Banjul, the capital of Gambia, musicologist Sam Charters witnessed a similar
procession, beginning with boys and young men who were singing and dancing, and
beating on boxes, tin cans, sticks, and tambourines. In the center of each group of dancers
and drummers was a costumed spirit dancer. Charters compared the scene to Mardi Gras
Boys and young men, singing and dancing the old New Orleans street dance ste
me people
who, as slaves, had made the journey on to the United States and passed on the memory
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was a string of drummers that came out from New Orleans, starting with Paul Baldwin,
who played Dixieland with a fonky second-line beat. His nephew, Earl Palmer- maybe
- started putting it
in records. When Earl started put
Second line drumming is a polyrhythmic shuffle, as opposed to the two-four backbeat
skirts for LaBelle and the shuffle o Night People
drummer] to think polyrhythms in a marching cadence with more of a shuffle, with a
press roll. 328
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