168 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the PresentBottle Trees
Th e unique practice of placing colored glass bottles and
other luminous objects on the ends of tree limbs is a
concept that ethnographers and historians link to en-
slaved Africans originating from the Kongo/Angola coast
of West-Central Africa. Instead of glass bottles, it is likely
that items such as conch shells and terra cotta pots were
used in pre-colonial West-Central Africa, in association
with gravesites as a means of both honoring and protecting
ancestral spirits. In the American South, this practice went
through a signifi cant transformation, and in all likelihood,
the introduction of Christianity and other cultural forces
played a role in alterations in meanings and practices.
As early as the 18th century, this practice of placing
bottles on trees specifi cally served a protective function—
they were to trap evil spirits and prevent them from enter-
ing the user’s abode. In the syncretic spiritual system thatWinter and such British musicians as Alexis Korner and
John Mayall. Although the blues’ presence on the world
music scene diminished somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s,
a number of popular musicians—such black musicians as
Taj Mahal and Robert Cray and such white musicians as
Duane and Gregg Allman, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Ray
Vaughan—continued to incorporate into their repertoires
both blues compositions and blues feeling.
Th e 1980s and 1990s saw the blues reach new audi-
ences. Older black performers (B. B. King, Buddy Guy,
Albert Collins, Ruth Brown, and Koko Taylor, among oth-
ers) and new blues interpreters (whites such as Rory Block,
Roy Book Binder, and Paul Geremia and blacks such as
Keb’ Mo’, Corey Harris, Shemekia Copeland, and Alvin
Youngblood Hart) performed blues music to older as well
as younger music fans. Recording companies (for instance,
Alligator Records and Bullseye Blues) and magazines (most
notably, Living Blues) were established during this period to
showcase the lives and music of both living and deceased
blues acts and to promote the blues as a vital, enduring art
form. Visibility of the blues increased with the arrival of
the new century, with the music genre serving as the sub-
ject of several major documentary productions (including
Th e Blues—A Musical Journey, a 2003 series of fi lms, with a
range of accompanying CD soundtracks, produced by fi lm-
maker Martin Scorsese). Th e blues as an African American
music tradition was also portrayed in O Brother, Where Art
Th ou? (2000), a popular movie and best-selling soundtrack.
It is evident that the blues—though emerging within black
culture during an earlier era of extreme discrimination—
holds signifi cance for people of all walks of life in all eras of
human history.
See also: Africanisms; Armstrong, Louis; Blue Notes; El-
lington, Duke; Parker, Charlie
Ted OlsonBibliography
Evans, David. Big Road Blues: Tradition and Creativity in the Folk
Blues. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Ferris, William R. Blues from the Delta. Garden City, NY: Anchor
Press, 1978.
Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-
American Folk Th ought from Slavery to Freedom. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977.
Palmer, Robert. Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the
Mississippi Delta. New York: Viking Penguin, 1981.
Titon, Jeff Todd. Early Downhome Blues: A Musical and Cultural
Analysis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.
A bottle tree, at the Pioneer Museum of Alabama. (Jeff Greenberg/
Th e Image Works)