Hoodoo & Blues Music
Many Americans will recognize Blues music as a mother genre of most modern American music today, giving way to rock, jazz, and popular music with its unique rhythms and musical lines. The Delta Blues, as it was known, was also commonly known as Hoodoo Music, Hoodoo being the African-based folk religion in early America during the time of slavery. As Blues music developed, African American conjurers of Hoodoo in the South utilized music to help them mask their workings and to motivate their followers to keep their strength and have faith in their spiritual practices during times of hardship. Lyrics were not only motivational, but they also documented many of the spiritual practices, spellwork, and magickal recipes of Hoodoo practitioners during this time.
Hoodoo, often mistaken for Voodoo, developed not only for the sake of spells and curses, but was the way African American slaves could help preserve their spiritual traditions. Songs were a way to help repeat these traditions and keep them alive amongst generations. Common topics in songs included the mojo, which is a magickal spell bag, deals done in a crossroads, which is symbolic in Hoodoo for where a spiritual transaction takes place, and general Hoodoo Blues, which often portrayed tales of love, losses, and ways that common folk practicing Hoodoo would deal with these feelings magickally. These tunes became an oral history, and by the 1920s and 1930s, they began to cover topics such as gambling, divination, and even John the Conqueror root.
Music, Magick, and the Mainstream
As Blues music began to develop more after the Great Depression, Hoodoo Blues in the South began growing mainstream in that society, with such tunes including “(I’m Your) Hootchie Cootchie Man” and “I Got My Mojo Workin” made famous by Muddy Waters. These songs and others that included topics of love gave headway into the popular music world, resulting in R&B and Hip Hop music today. But before folks like Beyonce could take hold of the world, Hoodoo made its way into Rock music in the 1950s, with Elvis singing about Hoodoo tricks in “Shake, Rattle, & Roll,” and Chuck Berry singing about a Hoodoo guitar. In a famous episode of I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz sings about Babalu, an Orisha in Hoodoo. The magick was beginning to spread everywhere.
Hoodoo eventually made waves into literature, starting with Zora Neale Hurston embracing this practice and including her accounts in some of her writings. These subtle findings entering pop culture are some of the ways oral tradition can be preserved today.
In the modern day, some of the older recordings of Delta Blues are being found and cataloged. These lyrics and recordings will help preserve this magick in history and help future generations familiarize themselves with and understand it.
Kat the Sugarwitch
Kat, the Sugarwitch, is your local rootworker/conjurewoman who owns and creates for The Sugarwitch Co., an allergy-conscious apothecary and conjure shop with roots in American folk magic, Latinx folk magic, and Chinese metaphysical studies. Find her @thesugarwitch_co or at www.thesugarwitchco.com
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