Desperado Orchestra®

Desperado Orchestra is a studio based out of Hawai’i. They are dedicated to sharing a multi-cultural approach through their music education youth programs. They also compose music that celebrates the African influence of roots music in the Americas.

When we talk about blues artists, we are referring to the artists from the Mississippi Delta area. These artists eventually moved up to Chicago during the great migration from the Southern states of the US to find work and more upward mobility, leaving behind their communities and sometimes families in search of more equal opportunities. At this time, segregation was still a major part of the American experience, and for the South it was not uncommon for former white slave owners to run indentured servant quarters on their plantations. Artists like Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, and Robert Johnson, and so many other musicians from the African diaspora were slowly introduced to through the African American music scene, but it was artists such as Rolling Stones, Elvis and Jimi Hendrix who revealed how heavily the blues influenced Americans.

After a few generations of blues the genre Rhythm and Blues became very popular in Northern America, which influenced artists such as Bob Marley and Peter Tosh who created a Caribbean style of music molded with other African diasporic cultures that settled in the Caribbean. Their music is considered Dancehall and Reggae. In many island cultures around the world, there is a version of island music that exists which owes a lot to the influence of Reggae, and subsequently the blues.

All over the Americas you find young and old who were influenced by the blues, if they appreciated and listened to rock, reggae, or R&B, blues music erupted and seeped into every American music crevice. Artists all over the world are still discovering the roots of American music. As globalization becomes the norm of today for sharing products, information, goods and services, it is more important now than before to remember and recognize the influence of the African diaspora in America, and to give the full credit African Americans are due for influencing music in the Americas.

To read more about how blues music spread throughout the US and the world, visit our blog at the link below.

For more information on the Desperado Orchestra music studio please contact desperadoorchestra@gmail.com

Megan Fong and J Lawson of the Desperado Orchestra are on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Youtube and Google+. Join the journey and find your inspiration!